Dear Wolf, Thanks for your reply and comments. I would like to make sure that there is no misunderstanding on one point, where I might not have been very clear.
From the sentences below:
(RG) In a nutshell, different organizations can be extremely active and extremely useful for different purposes related to the internet users, but if they do not participate in the policy development process they fail, IMHO, to satisfy the requirements for being an ALS. (Wolf) I don’t agree with your observation or conclusion that “ALS do not participate in the policy development process … (or) fail to satisfy the requirements …”. Please note that I never assumed or stated that ALSes do not participate in the development process, I only stated that, *if* they don't, *then* they fail to pass the test. I strongly believe that ALSes have, as a whole, done an excellent job, and I have stated that at the Mexico Summit, when I was still the Vice-Chair of the Board. However, the fact that most ALSes are active in dealing with the core business that ALSes have been built to do should not be used to hide the fact that there are other ALSes who do not participate in the ICANN policy development process, with the possible exception of periodically voting for representatives who take care of the policy development. The open question is whether this model works. Apparently we have a different opinion on what is the role of the ALSes: I am just giving my point of view, then it is up to the ALAC as a whole to decide what is the correct approach. The only thing that I ask is that this should be made clear. In other words, is it OK to have organizations who have some internet activities, but who do not engage in policy development? Either answer is fair, but it should be made clear where we stand. On the support/finance, I fully agree with you when you remind us that there has been in the past a sort of "handbrake" slowing the development of ALAC. However, this is the past, we have turned the page. We have obtained the Mexico Summit (my personal dissatisfaction is just that we have been unable to get it sooner, for instance in Paris) and we have obtained the voting Director - incidentally, I am personally proud of having been instrumental to this progress. Now we have to shift gear: we are no longer fighting for fair representation, we must make a plan and take commitments. What do we plan to bring to ICANN, how can we contribute to the overall purpose of ICANN? Once this stated, we can negotiate the resources we need to achieve this result. Until we have not clear in mind what we can do next, we do not have the necessary elements to answer your legitimate, but premature, question about "when the next At-Large Summit will take place". If we plan to build a strong "partnership" and show participation at the regional level, we can shoot for a summit in 2014. If, on the other hand, we give this impression of being not interested in interacting with the rest of the ICANN community, and continue having GAs somewhere else, my bet is that there will never ever again be another At Large summit (and obviously we can also forget about the second ALAC Director, that should still be an objective). Cheers, Roberto PS: I have cut the history, since I am on a slow and irregular connection