[council] FW: CEO/Community Leaders Conference Call - 18 Feb 2014

["Jonathan Robinson" <jrobinson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

 

Yesterday, ICANN senior staff held a second CEO / Community Leaders
Conference Call.  As I understand it, this is intended to be a regular
briefing and interaction session which assists in bridging the (significant)
time gap between ICANN meetings.  Especially in the context of such
significant activity.

 

A recording of the call will be circulated shortly but I thought it may be
helpful if I shared a couple of highlights that I picked up personally.

 

In particular 3 key areas were raised by Fadi Chehade as follows:

 

1.       Introduction of major themes for the ICANN Singapore Meeting

2.       Encourage feedback and comments on Strategic Panel
suggestions/recommendations

3.       An update on the Recent Board Workshop 

 

Singapore Themes:

 

a.       Carry strategic planning through to final stages.  N.B. The issuing
of strategic panels reports will occur prior to the meeting.
All will be out by this weekend.  It is very important that ICANN hears from
us.
N.B. These are recommendations for discussion & debate.

b.      Recognise and ATRT2 outputs.  We need to embrace these and recognise
how they need to be acted on.

c.       ICANN globalisation area.  There is broad momentum gathering behind
this and we will shortly see an ICANN board resolution from 18 February
regarding ICANN globalisation

 

My personal take on this is positive i.e. that ICANN Singapore will not be
dominated solely by the Internet Governance agenda.  Important as this topic
is, we have plenty to think about and do as we get on with the "day job" at
ICANN.  Encouragingly, this balance is also consistent with the weighting
that the GNSO Council has been placing on these areas (where appropriate to
our remit)  i.e. with a relatively even balance between a, b & c above.

 

Fadi also touched on budgeting and expenses before handing over to Xavier
(ICANN's CFO) to discuss these in more detail.  A key point Fadi made was
his intention to:

 

A.      Manage operations within the budget and 

B.      Recognise that the rate of expenditure growth needs to slow down
from circa 20% per annum to a growth rate of high teens next year and then
low teens the following year.

 

Fadi & Xavier's input were followed by Q&A through both audio and chat and
for those of you who would like to know and understand more, this should all
be public soon.

 

I trust that this is helpful and/or insightful.

 

 

Jonathan