All,
You need to know that ICANN has a very narrow, rather geeky, mission.
I thought that ICANN's mission was what the Internet Community wants it to be. I also think people need to move beyond discouraging participation on the basis of a restricted mission. If one is clear on ICANN's role, does that mean one is only allowed to talk about ICANN issues? I talked about finance even though I was working in an environmental community in my past role. Of course environment was my primary role, but by putting yourself in a silo do you risk cutting yourself off from potentially valuable information and networks?
ICANN's original mission what that of a technical coordination body. Over the years, its taken on more . While some have been ok with that, others are quite concerned with apparent "mission creep". This was the subject of long discussions at the recent UN World Summit on the Information Society. The concern remains - as evident by some of the comments in the latest Government of Canada submission on the triple-X proposal. So changing the ICANN mission, well, isn't that easy. As for the ALAC role in ICANN, well, that perhaps can be more easily changed. My belief is that if people have concerns, that they articulate them and put forward specific recommendations. The timing for a discussion on and about ALAC role and mission couldn't be better, as the formal ALAC review I think will be starting this month. So if people have ideas on how things could be changed for the better - let's propose them. regards Robert