[governance] RALOs without halos

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il giorno lun, 23/01/2006 alle 12.56 -0800, Bret Fausett ha scritto:
> from the power of its ideas and input. This model, a shell of the 
> original At Large concept, is what the ICANN Board decided in Ghana, 
> rejecting the proposals of its own blue-ribbon Bildt Committee and
> the independent NAIS.

Actually, just for the sake of history preservation, in Ghana (March
2002) ICANN decided to eliminate any kind of At Large participation. It
was only in Bucharest (June 2002) that a group of good-willing people
(traveling on their own money...) met the Evolution and Reform Committee
and convinced them to reinstate the At Large under the form of the ALAC.
Then an "assistance group" was formed to work out how to implement it,
and by the end of 2002 the concept of the RALOs was developed. Actually,
if I remember well, the original proposal that was initially put forward
in the group did not have the regional subdivision, but some members
(Latin Americans in particular) proposed the change to a regional model
in one of the conference calls. So, at the end of the year, ICANN
approved the ALAC/RALO model and in January 2003 the initial interim
members of the ALAC were chosen by the Board.

Initially, it was very hard for us to work: we had almost no budget and
support, and ICANN flew us to Rio (March 2003) with the agreement that
that would be the only ICANN meeting the Committee would attend in the
year. It took us the entire year just to obtain the budget to attend the
meetings and actually do our job, and also, to let the other
constituencies to actually know who we were and what we were doing (I
remember that in Rio some of our requests to meet other constituencies
were turned down or met with almost empty rooms...).

I think that the work of the Committee has been valuable both in quality
and in quantity. Sure, if you compare the ALAC with the utopian
expectation that thousands of people would be willing to attend ICANN
meetings and discuss DNS-related matters, you'll be disappointed; but if
you compare the ALAC with the other ICANN constituencies and committees,
then you'll discover that we're one of the most active.

Eventually, I share your final consideration: if all these energies
that, year after year, are being spent in name calling at every occasion
and in dwelling again and again over battles that were fought and lost
four or six years ago, were rather spent in collaborating to build an
even stronger and more numerous At Large constituency, then the At Large
would be even more important; and it would then be able to credibly
claim Board seats or other ways to have a strongest influence on the
actual decisions.

I am sure that those who oppose the At Large idea altogether - mostly to
preserve their power over ICANN - are extremely happy to see a divided
constituency where most efforts are spent in endless structural
quarrels, rather than a united group that can exploit fully its immense
potential.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...

_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance