[ncdnhc-discuss] clarification (sort of) on ICANNatlarge.com and other ICANN "at-large" things

[Alexander Svensson]

Just a few comments:

At 18.07.2002 07:10, James Love wrote:
>4.   A few days after the ICANNatlarge.com election Esther and Denise
>announced that there would be yet another ICANN sponsored effort, this one
>using at-large.org, a site first registered to Kent Crispin.   The new
>"at-large" effort appeared to be run by Esther and Denise.  The Esther and
>Denise effort created a new "At Large Organizing Committee"  made up of
>people who represent organizations, with a few dozen members.   There is no
>evidence that this group actually meets, votes, makes decisions or does much
>more than appear on a web page, but it has a lot of nice well meaning people
>involved.  http://www.at-large.org/at-large-members.htm.  In Bucharest
>Esther and Denise explained that this group would not have votes, but would
>find ways to learn what the public thought... it was sort of an outreach or
>focus group for public input, but one basically managed top down, rather
>than bottom up, and in keeping with the deep hostility of the ICANN board to
>anything remotely democratic, it did not even insist on the right to elect
>its own leaders, which seemed to allow Esther and Densie to run it however
>they like, without any need to explain "why them?"

You are (mis)portraying ICANNatlarge.com and the ALOC as two
competing entities. In fact, ICANNatlarge.com is represented
/on/ the ALOC. But I'm not trying to defend what the ALOC does
or doesn't do: The point is that I believe it would be a bad
idea if user organizations started to fight against each other
to become the Single Authoritative Voice of the Users. I
believe we need an interface between a multitude of user 
organizations and ICANN. And someone has to reach out to
user organizations worldwide (which is what Denise Michel is
doing). Of course, that interface must be composed of and 
elected by user organizations in the end.

Best regards,
/// Alexander