This is not so much an issue of "whittling away" as it is about gaining focus, respect and credibility.

I guess subtlety is wasted, so...

I travel in a few interesting circles, some behind closed doors. To the rest of ICANN, At-Large is a laughing stock, to be generally tolerated so long as it stays in its corner and chatters to itself. Its outputs are heard and occasionally followed if they cause no significant change to the status quo. Money spent on ALAC is seen as a sunk cost of doing business, so to provide a superficial sheen of public participation. This is why funding is such a struggle; look at what ATLAS 3 had to go through. We're seen as a charity case, with just enough funding to keep participants complacent and under the illusion that ALAC can effect real change. Those who were with me in the initial work on Applicant Support will recall that the Board and the rest of ICANN completely rejected us until we gained the support of the GAC.

I am saying all this -- imploring that ALAC refocus its outputs and better understand its constituency -- because I honestly believe that ALAC is in crisis whether it knows it or not. It has nearly no credibility, mainly because it redundantly speaks on behalf of the interests of stakeholders already served by other ICANN registrant constituent groups (notably the BC and NCUC), while spending nearly no effort actually determining the views of its particular mandate. As a result, it provides little of the unique perspective that would be expected of the only group in ICANN mandated to convey the needs of non-registrant end users. Rather than surveys or R&D to determine the actual needs of individual end users, ALAC spends its outreach resources to groom more elites. (Isn't that now the main purpose of ATLAS III?) It is a burden on ICANN that provides so little return that it will surely be a target of future austerity programs.

Sala, I was as much of that long fought battle as anyone before I stepped outside the bubble and saw how ALAC is perceived by its peers. That battle is far from over. I want an ALAC that is listened to and not laughed at. Getting there demands a hard rethink of what it exists to do and how it does it. The only known is that the status quo will not sustain.

- Evan