[council] Update on Helsinki Scheduling

["Austin, Donna" <Donna.Austin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All

James, Heather, Marika, Glen and I met earlier in the week to go over some 
planning for Helsinki, review the agenda and consider requests for rooms that 
Glen received from your respective SGs and Cs. The Helsinki venue is smaller 
than what we're used to in that there are not as many rooms available for 
meetings, so we had some challenges in trying to accommodate all requests, but 
we do think we have been able to accommodate all requests.

Glen and I will be speaking with Tanzie from the meetings team in the next day 
or so to confirm that our suggestions can be accommodated. I know that some are 
feeling a little restless about the unknowns associated with the Helsinki 
meeting, but hopefully we will have more concrete information for you early 
next week.

Proposed times for Council meetings:
Monday from 9.30am through to midday. This will include a one hour meeting with 
the ICANN Board. (This will be a very compressed version of the Council's 
weekend sessions)
Meeting with the GAC on Wednesday meeting from 9.30 to 10.30am
Prep session for Council Meeting Wednesday 6.30 to 8.00pm
Formal Council Meeting 10.45 to 12.30pm on Thursday, followed by a wrap up 
session from 1.30pm to 3.00pm

The current version of the draft agenda is available at:
https://community.icann.org/display/ccmeetschedplan/Meeting+Schedule+Planning

However, I would note that this is still a work in progress and we will be 
requesting some changes as a result of the planning meeting we had earlier this 
week.

Marika and her team are preparing information about the different Cross 
Community Discussion sessions to provide folks with an understanding of the 
intent of the sessions etc.

Because we're moving away from what we know, this has taken much longer to pull 
all threads together and of course we also have to deal with the unforeseen 
elements as they arise, but I wanted to let people know that progress is being 
made.

Thanks for your patience.

Donna