John, again, the RALO can do much more than that if we want it to
This would be a good time to review the dismal history of previous attempts to set up ambitious at-large organizations. All have them have started out just like you want to do and have fizzled once people have discovered how little effect a group like this can have on ICANN's entrenched, opaque bureaucracy, and how little relevance ICANN has to the experience of Internet users. There is no reason to think that another trip down this well trodden path would end up anywhere different. What's ICANN doing about all the porn spam they get? Nothing, not their job. What about all those fake messages from Caisse Desjardins trying to steal their life savings? Same answer. What about all that gross stuff we would rather our kids not see? Same answer, other than perhaps adding confusion when .XXX is set up. What about the prices that Videotron and Sympatico charge and their crummy service? Not ICANN's department. For any normal user, or groups of users, why should they waste any time or effort with ICANN? As I have tried to point out, if you think it is important to inform users about ICANN's activities and lobby ICANN, you can and should do that right now. The lack of a RALO is not preventing it, the presence of a RALO will not magically make it happen. If things aren't happening now, they're still not going to happen with a RALO. The reasons to make a RALO are to coordinate ICANN-related activities, and to select ALAC members. Lacking any activities that need coordinating, there is no reason to put any more effort into a RALO beyond the minimum needed to pick the ALAC members. So even though Vancouver is a swell place, and I have cousins there I haven't seen for a while, I cannot see any benefit to using ICANN's money and everyone's time for a meeting to set up yet another empty shell of an organization. R's, John PS: On the other hand, if the Canadian ALS want to do something useful and effective, how about telling the new Industry Minister to wake up and implement the recomendations in our spam taskforce report?