Re: [ga] A Call for Resignations
Sotiris Sotiropoulos ha scritto: Be Well All,
P.S. (as a totally personal addendum) I would note that the ALAC holds closed internal meetings (closed in the sense that the public isn't explicitly invited and that we reserve the right to ask someone to leave if we think it's the case, but in a number of occasions we had ALS representatives and other people attending), but it also holds public meetings at each and every ICANN meeting. There is ample opportunity to talk with us, but we only meet three times a year and we definitely need to make good use of the scarce and costly physical meeting time we have (as, in the end, its costs are paid by registrants). Anyway, if the rest of the Committee agrees I think we might accept comments (with a time limit) during our internal meeting in Mar del Plata. Nonetheless, I would hope that speaking time is used for a quiet and productive discussion among ourselves, rather than for shouting matches or name calling the Committee members. On the more general issue of At Large representation, I think that in the ALAC approach some things work, others don't - just as in the original flat election model. Especially, we did score bad in keeping dialogue open with our constituents (but also, I must confess that we never saw hordes of constituents willing to interact with us). We possibly overestimated our availability of resources, and even if we did a lot of useful work, and we did get some results (the most important one, in my opinion, is that the At Large is still on the map, and it has been reinstated as a fully entitled participant stakeholder in ICANN, something that was almost lost in 2002), in the end it seems that the present mechanism cannot manage to do all the necessary outreach, make the RALO incorporation process go on, struggle with ICANN and operational problems to keep us alive and running, and keep up with the policy work. We now have to assume that there still is significant interest in participating in ICANN, it's just not showing up because most people don't like the present participatory structure, and there are not enough resources to create and sustain participation. (This assumption will be strongly challenged to delete us from ICANN once again, so we'll need a lot of people to support it.) I think we should use the unique chance provided by WGIG to push for a new reform in the way civil society (which, contrarily to what some of you seem to understand, doesn't just mean NGOs, but also individuals) is represented in ICANN. However, we need to come up with a clear reform proposal, possibly in Mar del Plata. At the Cape Town and KL meetings, we already had joint public meetings with the NCUC, most of which were devoted to discussions on this point. We are trying to set one up in Mar del Plata, and hopefully that might lead to a common proposal. You are welcome to participate in the discussion, which is starting to happen also online, in many different places (perhaps the WSIS CS IG Caucus is the most comprehensive one). I think it does not make any sense for "us" - meaning users and non-commercial interests in general - to be split between a minority constituency in the GNSO and a powerless Advisory Committee. At the last WGIG meeting, I and other civil society members spoke up and got the group to agree that civil society participation in ICANN needs to be enhanced. Whether that happens will depend on our capacity to push for credible proposals and in the will by the world's governments (hopefully greater than the one showed by the DoC/NTIA in 2002, Mr. Williams) to support us. Anyway, thanks for pushing - I don't share your approach and I don't think it's ever been productive, but still we need people to be vocal about the importance of greater participation by individual users in ICANN. Ciao, -- vb. [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------ http://bertola.eu.org/ <- Vecchio sito, nuovo toblòg...
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