Hello all,
 
Some remarks:
 
1. Countries in NARALO
Using http://www.icann.org/montreal/geo-regions-topic.htm we can see that the countries in ICANN's North American region include:
 
2. NARALO's official languages
To answer Bret's remarks about languages, I agree that much of the communications in the NARALO community will be in English, as email list activity will most probably continue to be in English only. I also agree that in order not to unduly limit the org or person responsible for the secretariat function (which by the way should, in my view, be funded by ICANN), they should be allowed to rely on translation services. They should, however, be sensitive to multinlingual issues and be able to answer email and accept ALS applications in the official languages we will decide on for the NARALO.
 
I suggested English and French for our official languages because they represent the union of official languages in Canada and the US. However, given the 6 other countries that are part of our region, we may need to define other official languages, as Samoan, Spanish and Philipinos (amongst others) are spoken in these other countries and may be considered official languages in them.
 
Or we could wait to have ALS's from those countries and see then.
 
In any case, I suggest we limit ourselves to official languages.
 
 
3. Responsibilities of the NARALO
Regarding exactly what the NARALO will do, we should refer to Section 5 of the NARALO MOU. Points 5.1 and 5.2 (outreach) could allow for very broad-reaching activities, so the NARALO's role isn't necessarily as limited as electing ALAC reps and acting as an information relay between ICANN and ALS's. I guess it all depends on how much funding and energy ICANN/we are ready to spend, and where we want to take this thing.
 


_________________________________________
Luc Faubert
Conseiller en gouvernance TI et en gestion du changement / 
IT governance and change management consulting
GFI Solutions
+1 514 236 5129
www.GFISolutions.com
www.LucFaubert.com