Dear Colleagues, Time is flying... And so will you very soon. In slightly more than a week, on Sunday, 10 March, at 9 am local time, we will meet for our workshop. Our agenda is pretty packet; therefore, please do not be late! As you know, during our first face-to-face meeting of the year, we need to decide how to share the workload to accomplish everything we need to do. Some discussions last year showed that sometimes Councillors do not volunteer to fill certain positions because they fear they would not know what to do in those roles. One of the best strategies to learn something is to do. Therefore, to eliminate at least some of the fears, this time we will run two hands-on exercises. To get comfortable, we will start with introductions. For this part, please try to remember when did you join the ccNSO and think about "hopes and fears" with respect to your current role as a Councillor. This does not have to be a dead serious exercise! After the intro part, I will briefly go through the list of all the Roles and Responsibilities (see attached). Next on our agenda - Triage Simulation Exercise. We will break into 4-5 groups. Each group will discuss a couple of requests that the ccNSO has received in the past, i.e. will simulate Triage Committee members who usually do the evaluation for us. In the attachment you will find three old cases (dates are removed to keep the template simpler). Please read and think about these requests beforehand. The idea of the exercise is to 1) discuss the requests, 2) develop criteria to evaluate the importance of the issue in question for the ccTLD community, and 3) discuss how to handle the case. When ready, each group will present their criteria and suggestions. Those criteria will be used by the Triage Committee and the Secretariat for evaluation of future requests. After a short break we will have another hands-on exercise: we will simulate the Rejection Action process. Each workshop participant will get a randomly assigned role to play during the process. In preparation for this exercise, we developed a simplified summary (see attached) of the enormously complex RA process. Please review it to refresh your memory. I will say no more at this point! I hope that by the end of the workshop you will be fighting for the opportunity to be the Chair, Vice-chairs, Rejection Action Petition Manager, RA Petition Review Committee, Triage Committee, etc. We might even need to draw lots :) Thanks a lot to David Kolb who agreed to facilitate our discussions (and avoid bloodshed)! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask now or save them until the workshop. In case I do not write any more emails: have a safe trip to Kobe and see you soon there! Kind regards, ]{atrina