RE: [council] GNSO Council /ICANN Board dinner, Monday 26 in FES 2

["Marilyn Cade" <marilynscade@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I support the need to address the concern of the risk that the present
approach has for ICANN and participation. 

 

>From the BC perspective, our members need time to get approval for travel --
and usually, an international meeting will take a few weeks to get approval
for unplanned international travel.  The lack of a firm agenda limits the
ability of the user oriented commercial constituencies to fully prepare and
also to generate enthusiasm and ability to travel to these often remotely
located meetings.  I would suspect we are not alone. 

 

Not being there in person, I'll give the BC proxy to Tony Holmes or others
regarding this issue. HOWEVER, I think we need to address both the issue of
programme planning,  where  we have asked for, and had a commitment to have
a programme committee. Professional organizations have programme committees
that work professionally, and with deadlines for getting topics and speakers
agreed. A Programme Committee should include representations from all the
SOs, and the ALAC; development of a programme is different than development
of a meeting. And, so we need to address both the meeting planning aspect,
and the development of a programme. 

 

As to the present approach now in place, I am sure that the ICANN staff
would love to get away from "just in time" planning.

 

I had suggested that the Programme Committee start to meet on the Thursday
afternoons, while the Board is on retreat, or if not, then perhaps the day
after.. but the point is that these meetings are a tremendous expense to
both ICANN, the hosts, and to the attendees; given how important these
sessions are to our work, and they are indeed a critical aspect of the
community sharing information and benefiting from the workshops and the
interaction, we would all benefit from a well developed programme.

 

I would also like to raise the issue of a full commitment to funding for the
Council's policy development activities, including the additional
staff/experts needed, and the travel support needed. I don't see a firm
commitment to the travel funding; and frankly, the face to face working
sessions are much more effective than other models tried to date, especially
on the more complex issues we are grappling with now. 

 

I have been developing a few ideas that I'll post to the Council members
tomorrow. It is just a few thoughts I've been developing over a few weeks,
as I've been studying the Operational Plan and Budget and thinking about
what it portrays in terms of priorities. 

 

I see a lot of new staff in the Operational Plan and the budget but I am not
sure that there is a sufficient focus on the policy development and support
functions and how to strengthen it, rather than do work around to it. 

 

I think you had one other "big" item you wanted to do the update on, too,
right, Bruce? 

 

Have a good dinner, all and I'll see you all Wednesday a.m.

 

Marilyn

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 10:51 AM
To: council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [council] GNSO Council /ICANN Board dinner, Monday 26 in FES 2

 

Hello All,

 

> 

> The GNSO Council and ICANN Board working dinner will be in 

> 'FES 2' at 7:30 this evening.

> 

 

I will endeavour to catch Paul or Vint today to get a feel of what they

would find useful for the dinner.

 

>From the discussions on Sunday it appears that the Council didn't want

to focus on a single topic.

 

It would be useful for Council members to post to the list any issues

that they think should be raised with the ICANN Board.

 

Even if we don't have a single issue, I think we do need to be fairly

focussed on a limited number of important issues.   We should also avoid

duplicating any discussions that may have been had with the Board in

individual constituency meetings.

 

I would like to recommend that we at least raise the issue of meeting

planning again.

 

Regards,

Bruce