Dear All: As many of you know, a proposal was submitted to hold a meeting of ALSes in North America concurrently with the Vancouver PCNA summit later this month, at which ALSes and candidates for ALS accreditiation would meet and discuss issues surrounding forming a North American RALO as well as doing outreach at the PCNA itself. Where a region has not yet created a RALO and requests for funding of At-Large activities come in to ICANN, ICANN relies upon advice from the three regional representatives on the At-Large Advisory Committee and declines to fund meetings or events where the regional reps do not unanimously agree that it should be funded. In this case, the North American ALAC reps did not recommend that ICANN provide funding for this meeting, for reasons which they have previously stated on the list (rather than potentially putting words in their mouths I will leave it to them to state their reasons if they wish / are asked. They did state that if the meeting were to be primarily an outreach event for the Canadian community they had no objection. What I would like to suggest is that we could do the following: 1) Have a meeting space at the larger meeting, which if there's a cost ICANN could fund, to allow those of the ALS / candidate ALS community to meet in-person. Those present could also invite others at the PCNA who are interested in ICANN and At-Large to attend. 2) Connect via videoconference over the internet to that meeting for those unable to attend in person, but who wish to attend. We have access to an excellent Java-based tool which we are trying out at a meeting in Asia a few days later which could be used for this meeting too. 3) Use the meeting as an opportunity for those who are present, or who join the meeting remotely, to discuss RALO formation issues, but also more general outreach for those who are attending the larger PCNA meeting. Perhaps this might prove to be a compromise that would work? -- Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart Director, At-Large Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) PO Box 32160 London N4 2XY United Kingdom Main Tel: +44 (20) 8800-1011] USA Tel: +1 (202) 657-5460 Fax: +44 (20) 7681-3135 mobile: +44 (7774) 932798 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart http://www.alac.icann.org