Subject: GA-DIGEST V1 #248
From: [email-masked] (GA-DIGEST)
To: [email-masked]

GA-DIGEST         Wednesday, February 21 2001         Volume 01 : Number 248

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:10:41 -0500
From: "Joanna Lane" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Ben Edelman wrote:-
<snip>
You may have misunderstood.  My last message was not about participation
generally; it was about selecting comments to be read out loud.
<snip>

I may have extrapolated your statement to apply to participation generally,
but it would still be true to say that the underlying message the Berkman
Centre is sending to this list in all its posts is how to justify dismissal
of the fundamental principle that remote participants and attendees should
have equal rights to participate in all procedures of the public meeting.
This is wholly unacceptable.

To any reasonable person, it is blindingly obvious that the current system
does not facilitate the best possible online participation using available
technology and that the Berkman Centre is not working toward that end,
having rejected numerous sponsorship offers to assist with implementing new
technology that could resolve some, if not all of these issues. There have
been only negative responses, or none at all, to practical suggestions that
have been put forward, such as Sotiris's proposal to consider Firetalk to
overcome the Real Player lag, and Kendall's proposal to incorporate voting
on selected comments to overcome duplicated questions, not to mention my
own; all these recommendations would appear blocked for an overriding
consideration to maintain use of the current system which incorporates your
code.

Obviously, you have made enormous personal contributions in the past, which
I do not seek to diminish in any way, but the time has to come to consider
whether or not another approach would be more appropriate for the future
needs of the ICW. If you really cannot come up with practical ways in which
to resolve some of these problems, or support others who do, then either
another body should be brought in to oversee remote participation, or there
should not be any physical in-person meetings at all until these issues are
resolved, or possibly both.

Sincerely,
Joanna lane

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:27:47 -0500
From: "Joanna Lane" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] Melbourne Workshop on the Public Voice in ICANN

Rob Courtney wrote:-

Discussions in this group have been very helpful in emphasizing the
importance of remote participation, so this is a priority for us.
It's really a question of resources and connectivity.

r

Very good. Well, I tested out Firetalk the other day, and it worked pretty
well on audio and text. I believe Sotiris can put you in touch with those at
Firetalk who may be amenable to sponsorship, if you are interested.

Joanna

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:20:47 +0100
From: "Roberto Gaetano" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Joanna Lane wrote:
>
>Obviously, you have made enormous personal contributions in the past, which
>I do not seek to diminish in any way, but the time has to come to consider
>whether or not another approach would be more appropriate for the future
>needs of the ICW. If you really cannot come up with practical ways in which
>to resolve some of these problems, or support others who do, then either
>another body should be brought in to oversee remote participation, or there
>should not be any physical in-person meetings at all until these issues are
>resolved, or possibly both.
>

The ICANN Board will meet anyhow, with or without public forum.
Your suggestion to eliminate the physical meetings (with limited, but still 
important possibility of remote participation) will only lead to the 
situation in which ICANN will meet behind closed doors.

By the way, has any proposal of this kind be made for any other physical 
meeting like public congressional hearings? Should they also be banned until 
we don't find a way to ensure remote participation at the same level than 
physical attendance?

I think that Prof. Froomkin proposal has some merit, and that we should 
think a way to improve remote participation, but that going to the extreme 
of refusing the "good" until we don't have the "better" is suicide.

Regards
Roberto

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:32:45 +0100
From: "Roberto Gaetano" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] remote participation

Michael Froomkin wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Alexander Svensson wrote:
>
> > However, the proposal that the in-person participants take
> > part in the meeting as remote participants seems to take
> > away all the advantages of physical meetings; why should
> > there be physical meetings after all? The local community
>
>Good question.  Given that this is a global internet body, one might well
>ask.

About asking, did you say "global" internet body?
How does a US Corporation, subject to the authority of US Congress, located 
in the US, with US citizens as CEO (both the initial and the current), with 
US citizens as Chairpersons (again, both the initial and the current), that 
makes a statement about the recruitment of non-US staff in terms of 
"difficulty get a visa for non-US residents" (answer to a question of mine 
in Marina del Rey), and I may go on with more?
So, there is are obvious limits to "power" and "participation", that are not 
just related to physical/remote.

This said, maybe a way to go could be to experiment once a completely online 
meeting. In other words, of the 4 meetings per year, why can't we organize 
one fully online?

Regards
Roberto

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:43:09 +0100
From: "Roberto Gaetano" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] remote participation

Patrick,

>
>Having been to many such meetings I see many of the same faces at every 
>event.

In Yokohama I saw definitively more asians than in some other meetings.
And in Cairo I saw people that I did not see before, and probably never 
again.

In a certain sense, you are right, the ones that speak are always the same. 
But on the other hand, you have to admit that even on the lists the messages 
come often from the same limited (numerically) subset.

I don't have an easy answer: we should try our best to increase remote 
participation, but I don't think that this will dramatically change the 
situation. Just on one question I think we should be clear: the voting at 
physical meetings should be considered as indicative, while a real vote 
should be done online.
BTW, this is why I insisted, without success, to have a real motion to vote 
online to ratify some of the votings in Marina del Rey.

Regards
Roberto

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:51:09 -0500 (EST)
From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] remote participation

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> This said, maybe a way to go could be to experiment once a completely online 
> meeting. In other words, of the 4 meetings per year, why can't we organize 
> one fully online?
> 

I think this is a brilliant idea!
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:08:27 -0500
From: Kendall Dawson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Unfortunately, this is modus operandi of the NC and the Board too.
Individuals who don't have a lot of money but are concerned about the 
issues are
just out of luck. We can rant all we want on mailing lists - just don't 
rock the boat.

kd

At 12:58 PM 2/20/2001 -0500, Ben Edelman wrote:
>The GA has felt OK about conducting occasional "votes,"
>appropriately discounting their ultimate significance, of course.

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:28:57 -0500
From: Sotiropoulos <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] Melbourne Workshop on the Public Voice in ICANN

Joanna Lane wrote:
> 
> Rob Courtney wrote:-
> 
> Discussions in this group have been very helpful in emphasizing the
> importance of remote participation, so this is a priority for us.
> It's really a question of resources and connectivity.
> 
> r
> 
> Very good. Well, I tested out Firetalk the other day, and it worked pretty
> well on audio and text. I believe Sotiris can put you in touch with those at
> Firetalk who may be amenable to sponsorship, if you are interested.

If anybody were interested in exploring the
firetalk option, I would be more than happy to do
everything possible to explore such an approach.

Sotiris Sotiropoulos
	Hermes Network, Inc.
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 18:05:14 -0500
From: "Joanna Lane" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Roberto Gaetano wrote:-

<The ICANN Board will meet anyhow, with or without public forum.
Your suggestion to eliminate the physical meetings (with limited, but still
important possibility of remote participation) will only lead to the
situation in which ICANN will meet behind closed doors.>

- - Let them. It would be seriously underestimating the intelligence of the
BoD to think they don't fully appreciate the ramifications of such a step.

<By the way, has any proposal of this kind be made for any other physical
meeting like public congressional hearings? Should they also be banned until
we don't find a way to ensure remote participation at the same level than
physical attendance?>

- - What relevance do hearings held by democratically elected officials have
to do with ICANN in its present form?

<I think that Prof. Froomkin proposal has some merit, and that we should
think a way to improve remote participation, but that going to the extreme
of refusing the "good" until we don't have the "better" is suicide.>

I'm pleased to note that you support Prof. Froomkin's proposal that all
questions are submitted online, including those by attendees, as do I.
But I can't agree that to cancel physical in-person meetings unless remote
participation is resolved, would be suicide, which I submit you have
supported yourself by your own proposal to cancel one of the quarterly
meetings and replace it with online only participation.

It's not rocket science to see where all this is leading. There really is no
need to rush around the world anymore. It's not even the money. It's the
time. Why should anybody give up work and family for 3 days, when 3 hours
will do the job? Actually, I thought canceling all 4 meetings and replacing
them with remote participation was a more brilliant idea. Let the BoD meet
in-person, but why anybody else?

But that's just me.

Regards
Joanna

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:16:10 -0500
From: Kendall Dawson <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

At 06:05 PM 2/20/2001 -0500, Joanna Lane wrote:

>Let the BoD meet in-person, but why anybody else?

With all due respect Joanna, I don't see how this will help. If the MAL is 
given a chance and the other 4 BoD members are elected by the Internet 
users - then this could possibly work. But, with the current Board (such as 
it is) this is a very bad idea. We don't have enough elected 
representatives! What incentive is there for the Board members to 
acknowledge remote participants? Would they even be required to answer 
questions from remote participants? Or, would they do what they are best at 
- - ignoring everyone and do what the big-money and IP interests tell them to do?

My favorite quote from the November's L.A. meeting:

[Louis Toutin to the Audience:] "... you're here to observe not to participate"

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/scripts/rammaker.asp?s=cyber&dir=icann&file=icann-111600&start=06-09-20

This sums up the problem with ICANN perfectly. Maybe they should change 
their homepage to read:

"As a non-profit, private-sector corporation, ICANN is dedicated to 
preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting 
competition [except NSI]; to achieving broad representation of global 
Internet communities [except individuals]; and to developing policy through 
private-sector, bottom-up [except individuals], consensus-based means (ie: 
consensus of the Board and JDRP). ICANN welcomes the observation of any 
interested Internet user,  and the participation of business, or IP 
organization."

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:51:39 -0600
From: Bruce James <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

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>>[:Louis Toutin to the Audience:] "... you're here to observe not to
participate"<<

>>ICANN welcomes the "observation" of any interested Internet user,  and the
participation of business, or IP organization."<<

I think that sums things up pretty well.  I don't see it changing anytime
soon.

"He who has the Gold, Rules".

/Bruce James
[email-masked]

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<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000 =
size=3D3>&gt;&gt;[:Louis=20
Toutin to the Audience:] "... you're here to observe not to=20
participate"&lt;&lt;</FONT><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000 =
size=3D3>&gt;&gt;ICANN=20
welcomes the "observation" of any interested Internet user,&nbsp; and =
the=20
participation of business, or IP =
organization."&lt;&lt;</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000=20
size=3D3></FONT></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000 size=3D3>I =
think that sums=20
things up pretty well.&nbsp; I don't see it changing anytime=20
soon.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000=20
size=3D3></FONT></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2><FONT color=3D#000000 size=3D3>"He =
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Rules".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV></FONT>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000080 size=3D2>/Bruce James<BR><A=20
href=3D"mailto:[email-masked]">[email-masked]</A></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 23:12:40 -0500
From: "Ben Edelman" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Joanna Lane wrote:

> ... the underlying message the Berkman
> Centre is sending to this list in all its posts is how to justify
> dismissal
> of the fundamental principle that remote participants and attendees should
> have equal rights to participate in all procedures of the public meeting.
> This is wholly unacceptable.

I don't think this is the message we're sending.  Certainly it's not the
message I *intend* to be sending.  And I think the facts will back me up on
this.

> ...
> having rejected numerous sponsorship offers to assist with
> implementing new
> technology that could resolve some, if not all of these issues.

To the best of my knowledge, one suggestion (of a specific technical
mechanism) has been made recently in this forum: firetalk.  Now, that's not
a program I personally happen to be familiar with, and I'm honestly not
prepared to experiment with something new on two weeks notice -- in an
unfamiliar location,  11000 miles and eight time zones away from "home
base," at that.  To do so would in some respects put at risk the entire
webcast effort -- and whatever you think of it, I hope you'll agree that
it's definitely better than nothing.  I'd like to think I make this critique
in a relatively objective sense -- for I'd equally criticize such a change
at this time if it came from a member my team, and I'd expect them to
criticize such a suggestion coming from me if I were to advance such a
proposal this late in the planning process.  (Note also that we've never
first used any major technology at an ICANN meeting; rather, we test our
infrastructure at smaller Berkman Center events in advance of ICANN
meetings -- a procedure which, whatever one might say about its necessity,
has served us well in terms of learning about problems in advance, achieving
what we consider remarkable stability, etc.  This too would be impossible
given the timetable.)

Incidentally, I don't know that sponsorship of the webcast has been
especially forthcoming for the Melbourne meetings.
<http://www.icann.org/melbourne/index.html#sponsors> reflects that ICANN
continues to recruit webcast sponsors, but to the best of my knowledge has
not received any as yet, and their web site reflects no webcast sponsors as
yet, whereas in prior instances I believe they've been prompt in posting
sponsor lists as available.  I also see from the Names Council's web archive
(<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc04/maillist.html>) that they
haven't been discussing webcast expenses (recall that the NC generally
recruits a sponsor to make a contribution towards the DNSO's share of
webcast expenses), and
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc04/msg00721.html> in fact
explicitly budgets $0 for webcasts.  I don't intend to raise any of this as
"excuses" for failing to consider alternatives, if in fact I improperly
failed to do so (which I think I didn't), but rather just to rebut your
claim of "numerous sponsorship offers."  In short, I want to be clear here:
Whatever offers have been forthcoming recently, to the best of my knowledge
they have not included cash sponsorship.  And the only offer of special
technical infrastructure has been of firetalk, which I discussed above and
will critique more below.

> There have
> been only negative responses, or none at all, to practical
> suggestions that
> have been put forward, such as Sotiris's proposal to consider Firetalk to
> overcome the Real Player lag, and Kendall's proposal to incorporate voting
> on selected comments to overcome duplicated questions, not to mention my
> own; all these recommendations would appear blocked for an overriding
> consideration to maintain use of the current system which
> incorporates your
> code.

First, I sense that you'd appreciate a response to the substance of the
suggestion of using firetalk.  Putting aside my serious doubts re the overly
ambitious timetable for implementing it, I've got a few other concerns:

* <http://www.firetalk.com/for_business/features/index.html> reflects a
100-user limit in a firetalk "conference."  We've had more simultaneous
folks than that during periods of peak usage of both of the last two ICANN
meetings.  (See the respective archives for more information about webcast
usage rates.)  Obviously, we wouldn't want to adopt a system with binding
capacity constraints.

* Windows-centric client.
<http://www.firetalk.com/for_business/ft_free.html> reflects that the client
program seems to require Microsoft Windows, while we've previously used
streaming technologies that support most generally-used platforms (Windows,
Mac, and Unix).  Could implement it in parallel with another system, but I'm
not thrilled by the prospect of offering superior services to users who
happen to use one kind of OS rather than another, especially not on just a
couple weeks of notice.  Keep in mind that folks in many time zones may be
severely limited in what machines they (conveniently/easily) have access to,
given the time difference.

* Customizability to fit the existing remote participation system?  It's not
obvious from firetalk's site that this is possible, though I'll admit that
I've only briefly reviewed their site, and certainly it should be possible
in principle.  But recall the need for integration with existing
infrastructure, i.e. scribing (and the scribe-to-web gateway), etc., and
also the timetable.  Potentially of serious concern

* Low market share.  It seems that the player would be a special download
for almost everyone, few folks having used it previously.  In prior
discussions, we've resolved only to use "market-leading" streaming
technology, due to the concern that many users (especially users in shared
computing environments -- schools, libraries, many businesses) may be unable
to install arbitrary third-party software.  Again, especially given the
short notice, we wouldn't want to give an arbitrary advantage to those who
owned or fully controlled their own computing hardware.

Ultimately these are reasons that could in principle be resolved with time.
But I'm explicitly not promising to follow up with Firetalk -- it seems to
me a reasonable product, however not exactly what I understand ICANN to need
here, and on balance not desirable especially for its requirement of a
special download & installation, which experience (and various articles)
suggest to be difficult for most novices.

Now, to what I take to be the main substance of your comment above: That you
perceive only negative responses from me to suggestions for remote
participation improvements.  On balance, I certainly agree that I've been
critical of most suggestions, but in the most important respects I think
your characterization is not true.  Prof Froomkin suggested a need for
increased parity between remote participants and in-person attendees, a
principle we've long articulated and attempted to follow in design decisions
over the past 2.5 years.  Accordingly, I heartily agreed with this principle
when Froomkin so explicitly mentioned it, and thinking along those lines, on
2/19 I suggested an alternative means of selecting comments to be read.
Froomkin had two interesting critiques (in short: ratio of online versus
in-person comments, and a remote participation queue clogged with "stale"
messages) which I'll respond to later this evening.  I've seen only that and
Harald's "form follows function" notes in response to the substance of my
2/19 post.

Finally, and I think most importantly: While you characterize my messages as
dismissing "the fundamental principle that remote participants and attendees
should have equal rights to participate ... in the public meeting," I
definitely don't think that's the case.  First, as I said in my note earlier
today, "that [online participants being able to vote when an in-person show
of hands is requested] is something the remote participation team continues
to find intriguing -- and something in principle we'd like to implement if
consistent with our resources and expertise, which we think it fundamentally
is."  Certainly I don't think this is dismissing the underlying principle
you (and Froomkin and I) all so clearly agree with; my message seems
decidedly consistent with it!  Rereading that note, you'll see my
explanation of why we haven't moved forward with this -- and I hope you'll
come to the conclusion that I genuinely think is accurate in this case, that
the Berkman Center would be pleased to provide such infrastructure when it
can be done consistent with the kinds of concerns with firetalk (and other
"real-time-webcast" products) that I described above.

Returning to the general principle of equality between remote and in-person
participants, I'm curious to learn how you think "vote re which remote
participants' comments will be selected" and "project the live online 'chat'
discussion on a large screen at all time" rate under such a principle.  My
own sense is that both in fact stack up relatively poorly on that front
(whatever their other merits, of course): The method of selecting in-person
comments is first-come-first-served, not voting, so a voting-based systems
fails to achieve equality between the two means of participation.  And
comments made while another person is talking are de facto forbidden (by
social norm) during the in-person meeting, while a projected chat would
bring about precisely these sorts of interruptions; even if we don't think
of displayed chat comments as "interruptions," they still clearly fail to
map to any established in-person phenomenon, and thus fail the "equality"
criterion.

So, if the only axis of evaluation were "equality between in-person and
remote participants," I find it reasonably clear that these two
modifications would rate poorly.  Now, in fact that's obviously not the only
criterion -- at least most of us seem to want to take advantage of the
unique advantages of each medium of participation.  But I ultimately fail to
understand a critique of my suggestion that's grounded in the "equality"
principle; it seems like equality cuts in favor of an online
first-come-first-served system, and against the select-comments-by-voting
and projected-chat-room suggestions.

Again, I continue to think that first-come-first-served remote comment
selection (with some minor modifications, as previously articulated and as
further discussed in a forthcoming message later this evening) is the best
way to proceed in general.  So, I look forward especially to further
comments from this list (like those already made by Harald and Michael) re
that proposal.

Ben Edelman

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 23:39:41 -0500
From: "Ben Edelman" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Michael Froomkin wrote:

> First, it doesn't address the balance issue: what should the ratio of
> online to offline speakers be.  Should the quotas be relative to numbers
> present? Time?  I honestly don't know what the right answer is here -
> which is one reason why I like putting everone into the same pot.

I don't know the answer here either, and don't have a great way of solving
the problem.  But I can use the convenient heuristic of past meetings.  For
example, in MdR in November, there were 957 folks registered to attend in
person (<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la2000/archive/physpart.html>),
and about half that many could & actually did fit in the room at once.
(There were a significant number of no-shows, no doubt related to free
unlimited web registration.)  394 distinct non-anonymous people joined the
remote participation system on the day of the Public Forum
(<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la2000/archive/remotes-111500.html>),
and about half that many were watching the webcast at peak, as I recall.

If we thus estimate (conservatively) 400 in-person attendees and 200 online
folks, the two-to-one heuristic I consistently recommend to the Chair seems
pretty reasonable.

Note that it's then up to the chair to actually follow through on
recognizing that many remote participants -- which, as I've said before, can
be quite difficult for a bunch of reasons.  In particular, the Chair no
doubt senses the immediacy of hundreds of people who have paid thousands of
dollars each to attend -- and in that context it's surely tempting to ask
online folks to simply enter their comments into the web archive's record,
or to use the other online comment forum systems.  Again, I don't mean to
defend this approach -- I'll let its merits (which I actually think are in
some respects substantial and at the very least nontrivial, notwithstanding
its weaknesses) speak for themselves.

To be clear, then, my team's role (as I see it) ends with having comments
available for immediate display & reading, should the chair elect to take
online comments.  I consider it part of my role to periodically notify the
chair that such comments are available, but I certainly think I would be out
of line to (attempt to) "force" the chair to take such comments.  I'd be
curious to know if anyone here disagrees, or has advice re specific
procedures to follow when the recognition of remote comments falls below a
predetermined ratio.

> Second, first-come-first-serve has some trivialization dangers.  Imagine a
> meeting in which the panel/board/whatever speak for 40 minutes than take
> comments for 20.  Now imagine you are using two FCFS systems, one in which
> people queue at a microphone, and another the online system you propose.
> The people who queue at the microphone can edit their remarks to focus on
> the most important thing, and also not repeat something said after the
> time they started to queue.  The people who submit an online query have it
> preserved in amber.

These are indeed serious concerns, and while my team thought about many of
these issues before suggesting the f-c-f-s approach, I agree that our
proposal fails to address the entirety of the potential problem here.

To the extent that the initial remote comments are substantially
duplicative, it might be in order for the remote participation liaison to
pass over the duplicate comments (perhaps after orally noting the presence
of the additional comments to the same effect, and their presence in the
online archive).

To the extent that the chair recognizes the problem and separates each queue
into multiple subqueues ("all folks wishing to speak about x, please come to
the head of the line"), that might also solve the problem.

Here's a possibility that might be of some assistance: When we know that a
listen-only presentation or presentation series will continue for some time,
perhaps the comment submission system should temporarily be closed?  This
would map to the social norm of "don't stand at the microphone when the
comment forum doesn't start for another half hour," and it might solve the
"previously-filled stale queue" problem you raised above.  (In fairness to
this proposal, I should also note its downside, though: It prevents
presubmission of comments a couple hours in advance, arguably disadvantaging
those with serious time-of-day constraints, and it perhaps causes some folks
to "forget" their question, though clearly they could readily temporarily
save it in a local file.  So I think it's probably a reasonable change, on
balance.)

> [Any
> chance, by the way, of following up on the suggestion made earlier in one
> of these threads that the place where change is most needed is comments to
> the Board rather than the GA?  I think that commentator was right!]

I'll make a recommendation to Mr. Cerf, in his capacity as Chairman of the
Board of Directors, re how to choose remote comments to be recognized.  This
is ultimately in his court -- he'll direct the remote participation team.
But I expect he'll be amenable to whatever reasonable solution is ultimately
selected.

Finally, to respond to Harald's comments: As Harald noted, the "web form
comment submission system" is definitely sub-optimal for any kind of
interactive discussion.  But, in my experience, while some sessions
(especially the GA) tend to contain periods of back-and-forth discussion,
the presentation-and-comment model best describes the overall ICANN meeting
framework, including even the "General Comments" session at the end of a
Public Forum (in which the Board receives at most one comment from each
participant, but not more than one).  So, for the purpose of the GA's
sessions, perhaps the rule should be "one comment per person per topic,
except when during a 'discussion,' in which case multiple comments will be
accepted and queued, subject to a background consideration that those who
haven't spoken yet should get a preference."

- -Ben Edelman, going to sleep!

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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 00:51:50 -0800
From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] Melbourne Workshop on the Public Voice in ICANN

Rob and all remaining assembly members,

  As I suggested to you over the phone earlier.  It might/would be
worth contacting TNN/TNB in Melbourne and/or Atlanta.  I am
quite sure they would be interesting in greatly assisting...  But
again, time is getting short....

Rob Courtney wrote:

> At 12:59 PM -0500 2/20/01, Joanna Lane wrote:
> >- Will there be remote participation available?
> >Thanks,
> >Joanna
>
> This is something we're working on. We'd very much like to have some
> form of remote participation, but as we're on our own it's an open
> question. We are looking into remote participation, webcasting, and a
> realtime scribe but don't know yet which, if any, of these we'll be
> able to implement.
>
> Discussions in this group have been very helpful in emphasizing the
> importance of remote participation, so this is a priority for us.
> It's really a question of resources and connectivity.
>
> r
> --
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Regards,

- --
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 214-244-4827
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208

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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 00:59:16 -0800
From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] RE: Selecting Comments to Read Aloud

Joanna and all remaining assembly members,

 Your conclusion here, although strong, is appropriate, we believe.
It has been a raging practice of the Berkman center to appear
conciliatory in the past ICANN "Events", with respect to remote
participation.  However the truth is that the remote participation
provided has been poor at best, and at times nonexistent as the archives
of this another forums will clearly indicate.

Joanna Lane wrote:

> Ben Edelman wrote:-
> <snip>
> You may have misunderstood.  My last message was not about participation
> generally; it was about selecting comments to be read out loud.
> <snip>
>
> I may have extrapolated your statement to apply to participation generally,
> but it would still be true to say that the underlying message the Berkman
> Centre is sending to this list in all its posts is how to justify dismissal
> of the fundamental principle that remote participants and attendees should
> have equal rights to participate in all procedures of the public meeting.
> This is wholly unacceptable.
>
> To any reasonable person, it is blindingly obvious that the current system
> does not facilitate the best possible online participation using available
> technology and that the Berkman Centre is not working toward that end,
> having rejected numerous sponsorship offers to assist with implementing new
> technology that could resolve some, if not all of these issues. There have
> been only negative responses, or none at all, to practical suggestions that
> have been put forward, such as Sotiris's proposal to consider Firetalk to
> overcome the Real Player lag, and Kendall's proposal to incorporate voting
> on selected comments to overcome duplicated questions, not to mention my
> own; all these recommendations would appear blocked for an overriding
> consideration to maintain use of the current system which incorporates your
> code.
>
> Obviously, you have made enormous personal contributions in the past, which
> I do not seek to diminish in any way, but the time has to come to consider
> whether or not another approach would be more appropriate for the future
> needs of the ICW. If you really cannot come up with practical ways in which
> to resolve some of these problems, or support others who do, then either
> another body should be brought in to oversee remote participation, or there
> should not be any physical in-person meetings at all until these issues are
> resolved, or possibly both.
>
> Sincerely,
> Joanna lane
>
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Regards,
- --
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 214-244-4827
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208

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End of GA-DIGEST V1 #248
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