Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Andy,
>I think the main point is, that such a european communication plattform,
>forum, council, call-it-like-you-want makes sense itself, getting
>european user groups closer together, adressing issues to politics,
>to the media and not only to ICANN. When you look at special issues
>like "lawful interception" (that european echelon stuff) it might be
>important to adress ETSI as well as ICANN. And/or IETF. And/Or
>all european ISPīs. And/or european parliament (copyright controll
>discussion).

I support that. The need we have is for time, competence, dedication;
connections and a full vision of what is going around. ICANN is only
one element in a pattern: several in this ML documented that decisions
are not made nor taken at the BoD.

> >Otherwise, next time I think that we will have even less voters from outside
> >Germany, and even more voters from Germany, and so on until the Director
> >will be weakened since other countries' members will not accept him as their
> >fairly elected representative in ICANN.
>Again I understand your fear, but letīs try together - whoever the director
>will be - to think constructive on how we can break this situation up. I still
>think it is a good idea to have regulary physical meetings in different 
>european
>countries as one possible way to get a european understanding and let people
>loose fear of beeing taken over.

The number of voters in France, etc.. comes from a lack of information of
the people four to two month ago. Our target is to make sure that this does
not hapen again. From this process we must understand who are the German
voters, how they were motivated to register. I feel that cooperating from
now on on an European/Worldwide basis and getting results at ICANN and
elsewhere will give enough momentum to the @large concept. The next
election will be on a real different scale.

> > I do want to have it, to create as many forums in as
> >many languages as possible (we already have a French mail forum and lots of
> >German Web forums, by the way), and to involve all the community, but it is
> >not enough, and if we lose this occasion to raise our level of legitimation,
> >we are scoring a goal to ourselves.
>
>I completely agree with that.

I created the two French MLs. One is for the relations with voters
[icann-fra@egroups.com] and the other is for relations between candidates
[ip-france@egroups.com].

I suggest the same double list elsewhere: we have to learn from each others,
get to know each other, as Andy says organize meetings, etc... many petty
or practical things which would confuse the public. (Example: we used the
internal list to work together on the press release published on the geneal
list and to organize the place, time, date of a meeting withe press). We are
also discuss about mutual endorsments, etc...

I am presently compiling a third one - protected and for broadcast only - for
press releases [news-france@egroups.com] any one can use. I suggest other
countries to follow the same pattern, and we develop together european ML.

NB. The French lilst is obviously open to everyone. This is purely a language
and a practical issue.

> >This is also unavoidable, and this will also weaken furtherly the strength
> >of this "open list" we want to establish. Imagine that on this list a
> >proposal is discussed, and consensus is reached. Then we bring it to ICANN,
> >and someone else pops up and says "Hey! We, on the French (Spanish,
> >Italian...) list, reached consensus on the very opposite!" What should ICANN
> >do? They will possibly decide that At Large members cannot express a clear
> >position, and will do as they like. And even if the Director chooses one of
> >the two positions, he will be weakened by the fact that there are structured
> >groups of At Large members claiming that he is going against the will of the
> >community
>
>And to avoid exactly this we need physical regulary meetings in different
>european places on the issues to be adressed to ICANN. Mailing lists and
>News Groups are great to get an broad band diversity of ideas and
>opinions.

Since Germany is leading the votes and the two French Directors may
give their seat to a German director, we would certainly be happy
organizing a first low cost meeting in Paris for who ever may attend.

>[..] if we need to concentrate on finding a concensus, solution
>and/or clear statement to a question, itīs much easier in real life and/or
>on a mailing list with a clear focus on that. To avoid misunderstandings:
>A clear statement could also be, that on special questions there simply
>is no represantative statement to make for all user and that the issue
>and/or structure should allow different users interests.

IMHO the first things we need are:
- a clear glossary of the terms we use. As Europeans we may bring
   this precious tool to the internet, having many diferent langages
   needs and experience will help. Exeprience shows that shaping
   words often shapen decisions
- not that much a consensus but a summary of the different positions
   so we know where we come from in searching from consensus.

> >Since I'm quite sure that we are going to have at least five or ten "open At
> >Large lists" in different languages and communities, there must be some way
> >to coordinate them all and get to a consensus shared *among* the
> >communities. This is another reason to have a more formally structured
> >council.
>What do you mean with "formally"? I hope you donīt mean buereaucracy?
>One of my main questions to constructively building such a thing is in what
>european countries there are what (user-)organizations that could help?

This is a very good question. But the next one is how. This is a new area,
with many large interests at stake. We have to be carefull at petty inter-
organizations fighting not to interfere too much. I suppose we could look
for an advisory board including fro these organisations which would be
involved and would be put in competition to help us (introductions, rooms,
resources, competences, experience, etc...)

Jefsey Morfin