Re: [council] Draft minutes of GNSO Council teleconference 29 May 2008
hi,One problem with executive summaries and syntheses of various sorts its that they are a lot harder to write then one can imagion - i have written many in my day job.. And they are a lot harder for people to accept because the degree of abstraction necessary to make it concise means that a lot of information is lost. People have a tendency to want their point of view represented in the minutes - and in an executive summary or abstract that can't happen. I agree that we don't need to quote the motions twice in the minutes, and in fact since the motions are sent out earlier and posted before the minutes are published it might just be possible to reference them with an url pointing to where they are posted. This in itself will shorten the minutes considerably. Personally, I know I find these minutes valuable in that they give a reliable reference to go back and review not only what we have done but what the various viewpoints are. Yes, we have the recordings and they are valuable for anyone who wants to do in depth research on an issue. To say someone can go back to the recording anytime is true, but the level of difficulty in doing so is quite high. In fact having done so on occasion, I can point out how useful the detailed minutes were in helping to search for the place in the recordings I needed. I suggest that in the short run we consider leaving out the repetition of the motions in the minutes but that for now we keep the extended reporting and see if this makes an appreciable difference. In the longer run the topic of how the council fulfills its requirements for transparency and accountability, including minutes, may be a good topic for the Operations Standing Committee we are considering as part of the GNSO "improvements". Alternatively we could schedule a discussion on minutes for one of our future meetings if that is what the council members wish. thanks a. On 11 Jun 2008, at 16:53, Rosette, Kristina wrote: I agree that shorter is better. I would prefer an executive summary format supplemented by audio and transcription. Why are our phone meetings not transcribed? I've always found that frustrating because it's then necessary to go through the entire audio to find what is often a 3-minute dialogue. If we're heading in thatdirection anyway, why not make it complete? Transcription has the addedbenefit of being easily searchable. K -----Original Message-----From: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ]On Behalf Of Philip Sheppard Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 4:59 AM To: 'Council GNSO' Subject: RE: [council] Draft minutes of GNSO Council teleconference 29 May 2008 I am increasingly concerned that the GNSO minutes are overly long and detract from our work.The current set is 17 pages long. Finding the relevant details - actionswe agreed upon - is hard. Is it really necessary to record every detail of "he said" "she said" and "he said again"? If people want a minute by minute record we have the audio file. A set of minutes should reflect: 1. Who was there2. What was discussed (including key questions but not every question).3. What was agreed. This level of detail seems to have grown. Past DNSO and GNSO minutes were not so lengthy.Has there been direction from the Chair to the GNSO secretary to do themin this way? If so why? If not, lets ask for shorter minutes please. Philip
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