[alac] At GAC Open Regional Forum today
I am attending the Government Advisory Committee's Open Regional Forum today, I made an informal proposal to GAC members in relation to AtLarge. I suggested to have a session around the role of Users in ICANN's policy development in the next ICANN meeting's GAC Open Forum if they are to organize one. I explained the rationale using the WSIS process where the role of government in Internet Governance is on the table, which is to have public policy perspective, that also gave rise to the role of users/ consumers/civil society as public. I also added that we are happy to send our representatives to the session from ALAC and ALS members. In the morning session, I was bit surprised to hear Paul Twomey mentioning specifically about ALAC and RALO as an effort for ICANN to hear the voice of the users and referred ALAC and myself as the only member of ALAC in the room. There are some 70 or 80 people in the room now, at the end of the session of the day, it was perhaps more than 100 people and I guess more than half of them are government people. Today's session covered from ICANN's mission etc, then IDNS and IPv6 among others. I took the floor, at the end of the session, since the floor seemed to be open. Paul Wilson of APNIC made additional comment and question, which I could not hear and understand well, but questioned Paul Twomey if current ALAC effort is on the right track (so that they represent users) Paul Twomey's answer is YES, they are, and added that including the users interests into the ICANN process is one of the baggages ICANN is tasked to carry out. (I will clarify what exactly these two Pauls meant since I am not that much confident in my hearing) izumi
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