[council] Information on the Open Joint Sessions in Cairo

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

-- OPEN JOINT SESSIONS IN CAIRO

The upcoming ICANN Cairo meeting will experiment a new session format called 
Open Joint Sessions. Organized jointly by gNSO, ccNSO, GAC and ALAC, their 
purpose is to foster interaction between the different constituencies on some 
key issues on the Agenda.

The sessions are open to all ICANN attendees and will take place in the main 
room, under the chairmanship of the respective Chairs of the four involved SOs 
and ACs. The sessions will be moderated to encourage structured interaction but 
devoted to contributions from the floor. There will be two sessions on Monday 
afternoon and one session on Thursday morning.

Monday afternoon : Initial interaction
the first session, devoted to the expansion of the Domain Name Space, will 
address the two issues of new gTLDs and IDN ccTLDs, on the basis of the 
presentations by staff in the morning on the documents recently released (Draft 
Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs 
<http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-comments-en.htm>  and Draft 
Implementation Plan for IDN ccTLD Fast Track 
<http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-23oct08-en.pdf>
 )
the second session will be devoted to the Transition Action Plan, on the basis 
of the documents produced by the President's Strategic Committee (PSC) : the 
revised versions of the Transition Action Plan 
<http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/action-plan-revised.htm>  and Improving 
Institutional Confidence 
<http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/improving-confidence-revised.htm>

Although staff will be available  to answer specific questions should the need 
arise, the purpose of these sessions is primarily to allow a direct, 
"trans-silo", interaction on key documents and major issues at stake between 
members of the Councils and Committees as well as all members of the community 
before they are discussed in the various constituency fora.

It is hoped that the sessions will help identify the key points in the various 
documents that will most benefit from the opportunity  of face-to-face 
interaction in Cairo and that they will trigger better understanding between 
the different constituencies on the potentially delicate issues.

Thursday morning : reporting back

A third session on Thursday morning will offer the opportunity to report back 
on discussions held during the week and to identify common issues of interest 
or concern within the Community and the way to address them moving forward.


Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org