NOTES | ccNSO Council Special Meeting
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
Apologies: Jordan, Ai-Chin, Olga, Molehe
1.
Welcome by the ccNSO Council Chair
Welcome by Alejandra.
Meeting was
held via Google
Meet, due to Zoom issues. This meeting was not recorded.
2.
ccNSO appointees to the How-We-Meet discussion group, Jodi Andersson and Molehe Wesi, explain the report recently shared for public comments
a.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the proposals?
Jodi: 3 main topics for feedback
-
Shorten community forum
-
Prioritizing locations, and returning to them
-
Virtual meetings
Weekly meetings by the discussion group. ICANN org suggested proposals and sought our feedback. The report has most of the proposals, some are tweaked. However, the input we provided
was not taken into account.
Jodi: example block schedule was not added in the report. Staff said it might confuse people.
Reference to the welcome session, and the polling results.
>> shorten community forum with one day
Chris: I think these 3 suggestions make sense and would be effective....Moving the Public Forum and Geopolitical Forum earlier in the meeting, to the same day as
the Welcome Ceremony and Executive Q&A session, to limit the need for the main ballroom
to a single day?
b. Scheduling any community wrap-up sessions that may be needed in the final block at the
end of the fifth and last day?
c. Adding a new Board-community engagement session open to everyone, to discuss issues of
broad common interest, to lim
When we created the new meeting structure in 2013, the Community Forum was supposed to be a 5-day meeting. If you look at the usage of the room from the report on Thursday, it is very
low. The amount of people who meet on Thursday is slow. If you move the public forum to the Monday, move all big room sessions on one day, that would save a lot of money. Is there a genuine believe,
Bart: notion of unconflicted sessions. You cannot run meetings in parallel during the opening ceremony. That must be a requirement, if the number of days needs to be reduced, to be able
to have conflicting sessions. We had session in Copenhagen where you could not schedule a plenary session, even though the topics were not relevant to the ccTLD community.
Peter: the day before the last day will become the last day. Thus also low attendance
Jodi: was not discussed in the group.
Alejandra: the ccNSO did have a study on how to deal with it, when the meeting strategy was originally reviewed. We decided to have the same schedule for all 3 meetings, except that there
are no WG/C meetings over the weekend at the policy forum.
Feeling that they try more often to not have unconflicted sessions. We can stress this in our comments.
Everton: this was not directly written in the initial report, but we could stress the importance of prep week. Has not been used in its full potential. If we lose some sessions, we could
defer them to prep week?
>>> rotation between fixed locations for cost-effectiveness
Jodi: rotation between regions. Choose locations in advance that work well. Locations that are cost-effective and meet all requirements. To allow icann org to plan well in advance, to
do cost-saving. Input from Molehe and Jodi, and the audience during the welcome session. Sounds like a good idea, but with a few conditions. Returning to locations did not embed some problems with access for certain communities. Also concerns regarding the
“right” location for regions. AP region is large. Pacific audience finds it difficult to travel. Istanbul was part of the AP region. If you return often to a “bad” location, you repeat the issue. Ensure it is equitable for all. Make sure it is a good hub.
Easy to get to. Make sure people can get visas, and it is cheap to stay.
Everton: appreciate the idea, but situation changes from year to year. Planning is good. But there is no guarantee that the conditions and situations stay the same.
Pablo: are multi-year contracts considered?
Jodi: assume so.
Alejandra: pros and cons.
Lowering the price for multiyear contracts is good. Community can plan ahead as well. Jodi mentioned a few cons too. Important to make those clear.
>>> move the meeting to a virtual format in case of unexpected circumstances
Jodi: worried that the policy would be used, for reasons that do not really justify it according to the community. Easy way out for icann? People might have invested a lot into the meeting.
There should be guard rails
Chris; this is already the case? I am perplexed. One meeting was moved because of zica, one for security concerns. We went to Hyderabad, instead of another location.
Maybe the ccnso should have a different view. We believe the 3 meetings should take place. People should be able to attend, also remotely. Whatever it costs. They can save costs elsewhere
Chris Disspain
9:30 PM
it would be very easy to run all the plenary sessions on the Monday... opening, exec q and a, geo politics, a community chosen plenary, the public forum and the board meeting...
Bart Boswinkel
9:38 PM
and you could easily set Tch DAy/ DSNsec session opposed to it
targeting different audiences
Chris Disspain
9:40 PM
exactly Bart
Pablo Rodriguez
9:44 PM
Not to mentioned the loos $100K for the sponsor
Pablo Rodriguez
9:46 PM
+1 Chris
Alejandra: we should have our say on the proposals itself.
Chris Disspain
9:46 PM
the quesrtions are closed...we should not restrict lour commenst to answering the questions only
Alejandra: character limit. We could also send an extra letter.
Everton: when the meeting location is announced, can they disclose the number. Greater than the number of locations? Perhaps location A is not available, but location B is?
Alejandra: not public knowledge.
>>> convert one into a virtual meeting
One of the 3, have an extra virtual meeting. Several proposals.
Rotate timezones?
b.
What is missing? What is supported?
Jodi: effectiveness part.
This is an icann org thing. It was not us bringing ideas. It was us commenting in a superficial way on their proposals. Good point Chris made. See also feedback from the welcome
session. Let’s stop thinking about cost-savings, but start thinking about “why we meet”. Add that input, despite the closed
questions
Alejandra:
a
4th meeting is untenable.
Chris Disspain
9:53 PM
loosing a physical meeting will have major effect on the community both as a whole and in its silos...not good
Peter
9:53 PM
reducing meeting days will also not help escape the silos
in fact, I understand with the contracted parties summit there is a 4th meeting already for many
Chris: those could be easily held virtually
Pablo: timezone considerations for virtual meetings
Jodi: push-back. We have intersessionally meetings, and come to the big meetings.
Chris: i would be surprised if the contracted parties would be against having one virtual meeting, or move their meeting to prior to the policy forum. Gnso has a council strategy meeitng.
That could be virtual.
Pablo: trailers to create the network. In some jurisdictions it costs a lot to take it out of the peers, you need to pay transportation etc. some countries will charge more, others less.
Might be a criteria for consideration.
[top of the hour. Notes after this point missing]
3.
Next steps: draft a submission
4.
AOB
5.
Closure
Background
Requests for Public Comments | 9 April 2025
Open for Submissions: 09 April 2025
Closed for Submissions: 19 May 2025 | 23:59 UTC
Report Due: 02 June 2025 | 23:59 UTC
ccNSO library:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ALuqeeO0_5NYU3FWjfkwYsg-YVR2_CVlvfxPEX_6DOA/edit?usp=sharing