On 05/09/2012 01:31 PM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
...I disagree with Karl when he regards the way ICANN meeting are conducted (face-to-face rotating in different parts of the worrld) as useless. Quite the contrary, I believe that we should move towards having more interaction with the internet community worldwide...
That's not quite what I said (or if I did say it, it wasn't what I meant). The point is that ICANN spends its week long meetings on stuff that could occur separately. The real thing that needs to occur at these meetings is exactly what you want - conversations, by which I mean two way exchanges - between the community of internet community and the decisionmakers in ICANN, mainly the members of the board or staff members who have discretionary powers to make choices. I do not buy the logic that the board is too pressed for time that they can't have long conversations, en banc, with the community. The problem is that ICANN does not manage its staff to prepare matters sufficiently in advance and leaves it to "the night before". That is simply sloppy management of staff and reflects poorly on ICANN's executive management and the board's oversight of that management. When I was on that board I felt that it was part of my role to actively engage with the community - which is why during the weekly meetings I sat in public places to encourage easy conversations; which is why I kept a rather public diary of my decisions - for which I got a lot of very negative push back from other board members; and which is why I asked questions and follow-up questions during board meetings - again for which I frequently received negative push back. ICANN's decision makers spend too much time listening and not enough time asking. The issues that face us are not perfectly well articulated and it is often through interaction that the real agreements and disagreements are revealed and solutions become apparent. For this reason I would like ICANN to vastly expand its board-public interface so that its meetings comprise days, not hours, of back-forth-conversations between the community and the board members separately and the board as a body. And when I say "back-forth" or "conversational" I really mean it - the board and executive ICANN staff ought to make serious efforts to be active participants in a two-say dialog rather than silent statues on a dais who may be listening, maybe not, who may be understanding, maybe not. Moreover, in these days of electronics and cheap memory there is no reason - except fear of being heard - for ICANN not to put a full audio/video recording of *every* meeting of the board and board committee except for those matters that a majority of the board, in public, agrees are related to personnel matters, contract negotiation, or ongoing or reasonably anticipated specific litigation. Most of week-long meetings is spent in matters that are among special-interest groups and could be held elsewhere or on their own time; in fact it would be good if they were held more than a week in advance so that any results of those meetings could be properly packaged so that their contents could be properly digested by the time the plenary meetings were held. If the rationale for the traveling meetings is to engage the local community of internet users than it stands to reason that those groups that show up every time - by which I mean the often rather well heeled registry/registrar, trademark, and similar groups - ought to receive less emphasis and the time thus recovered be dedicated to interaction with those who are not world jet-setting travelers. --karl--