At 30/07/2009 03:55 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Alan Greenberg wrote:
The meeting was not held to decide on the fate of RALOs or their budgets. I was a wrap-up to make sure that the results of the weeks's meetings were followed up on and that there were no omissions in the various "to be done" lists. We asked Kevin and Steve to join us to make sure we understood the current travel situation and tried to cover things to improve the Seoul meeting.
I have said in public (probably to you as well as others) that if this is indeed the situation for this budget year, perhaps it is too late to change it, but we still need to try to fix it in future years. I spend quite a while on Saturday morning talking to Kevin about the budget analysis I did last fall, to try to make sure that he understood that this year's At-Large budget is not a continuation of the status-quo, but a cut. (For the record, I did this as the person who had spent the most time on travel budget issues over the last two years, and not as a ExCom member - my discussions predated my taking on that role.) He said he would go home and root around to understand what happened. I plan to talk to him this week to find out if I was successful.
Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation -- though I still think it would have helped had there been a wider audience for that session.
I don't think there was any intention or action to keep the meeting secret, but do understand that meetings like this have a life of their own and there was not a scripted agenda other than we needed to flesh out the carry-forward items and that Kevin/Steve would drop by sometime. I suspect that if anyone else had shown the slightest interest in attending a meeting starting at about 3 pm on Friday, they would not have been kicked out (but that is just my position).
What do you think about my idea for biennial general assemblies as a way to meet the ICANN budget folks half-way?
I need to read your note over carefully, now that I have released my angst, but it is probably a reasonable position to take IF we can't get the whole pie (and I have not yet given up).
- Evan