Hi all, Evan and I just has a conference call with Nick regarding the Summit plans so far. It's of course critical that we come up with a plan that meets the expectations of the community, as well as ICANN itself as it will be funding all the costs. As it turns out from our discussion, our goals for the Summit are remarkably similar.
From the point of view of ICANN (as expressed by Nick), the At-Large Community ultimately exists to provide the general public's point of view on relevant issues. For the Summit to be considered as a worthwhile achievement of that goal - not to mention provide value for its substantial expense -- it must actually produce policy analysis and recommendations to the rest of the ICANN community.
Certainly educational and social components are vital. However, for the Summit to succeed a significant amount of education and discussion on issues must take place in advance, within the RALOs and ALSs, with final debate taking place and formal consensus recommendations being delivered at the Summit. The event's success will be judged - within ICANN itself - by its ability to provide useful recommendations and analysis regarding issues of importance, reflecting the diverse but common needs of the At-Large community. Summit delegates, in order to be funded, will be expected to have already raised relevant issues within their constituencies. We received commitments from Nick that sufficient background information will be provided in many languages, to allow such debate to start well in advance. We started with the attached ICANN Ensemble document. Nick liked many of the ideas shown there but was concerned the plan did not sufficiently commit the Summit to produce concrete policy documents. Here is what we need to do: 1. Decide which (and how many) policies we would like to work on. Obviously we don't have time to work on ALL of ICANN's policies at once. So, we need to choose between 3 to 5 of the current issues and work on them. This can be achieved by an on-line poll. (While it will be possible to start debate on long-term issues to be turned into policy at a later date, it is important to choose a number of issues on which At-Large can have an impact within the coming year.) 2. Create actual realistic milestones. We need to have dates and things accomplished by those dates to prove to ICANN that we are actually working on this stuff. When they see this, they will be much more likely to fund this venture. This will also be our opportunity to get a commitment out of them. They won't commit unless they see work getting done. 3. Only those that put the effort into doing the policy work will have the opportunity to go. ICANN will not fund those that just want travel or to socialize. Period. ICANN will, more than likely, be funding the Secretariats and Chairs to go to the LA meeting to discuss this further. They may also fund one or two others but that is it. The group will schedule at least one conference call during the LA meeting to involve anyone else who wants to participate but will not be there.