Firstly, happy Birthday Wolfgang :) Secondly: Vittorio's long service has borne great fruit and I hope that a vote of congratulations and thanks will be the first order of business at the ALAC meeting in San Juan, and of the first EURALO board meeting :) Third: While a number of EURALO board members will be in San Juan, others will not - however, we can arrange a meeting and telephonic access to it, so that the first board meeting could be held in San Juan. Needless to say, we staff people will be happy to make all the necessary arragements. On 22/05/07, Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu> wrote:

Kleinwächter ha scritto:

...

First of all congratulations to all elected. We went through a complicated process but at the end of the day we have been sucessful to to build a structure and to elect a leadership for our EURALO and to give legitimacy to our two reps in the ALAC.

Looking at the results I am also happy that at the end of the day the principle of geographical and cultural diversity is reflected in the final outcome. I am also satisfied that we have a good balance of different institutions in the EURALO Board. This gives us a great opportunity to move now from the discussion of procedural issues to issues of substance. I am sure that this discussion will produce much more unity than we had in the procedural debate.

I would also invite Patrick, even if he was not elected, to give his energy and knowledge to the EURALO process. There is no need to have a position to give input to the process. And the at large community lives to a high degree from individual contributions.

Next step would be the drafting of a workplan. I would also encourage a discussion on a strategy paper with some mid-term goals and milestones. As you have seen there are two European ICANN meeting scheduled now fro 2008 and 2009. This should be seen as a challenge for EURALO not only to show the face but to bring fresh ideas and actions to the ICANN process.

Hope we have some time in San Juan to discuss the next concrete steps.

I want to join you in the congratulations, and also thank you and the other people that, while not being candidates in these votes, put a lot of effort in the last years to make it happen.

While thanking everyone for the support in the vote for the EURALO Board, I'd like to point out that this marks the long awaited end of my four-and-a-half-year-long term in the ALAC. Nobody expected that it would take so long, and we had to try, struggle, make mistakes, go through cycles of enthusiasm and disappointment. In the end, we succeeded, though I agree with some of the comments about the need to understand what went wrong in these last steps of the process, and whether we need more adjustments in the future. (And also, congrats to Veronica and Sébastien, and I'd be happy to set aside a couple of hours with you, early in San Juan, to pass on some experience and bring you up to speed.)

But I disagree with the comment I've read somewhere, that this process forces good people to exit: actually, this election brings for the first time into active positions in the At Large constituency several new people, both relatively new to ICANN such as Veronica and many others, involved in the past in other constituencies such as Sébastien and Desiree, or already very expert in Internet Governance matters such as Jeanette, Bill and Karen. And we need more voices, not less, even if this costs some time and "pain" to understand and accept each other.

I agree with you that we need a timeline for the next months. We have some "meta" issues still open, such as individual participation; also, I think that the theme of At Large Board seats and other reforms will likely be on the table during the ALAC review (at least, we've been working for it). We have to increase our credibility by making our processes more reliable and less contrasted, and by getting more and more organizations, of many different kinds, around this table. It's a big challenge for the EURALO Board and we have to be prepared.

To be practical, I don't know how do we want to proceed - do we want ICANN to set up a EURALO Board mailing list, or do we want to work here, or set one up on our own? We should start working immediately, and perhaps arrange a meeting for those of us who will be in San Juan, if enough will (who is going to attend?).

In the meantime, and to conclude, I've discovered that today is your birthday, so - happy birthday, Wolfgang!

Regards, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------

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