Darlene and all,

I feel I must comment on this note.

There are indeed three ALAC members from each region. The Bylaws call for two to be selected by the RALO (and prior to the RALO's existence, be selected by the ICANN Board) and one selected by the Nominating Committee. This is similar to the GNSO and the ccNSO have which also have voting members selected by the Nominating Committee. Conversely, there are five members of the Nominating Committee selected by the ALAC. Perhaps some or all of this might change following the review of the ALAC, but that is the structure at the moment. Regarding why does ICANN have such NomCom-selected members, I cannot speak to the intent of those who drew up the current Bylaws, but I suspect that at least part of the motivation was specifically to have some members who were not beholden to special interest groups (be they RALOs in the case of the ALAC, or constituencies in the GNSO or ccTLD-managers in the case of the ccNSO).

As member of ALAC, selected by the NomCom and coming from North America, I have a number of responsibilities. First and foremost, it to act in what I believe are the best interests of ICANN and the ALAC. Second, is to act in what I believe to be the best interests of the North American At-Large community. As I understand it, all of these responsibilities are shared with RALO-selected members of the ALAC. RALO-selected members also have a direct relationship with their RALO. To what extent they must follow the explicit direction or intents of their RALO depends on their own conscience, the policies and regulations of their RALO, and of course their interest in staying in or getting re-appointed to that position.

I consciously and carefully have not gotten involved in the formation of the NA-RALO. I felt that this should be left to the members of the involved ALSs. For the record, several NA-RALO people have told me that they believed that this was a reasonable and correct position for me to have taken. Based on this, and other demands for my time, I did not read all of the e-mails discussing the formation and I therefore was not even aware of the decision that you mentioned. I did post my suggested changes to the At-Large list on June 16th, and received only one comment from the NA region, and it did not cite any decision or discussion, formal or informal, related to umbrella organizations (the comment did disagree with my recommendation, but not from the viewpoint you mentioned). I made this comment (as well as others) based on my best beliefs at the time. I would think that this is all you could expect of anyone. Had I known of the previous exchanges, I certainly would have made an effort to discuss the issue before the earlier ALAC meeting. But no one chose to explicitly tell me about it despite my posting my thoughts nine days earlier.

For the record, although the intent of the quotation that you cite generally agrees with my statement in my June 16th note, the quotation was not mine. It was entered into a draft document on the fly by the At-Large staff person (a practice that I have repeatedly gone on record as opposing).

I am glad that Robert distributed the document to you. Communicating with his RALO's ALSs is part of his job, and I am delighted that he did so (and I would not expect anything less from a professional of his calibre). Based on my current and past experiences with Robert, he is no doubt a hard worker, and I assume the same is true with Beau. But most of the rest of the ALAC has been working similarly hard, and in my case, I started a day earlier with 13 hours of GNSO meetings.

I find the confrontational wording of your note rather troublesome.

Regards, Alan

At 26/06/2007 12:12 PM, Thompson, Darlene wrote:

Hi all,

I must say, I'm learning a ton of stuff here in San Juan. One of which, is that I had always thought that we had 3 ALAC members representing our region and that is not, in fact, the case. We have two, who we have just elected being Robert and Beau. Alan "has no obligation" (his words) to forward any of our causes.

I found this interesting because, some time ago, we had a huge discussion on this list (which I do not mean to re-open) on whether orgs-of-orgs (ICANN calls them "Umbrella Organizations") and their member orgs can apply to become ALSs. We had concensus on this topic, in fact the vast majority gave their consent. At yet, Alan Greenburg actually put in contrary wording to this in the ALAC Proposed Guide to ALS Application Evaluation which would have prevented this, namely (and I quote):

"Where an Umbrella Organisation applies and is accepted for membership, its constituent member organizations may not be accredited as ALSes. If members of an Umbrella Organisation are already accredited as ALSes, and they wish to retain their accreditation, the Umbrella Organisation’s application would not be approved."

We were extremely fortunate to have Robert there as he circulated this document amongst several of us here that would have been negatively impacted by this and arranged to have us speak to the ALAC to have this wording removed.

It is also interesting that, up until this time, it was a fairly major responsibility of ALAC to assist in the formation of the five regions. Now it seems that ICANN is revisiting the entire structure. We may wish to discuss how we would like to see this structure work. I am wondering why we only get to select 2 of the 3 regional ALAC reps. If the third one is not actually forwarding OUR causes, then what is the point? Why does ICANN reserve the right to select these people if, really, they are not answerable to any group?

I must say, we are very fortunate to have both Robert and Beau on the committee. They have been working unbelievably hard already (meetings at 7:30 AM most days, having to stand up and speak although totally new, running like crazy and organizing things).

Thank you, Robert and Beau,

Darlene
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