Dear All: As many of you know, several of the ALAC Liaisons to to other Advisory Committees and Bodies of ICANN do not require that the person chosen be a current member of the At-Large Advisory Committee. Since 'tis the season for selecting liaisons for the coming year, and since there are likely members of the community who may not be familiar with these matters, I thought I should send out a brief note. In the past, there have been serving liaisons - Bret Fausett, to the GNSO, and currently Hong Xue, for all IDN matters - who have been in this situation. ICANN has provided travel support for them to attend the face-to-face meetings necessary in order to be effective liaisons for the At-Large community, though there has never been any "official" policy related to this. Why is this, you might ask? Simply that ICANN wants the community to be able to appoint the best candidates to important liaison positions such as these. If there are members of the community who believe they have something to offer by volunteering for one of these posts, we would not want them to be discouraged simply because they cannot personally afford to pay to attend the ICANN meetings, and sometimes intercessional meetings, that their liaision brief would require. It should be emphasised that we have to look at these things on a case-by-case basis to at least some degree. We would expect, for example, that a person who was from outside the ALAC who wishes to serve in a liaison capacity which would require funding from ICANN to support would be someone who, for example: * Is clearly knowledgeable about the area they propose to be a liaison to - which would include having worked on the issues related to their proposed liaison role as a member of the At-Large community in an active way preceding their possible appointment; * Knows the people in the ICANN body to which they would be a liaison, preferably with relationships already in place with at least some of the main players; * Will commit to the time required to be effective in their new role - which would include measuring up to the standards required of liaisons in the ALAC's Rules of Procedure, reporting regularly to the community, working actively on At-Large policy working groups that relate to their liaison role or the body they are a liaison to, and the like; * Has been a part of the At-Large community and a participant in their RALO's work in a meaningful way (meaningful to their RALO at least, and hopefully meaningful to the whole of the community). I hope everyone understands that the above isn't meant to be carefully scrutinised as a precise criteria or anything like that, but rather to give a sense of what kind of person would be appropriate for receiving travel support for being a liaison - in some cases quite considerable funding. After all, the funds which are used to send a liaison to the necessary meetings and the like are coming from funds which would otherwise be spent on other members of the community - I feel sure that you all would want to feel that if such an appointment were made, that the person in the liaison role would be felt by the community to be providing 'value for money' to the whole community (to use a UK expression). As always, please feel free to ask questions. -- Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart Director, At-Large ICANN Main Tel: +33 (450) 40 46 88 USA Tel: +1 (202) 657-5460 Fax: +41 (22) 594-85-44 Mobile: +41 (79) 595 54-68 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart