[ICANN-EU] Re: European At Large Council

["Griffini Giorgio" <grigio@mediapoint.it>]

Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> May I propose a sequence of points that we should solve to proceed?
> .....

If I were a director I will prefer to have a limited number of people to deal with 
for stay informed on sub-regional issues (where the boundary is the country) 
and preferably composed this way:
1 member for the country of the director
2 members per each other country 
3 members that acts as a 'Other Countries' representative  
The OC representative will capture countries where there are few names or 
small country like .sm or .va, for example, that choose to not stay with .it but 
prefer to be represented by a 'other countries' representative) 
Tasks of these members should be to collect issues,hints,opinions from a 
wider audience in their own country by promoting public discussion on 
relevant topics topics by ML or any other mean and summarize it for director 
They should be 'elected'  within their country in a public open way.

Once running it will have a high degree of representativity. 
The problem is now while bootstrapping such a kind of organisation. 
Current ICANN concept about 'representativity' is amount of endorsements 
received and Nom-Com nomination so I think we should stay on this concept 
at the moment.

When the endorsement phase is finished we will have two groups of persons. 
Those in the ballot (Nom-Com+endorsed enough) and those not in the ballot 
(the remaining not withdrawn candidates).
We may make a first round to select 1st member per country by offering the 
seat to 'not-in-ballot' candidates starting from those have received higher 
number of endorsement (if the candidate don't like to seat the next best rated 
one and so on). Once election is completed we will make the second round 
to fill 2nd seat for each country (except the director one) with Nom-Com 
candidates ranked in proportion with votes received in the election but scaled 
to endorsement final result. 
The third round offer a seat for OC representative (all willing names collected)
At the end of this third round the selected members elect  the 'other 
countries' representative by selecting (method still TBD) form willing people.
Main task of 'other countries' representative will be to try to stimulate 
attention to this process for countries which had no direct representitative at 
this bootstrap stage in order to get 'mother-voice' members from such sub-
regions. 
If an adequate amount of percentage of population is covered this 
'bootstrapping council' should develop the charter, minimal election 
rules/methods (with details left to each country) and deal with funding issue.

About this last matter I think that if this 'bootstrapping council' cover enough 
percentage of population (representativity) may apply for having funding by 
EU.

When 'up and running' each of 'country' members will then develop 'ears' and 
'nose' and 'eyes' tools for providing  the 'mood' of his sub-region.

Here I will answer to your questions issues not already handled by my view.

1) Bootstrap process described in my answer

2) Boostrap --> develop charter;   Running---> fulfill charter

> I've rethought at my original proposal, and after the discussions we had, I
> think that we should try to form a closed group (though open for reading to
> everyone) with somewhat "representative" people - but we should also try to
> get the best possible and most active persons in it. So I'd make an open
> call to everyone who wishes to get in, but (in case we get more applicants
> than the number of members, which I'd like to be about 20-30) I'd say that
> 60-70% of the places should go to candidates in this election, sorted by
> their number of endorsements, and then those people should opt-in the others
> choosing between the applicants. This would allow to bring in persons who
> were not candidates or could not get enough support but that are thought to
> be influential or important to have a good result, but would nevertheless
> ensure that the resulting board is somewhat representative of the At Large
> members' wish. The call for members should be adequately made public, i.e.
> with a message to all candidates and all At Large members in Europe, if
> ICANN allows us to do it.
> 
I agree for initial closed group but IMHO your proposal is not suitable 
for a bootstrap process but more properly when the body is already up and 
running and as a possibile inclusion in the charter.
For a bootstrap process I see two drawbacks in your proposal. 
First, it is not clear what you mean for 'representativeness' . We, as 
candidates and by running in these elections, have already accepted to 
misure representativeness by endorsements and Nom-Com nominations and 
you are adding a non-deterministic judgement factor by allowing for an opt-in 
by each candidate.
Second, being not yet organized for PR you will end to rely on ICANN for call 
for members. This may not be wrong but it will mean to depend on a third 
party.
  
In my view, we will use the current 'representativeness' method of @large 
election, we will able to measure the real will of us as candidate in putting 
efforts into a thing like this 'body' , we will have 'fair' representativeness for 
our subregions and we will able to do it by ourselves.
My humble opinion, of course....:-)

Best regards
Giorgio Griffini