Evan Leibovitch wrote:
[ my comments are limited -- for now -- to the NARALO list, pending feedback ]
Not a single reply or comment in days? Is this -- Danny's proposed letter -- something that should be on the agenda of next week's conference call? - Evan
Danny Younger wrote:
I am of the view that the ALAC needs to write a very strong letter to the Board expressing their disgust with (1) the manner in which the ICANN Public Forum session was conducted that allowed for a very limited amount of time within which to interact with the Board and (2) the almost total lack of remote participation opportunities that were available to at-large members.
Hi Danny,
I found myself fairly disgusted with the highly stage-managed nature of the Public Forum. However this is not the first of its kind, the Paris meeting was also similarly controlled.
As someone that attempted to participate remotely, I can't point to a single ALAC session that allowed for meaningful remote participation, nor were audio feeds available for many workshops.
I must have picked up a bug on the plane coming home as I'm feeling quite unwell right now. I will have a full debrief once I'm up to it. But I'll reply to your comment because I generally agree with it.
Danny, to me it felt like there was a significant chunk of the ALAC calendar in Cairo that didn't allow for meaningful participation by those of us who were _there_, and I don't just mean the open forum. Often we spent so much time patting ourselves on the backs for merely getting multiple constitiencies together in the same room, we spent near zero time actually churning policy. The "Open Joint Sessions" Monday afternoon and Thursday morning were particularly pointless and I will advocate scrapping them in the future in favour of more concrete policy-driven activity. More than 90 minutes of the "Open Forum" was spent reading prepared written AC and SO reports out loud. And the utter rudeness with which the Bruens (of Knujon) were treated was simply an embarrassment, they are owed an apology.
It got to the point that ALAC never got around to implementing its extra measures on accountability -- the staff-proposed changes to the ALAC rules that would (IMO) micro-manage participation tracking. Having said that, I consider the non-approval of these ridiculous measures to be a Good Thing (a discussion for a later time). However, the dropping of this measure on the floor was indicative of how little of substance really got done. If it hadn't been for Nick's background info on new gTLDs and the substantial grunt work on the summit -- much done away from the formal meetings by Wolf and Darlene and me -- I would have considered the week a massively wasted opportunity.
This has to be the worst case of both in-person and remote participation management that I have ever seen at an ICANN session.
I would agree, for reasons that have nothing to do with technical barriers. But I think that at least part of the problem with participation lies closer to home. So long as ALAC sees merit in bloated action-free multi-stakeholder meetings -- in which applauding the mere ability to bring everyone together in the same room appears to be the overriding agenda item -- we have little moral high ground from which to lecture others.
I would like to get the points of view of Darlene, Robert, Wendy and Beau on this before talking my concerns to ALAC and maybe beyond.
- Evan
PS: In retrospect, Robert's attempt to engage the local Cairo community ended up -- to me -- to be an utter failure and a unproductive diversion. As it turned out, the "community" that Robert found didn't want to participate in ICANN so much as exploit us as a vehicle for self-promotion. I've learned my lesson and will personally not indulge such activity again, even (maybe especially) at the Summit.
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