[ICANN-EU] Horizontal organization

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

This is my draft proposal about "horizontal organization", a term with
which I indicate a way through which the regional At Large Director
could inform and discuss his positions with all At Large members, to
get their thoughts and consensus. It seems to me that many of us agree
on the opportunity of such an instrument, which I find fundamental to
make the At Large concept successful, so I'd like to discuss and get
to some practical action in a short time.

Since it does not seem feasible to me to have a mailing list with
35'000 subscribers, I guess that the European community should be
broken down into local communities, where "local" can be conceived in
a variety of meaning: by country, by type (business, no-profit,
underground...), by job, by age... However, the most natural way to
proceed seems to me to be by nation, for one simple reason: the
language. Everyone feels more comfortable with his own mother tongue,
and not everyone speaks English.

However, we do not need to start from zero. There are a number of
independent sites run by activists. Many of them already have forums
or mailing lists. We should establish a network of independent At
Large sites that diffuse information and gather ideas through the
community, and try to promote participation in these sites and in
their forums (maybe with some underlying commitments by the site owner
ensuring free participation and fair information).

The European coordination could then be delegated to an intermediate
level, which could well be this mailing list. However, I am wondering
whether we'd need to give some formal structure to this. I think that
ICANN and the At Large concept would be strengthened if there was some
formal and credible way of gathering consensus among At Large members,
and of proofing that the positions that the European At Large Director
will take, whoever he will be, are shared by a majority of the At
Large community in Europe. A mailing list could do, but there should
be some way of keeping reasonable the number of its subscribers, so
that they don't get overwhelmed by the amount of messages, and that
polite and profitable discussions can take place. And the participants
should somewhat proof that they represent something more than
themselves alone.

But how can we select this intermediate level of representatives? IMHO
there's a very simple and effective way: let's say that the N
candidates with the highest number of endorsements, with a reasonably
high value of N (i.e. 25), can be considered representative enough to
participate in this middle level - or else, all candidates that get at
least X endorsements in this phase, with a low value of X (i.e.
10).[1] For candidates who withdraw formally, the number of
endorsements at the withdrawal moment will count. I think that this
would be a good balance between having an open and wide participation
in this level and granting that the consensus that will be reached
here can credibly represent the consensus of the whole community.

However, another possibility is simply keeping this list open or open
to all candidates, but I fear that its representativeness could then
be easily attacked.

Comments? Ideas? I think that many here share the feeling that some
higher degree of organization in the community is necessary, so I hope
that we can find consensus and act on this in a short time. I'd also
like to hear from the 4-5 candidates that really have chances to get
to the ballot whether they would agree at least to discuss, if not to
submit, their decisions with such a structure.


[1] I've done a quick check with this morning numbers:

Endorsements	# of candidates
100 or more	3
50-99		1
10-49		7
5-9		7
2-4		19
0-1		37
------------------
TOTAL		74

Guess that the Gauss curve is narrowing...

-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology