[council] New Friday schedule

[Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder@xxxxxxxxx>]

Councillors,

On the subject of the new Friday schedule, please see below a response from 
Steve to a comment I made as part of the discussion around this on the ICANN 
Chairs' list.

I asked Steve if it was OK to share his response with the Council and he agreed.

IMO, this response adds a lot of context to our possible discussions on the 
matter.

Thanks,

Stéphane

Début du message réexpédié :

> De : Steve Crocker <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Objet : Rép : SO and AC plenary time at ICANN meetings
> Date : 4 mai 2012 14:49:44 HAEC
> À : Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc : 
> 
> Stéphane,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughtful note.  We're gathering inputs, getting the Prague 
> meeting organized and will be sending at least one additional note to the 
> community to cover these items.
> 
> The Friday Board meetings had been very lightly attended and didn't really 
> provide either insight on the Board's thinking or opportunity for the 
> community to interact with the Board.  The other parts of the Friday 
> schedule, reports from the Board committees and reports from the SO and AC 
> chairs do provide a little bit of room for interaction, mostly around the SO 
> and AC chair reports.  I think that's something we want to make sure 
> continues in some fashion, and we will weave this into the overall schedule.  
> We will also allocate time for interaction with the Board during the Thursday 
> afternoon session.
> 
> Once in while there are Board actions that have some content and even a bit 
> of drama.  The XXX decision in San Francisco and the decision in Singapore to 
> move forward with the gTLD program are the two recent examples that come to 
> mind.  For matters of this import, we will have a public Board meeting.  In 
> Singapore, we did this at the beginning of the week.  This was a big 
> improvement and really helped set a positive tone for the entire week.  I 
> think this is a good pattern, and I'm inclined to follow this when it's 
> needed.  I don't know how often we'll have to do this; I suspect it will be 
> less than half the time.
> 
> Another element in our thinking is that it's usually inappropriate to rush 
> through a resolution at the end of the week based on developments during the 
> week.  We need to take some time to develop the proper documentation.  So, 
> instead of trying to cap the week off with resolutions passed on the basis of 
> the week's work, we will report on what's come up during the week, what 
> happened between the last ICANN meeting and this one, and what we plan to do 
> following this ICANN meeting.
> 
> I look forward to inputs from you and the other chairs of the SOs and ACs.
> 
> Finally, we'll work hard to get this right by Prague, but if what we do in 
> Prague is not good enough, we'll keep working on it.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On May 4, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Stéphane Van Gelder wrote:
> 
>> Chris,
>> 
>> My two cents on this.
>> 
>> I think the Board is right in moving towards decisions of this kind without 
>> necessarily going through the time consuming and work heavy process of a 
>> public consultation. For things to get done in an organization such as 
>> ICANN, the body placed in charge of that organization much enjoy some 
>> element of trust from the community to take decisions like these.
>> 
>> However, for that trust to be well deserved, the Board must also be able to 
>> listen to feedback from the community and act on it promptly. In this case, 
>> I am hearing very clear messages that there needs to be some kind of 
>> interaction between the Board and the community in a formal setting such as 
>> the one that was provided by the Friday Board meeting. I feel it is 
>> therefore crucial for the Board sessions planned on Thursday to act as 
>> effective replacements to the now defunct Friday Board meeting in that 
>> regard.
>> 
>> I also think the Board must actively address the loss-of-transparency issues 
>> that this Friday program change has raised. I for one will be watching very 
>> carefully in Prague to see if the new Thursday sessions live up to the 
>> community's Board transparency requirements.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Stéphane Van Gelder
>> Directeur Général / General manager
>> INDOM Group NBT France
>> ----------------
>> Head of Domain Operations
>> Group NBT
>>