[council] Managing the run-up to ICANN meetings

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

Hi all,

In the interest of full transparency, I wanted to inform you of a Circle ID 
article that I wrote: 
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120605_icann_gets_crazy_again/

You've heard me speak of the potential for volunteer burn-out many times in the 
past. You've also heard me moan about the lack of pre-planning on document roll 
out by ICANN. This post is also voicing my opinion that the current trend is 
making it difficult for volunteer bodies like ours to adequately look at all 
issues when making policy.

In actual fact, my main worry is with the Board. I am told that they get about 
3 times the volume of documents to read in the run-up to ICANN meetings that we 
as community members get. So does that mean we're asking Board members to get 
to grips with so much reports and briefings and documents, and then expecting 
them to make quality decisions? If that's the case, I think we are asking too 
much of them.

I note with interest a couple of the comments posted in response to this 
article. Avri's comments, for example, rightly point out that some of these 
reports do not require us to read every single page. However, I do think that 
is an insider's POV, and one that is deeply involved with ICANN like Avri is 
and has her depth of knowledge of the issues. I would wager that with so much 
going on, most of us need to read a full report just to remind ourselves of the 
subject matter's past history.

I was also interested to read Kieren's comments, because I think he hits the 
nail on the head when he says that because there is a 15-day deadline for 
document publication, everything tends to come out on that deadline. I agree 
with him that if we are able to plan ahead more and better pre-plan, we would 
not end up with more than 700 pages of reading to do before we all congregate 
for what remains the most important item on the ICANN yearly calendar: the 
ICANN meeting. After all, it is in these face-to-face meetings that a lot of 
the crucial ICANN decisions get shaped, if not taken, so it is important that 
they are based on people having had sufficient time to take in and digest the 
documents that provide the context for them.

I hope you do not feel this email is off topic. I think this is at the heart of 
what we do at ICANN, which is to constantly strive to do the best we can when 
weighing the issues that we deal with at ICANN.

I would love to hear your views on this, not just as a Council, but also as 
individual ICANN volunteers who all have to face the same problems that are 
being described here: that of what bandwidth you have available to deal with 
ICANN-related stuff in a way which you feel does credit to the organization and 
what it is tasked with doing.

Thanks,

Stéphane Van Gelder
Directeur Général / General manager
INDOM Group NBT France
----------------
Head of Domain Operations
Group NBT