Re: [ICANN-EU] Re: European At Large Council

["Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@medea.wz-berlin.de>]

> > Yes but it should be manageable otherwise the director will spend most
> > of his energies in trying to understand what is the concern rather
> > than trying to find a solution for such concern. 

He shouldn't do this on his own anyway ;-)

> If your main concern is about ressources needed to follow
> discussions, and mere monitoring of tendencies, there's no real need for
> elections and the like - I'd rather expect that the structures needed
> will naturally evolve.

I agree. I've pondered the concept of an at-large council today. Here 
is the provisional result:
Any form of council would imply that only a limited number of people 
is honored with joining the club. 
So far, I've found none of the suggested selections procedures 
convincing. On the contrary, none of them seems really up to the 
tasks we have to deal with. 
(Personally, I don't care at all about a member's nationality, I do care, 
however, about commitment, competence, communication skills and 
so on. How would we know if these merits are equally distributed 
among the council members chosen?)
What is more, I don't see that we were able to produce anything near 
a "rough consensus" on the selection mechanism. We would probably 
spend precious time and energy on debating endlessly the various 
advantages and disadvantages of the various ways at hand to truely 
represent the members' will. 
One potential outcome would be that we thereby lose a lot of frustrated 
people on the way. Another that we'll be more concerned about self-
organization and mere survival than about ICANN related issues. 

Thus, I think time is not ready for creating a council. An at-large 
council may be a gradual outcome of an undefined period of 
discussion and work. A council whose authority would be based on 
pesonal trust and merit rather than on formal and somewhat helpless 
criteria of representativeness.  
That's why I would prefer to rely on open mailing lists for the time 
being. 
And, to add just another point, a council wouldn't prevent a director 
from creating his own private little council - and be it only to figure out 
how to cope with its official equivalent ;-) 
 
Comments?

jeanette