constructive critical contribution to ALAC

[Max Senges <maxsenges@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ALAC review team - dear ALAC colleagues

Allow me to briefly restate the comments I made during the session on ALAC
review this morning and encourage you to also contribute constructively to
planning the future setup of ALAC @
http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#alac-review

1) information overload
As a volunteer it is very difficult to follow all the complexities of ICANN
developments. It would be great if the core ALAC team can summarize and give
short updates on hot themes and especially calls for defined action (like
votes etc.). Another worthwhile effort might be a 5 min video newbie-guide
on what are the common practices and points of leverage for ALAC member
organizations.

2) education about ALAC & Internet Governance
I support the idea to develop educational resources (e.g. for teaching
Internet Governance and ICANN matters in school and university) as well as
to hold online lectures. Hereby learning materials and activities should be
addressed to ALAC members as well as the general public/users.  I am happy
to help in developing this initiative as this is my field of work and i have
concrete ideas in how to bring this forward.

3) Facilitate organization - enable bootstrapping - POWER - funded
initiatives
I would like to reinterprete Karl Auberback's point raising that in the end
ICANN is at least not only a technical but also a policial institution in
which the name of the game is power. I'd like to add power is represented by
governmental diplomacy AND of course by money. Hence as Karl also pointed
out it is good and important to give advise - but as he rightly said
everybody can give advise and we as user representatives should continue to
influence ICANN's governance structure to give civil society/ user
representitives advise relevance.

Nevertheless my constructive critical constribution to the review is to
improve the support (bootstrapping) for initiatives coming from ALAC member
organizations. One aspect that i'd like to single out is for ALAC staff to
facilitate to find funding for initiatives because there is only so much one
can do voluntarily.

In this context allow me to mention that an innitiative is forming to work
on a User/Registrant Rights Charter which eventually will lead to better
user/consumer rights for all by integrating the charter into all Registrars
offerings. You are very much invited to join our team - please contact me
and/or come to our workshop on Tuesday, 3 March, 2009 16:30 - 18:00  Room:
Alameda 3 (Hotel Meliá) http://mex.icann.org/node/2651

4) My last point is asking to explore how to make another ALAC summit like
the one in mexico possible. These face-to-face meetings are very very
essential to build the relationships and trust to start meaningfull work.

Kind regards,
Max


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Dr. Max Senges

www.maxsenges.com
www.knowledgeentrepreneur.com

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