All, sorry about how hard it was to hear me today in the call, I was in the middle of the road with my mobile phone - I tried but didn't seem to work well enough. However, I managed to find an Internet connection here so I can repeat my report in writing. There has not been a lot of activity in the Board after Lisbon - the Board is preparing for its retreat which will happen in Palo Alto this Friday and Saturday, so most of the discussion was focused on its agenda. There was a Board call on April 25th, which did not deal with anything specially important to us, though the fellowship program for non-At-Large participants is IMHO an important step - also, members from Africa may note the .gw redelegation. The agenda of the retreat encompasses mostly strategic issues, including the issue of succession to Vint, where the idea that floats is perhaps for the Board to work more as a team, rather than focusing every responsibility on a charismatic Chair. Also, some initial discussions on next year's budget will happen. However, several Board members (plus the SSAC Liaison) share our concern about the need to work promptly on systemic responses to the Registerfly failure, so there will be half a day discussing on what ICANN should do to respond to that, and what are ICANN's responsibilities to registrants and other stakeholders. I guess that the discussion might start from a better definition of ICANN's role in terms of consumer protection activities, and move to a range of possible actions - RAA revisions, education, best practices etc - and perhaps to the process that the Board asked the CEO to define by San Juan. I have forwarded again to the Board our resolution from Lisbon, and will try to lobby for it if we come to those points. I have been also participating in the calls of the GNSO Review Working Group, which deals with the LSE recommendations and is tasked to prepare a proposal for action to the Board Governance Committee, which will then make a proposal for action to the Board. Several interesting ideas are being floated, and while it is too soon to say what will happen, I think that there should be a way to ensure that GNSO policy development processes don't get stuck in constituency-based power struggles, but work more like the IETF consensus-based working groups; and that the time might be ripe for an individual registrants constituency in the GNSO (rather than the ALAC/NCUC merge, which doesn't really seem to fly with neither of the two groups, nor with anyone else). A couple of minor points in the end: - In theory, the Board owes a reply to the Ombudsman by May 12, on the ALAC case. I've not seen any draft, but it might be that it is being worked upon by staff. In any case, I'd like to get a consolidated current draft of our own (unsolicited) reply to the Board, so that if the issue comes up in a rush, I can have something on which to base my responses. If it doesn't come up, we can continue refining the answer in the next days. - I've seen that some concerns have been expressed on the NA Discuss list about one sentence of the April 25 minutes, the one stating that the ALAC administers funds for travel by At Large leaders. I understand the concerns and I think that the sentence is imprecise, so I've raised the matter and I've been suggested to move to change it at the next Board meeting, which I'll do. As usual, any comments and suggestions on the points above are welcome. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------