[ga-nominations] Acceptance statement

[Alexander Svensson <alexander@svensson.de>]

   1a. Full name of the nominee: Alexander Svensson
   1b. E-mail address of the nominee: alexander@svensson.de
   1c. Background information about the nominee:
I'm a student of Political Science and Public Law at the University
of Hamburg, focussing on net and media policy issues. I have
founded icannchannel.de as ICANN information platform in
German language and have been active in the icann-europe list
during the At Large elections. I worked as a GA list monitor
and was a member of the election watchdog committee (which
I will obviously not be while I'm a candidate myself).

   1d. Statement of the nominee's objectives
       in the role as Chair of the GA:

I would reluctantly accept the nomination as GA
Chair candidate, provided that
 * there is financial support for the person chairing
   physical GA meetings (I for one would not be able to
   pay for the travels on my own)
 * the efforts to bring the GA back to work, including
   list monitoring, are backed by the GA membership.

My thoughts about what I would try to achieve:
== If the intelligent and able GA members stop
   contributing to the GA, it is doomed and not
   worth lifting a finger. However, there are
   many people with a wealth of knowledge about
   the issues still reading the list. Tapping
   this potential and getting those people to
   participate is one of the most valuable things
   a GA Chair could achieve.

== There must be far better cooperation between
   GA Chair, GA Alt.Chair and others, including
   list monitors, Secretariat, DNSO constituencies,
   NC and ICANN Board and staff -- the communication
   channels must be kept open even if there are
   strong disagreements.

== The GA (Alt.) Chair should not try to push
   his or her own agenda. He or she should guide
   the GA discussion so that meaningful input
   turns into meaningful output.

== The GA must have procedures to produce motions.
   The Best Practices documents are strong
   candidates and should therefore be tried out;
   if they or an improved version prove to be
   working, they should become the standard
   procedure for motions.

== A posting limit per day must be respected by
   all GA members. The GA rules on personal
   attacks should be enforced primarily by
   warnings, in repeat cases also by temporary
   suspension of posting rights. The list
   monitors' decisions must be implemented and
   the list monitors' work must be backed by
   the GA Chair.

== Particularly, personal feuds *must* come to an
   immediate end. Opinions must be debated on
   their merits.

== If the GA output becomes meaningful, the GA
   has a right to be listened to by NC and Board.

== There are obviously some non-procedural issues
   I would like to further, such as building
   meaningful At Large participation, better
   outreach and more diversity within the GA.
   However, I am far from sure whether I can
   contribute significantly to those goals.
   The current GA situation is lamentable, so
   I put the issues mentioned above on top of
   my personal list.

Conflicts of interest: I'm a domain name holder
in a ccTLD and a gTLD; occasionally, I write
about domain name issues. I own a t-shirt and two
pencils (a red one and a blue one) from a .Name
promotion at ICANN Stockholm. Apart from that,
I don't know about any conflicts of interest
relevant to ICANN issues.