The whole point of the RALO level of structure/bureaucracy, as I understand it, is to allow at large groups to work locally and aggregate grassroots-level points of view before getting to the top level.
Not really. It's to choose two ALAC members. There is a reasonable point of view that the real goal of the aggregation stuff is to set up a chokepoint to keep the variety of voices from disturbing ICANN. My experience with ALAC tells me that we are unlikely to find much consensus on any non-trivial issue, and a single report from a RALO will undoubtedly be interpreted as such, regardless of what it says. ICANN has processes for any individual or group to comment now, and it would be foolish not to use them, RALO or no RALO.
In any case, this is a low-risk effort. The worst that can happen is that a RALO is created in the way Robert and Luc and others want, and nothing happens after that.
I'm perfectly OK with a low impact RALO, no in person meetings, no budget, no secret handshakes. Just don't take it for more than it is.
Personally, I believe that RALOs should make every effort to internally work in whatever languages are practical to work with (while still enabling proper debate), but that the interface to ICANN still needs to be in English only.
ICANN's working language is English. If you talk to them in any other language, they simply won't understand. In Sao Paulo they had simultaneous translation into Spanish (there were a lot of attendees from other parts of Latin America) but it was clear that very few people, at least at the physical meeting, were using it. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.