The future role of the AtLarge Membership

Summary

I support an active role of the AtLarge Membership in ICANN's decision-making process.
The AtLarge Members should self-organize in permanent structures, similar to the Supporting Organizations, and the AtLarge Directors should maintain a liaison role between these AtLarge structures and the ICANN Board.

Foreword

ICANN has been explicitly structured in a way to ensure balance between the input from technically-oriented bodies (the Supporting Organizations) and the general users of the Internet (the AtLarge Members).
While a distinction is not always possible (technically competent people are also part of the general public as users, as are employees of corporations that are part of the Supporting Organizations), I believe that an effort should be made for ensuring that the impact of the decisions of ICANN on the general users be taken into account.
It is the role of the AtLarge Membership to define and discuss this impact, and of the AtLarge Directors to ensure that the concerns and suggestions of the AtLarge Membership be brought to the Board.

The current situation

At present, the Board is composed by the initially appointed Directors and by the Directors selected by the Supporting Organizations.
While the Supporting Organizations have a mechanism to ensure that their recommendations, comments and concerns are forwarded to the Board, there is no way for the AtLarge members to make their voice heard other than the individual comments on the subjects that the Board decides to submit to public enquiry.
The process of managing the public enquiry is a very laudable effort from ICANN's part, as is the willingness by at least some Directors to take into account the needs and expectation of the general public, but a more permanent and professional approach should replace this initial voluntary approach.

The need for the future

In general, the input from users is lacking in comparison with the input from the Industry and Business.
One example for all, the Dispute Resolution mechanisms.
The interests of the Trademark owners are taken into account, and rightfully so, but the interests of the "normal people", that happen to have and use in good faith names that happen to be similar to Trademarks are not sufficiently protected.
The voice of the users must be added to the process, not to impose the users point of view over legitimate technical interests and constraints, but to provide also, in an institutional way, alternative elements of reflection and debate to the Board.  In other words, to ensure the diversity of interests in ICANN's BoD.
The AtLarge Membership should form entities of manageable size and homogeneous background, for instance on the model of ISOC Chapters.  The debate within these groups should be the basis for the future elections of the AtLarge Directors.  By participating to these debates, and providing their opinions on the issues on the table, the candidates will provide the useful information to the AtLarge Members, that will have the ability to select among the candidates the ones that better reflect the electorate's opinions.
Considering the size of the AtLarge Membership (150K+, and likely to grow if registration will reopen), the creation of a coordinating body (like the "AtLarge Council", envisaged in the initial proposal) seems unavoidable.

Conclusion

The AtLarge Membership should self-organize, and provide the community input to the ICANN process via the AtLarge Directors.
The AtLarge election process should be kept, and possibly modified to ensure better representativity of the elected Directors of the diverse components of the Membership.