Dear colleagues, I would welcome hearing from other Councilors who might join a small planning team all to advance finalizing of the provisional agenda, noted below. Please reply offlist to me, and to Glen regarding your interest. I've already had a volunteer or two and greatly appreciate those offers of planning and organizing assistance. Regarding the meeting notice: Glen will be posting this notice to the liaison list. If you can also encourage distribution within your constituencies, that would be much appreciated. Please email me and Glen with questions. We are still finalizing with the hotel arrangements, but want to advance the program agenda as well as quickly as possible. Regards, Marilyn Cade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------- Meeting to develop comments on ICANN Strategic Plan Amsterdam, 7-8 February 2005 The presently posted ICANN Strategic Plan outlines the strategic directions for ICANN for a three year period. Like all strategy documents, it needs to be analyzed and understood in conjunction with other relevant documents, such as the ICANN budget. It provides insight into changes in ICANN's scope, scale, funding base, and activities. It helps to position ICANN for a post-WSIS and post-MOU world with an increased budget, regional offices, an extensive workshop initiative, and outreach activities to developing countries. Other changes include a proposed shift of funding from reliance on registrars as the primary aggregators of funds to a more centralized collection via the registries, with an increase in the amount of money collected per domain name, in order to provide a stable foundation for ICANN. The Strategic Plan, as drafted, creates the same kind of scope and scale of change that the Evolution and Reform Process did, and deserves full consideration and review by the community. MEETING NOTICE The gNSO Council has approved the organization of a meeting to develop comments on the ICANN Strategic Plan by interested attendees from the constituencies. The meeting may also include guests from the At Large, other SOs or the community who have indicated an interest in attending. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that the constituencies of the gNSO/liaisons have an opportunity to review, analyze, and develop comments on the ICANN Strategic Plan. This meeting does not replace the opportunity for any individual, or any constituency to post ongoing comments during the ICANN public comment process. www.icann.org/strategic-plan/strategic-plan.html -- this link provides information on the Strategic Plan, and how to submit individual comments. NOTE: Comments are due February 28, 2005. The ICANN staff has also indicated their plans to offer teleconferences with each constituency, and this meeting is not intended to replace that consultation. Details of the Meeting: February 7-8, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sheraton at the Airport. Provisional Agenda: Monday, February 7: 1:00 p.m. - 5.30pm. Overview of Strategic Plan by ICANN staff Presentation/Comments by scheduled contributors Open Mike for participants for further comments Adjourn Small volunteer teams to work Monday evening to synthesize comments received. Tuesday, February 8, 8:30-12:30 p.m. 8:45 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Presentation of comments received/contributions from Monday's session by small working teams. 10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Consolidation of contributions. 12:30 p.m. Adjourn Space is presently scheduled for 50-60 attendees for both meetings, on a first-come, first-served basis. We will make reasonable efforts to address additional requests to attend, should we have over-subscription. You can register for the meeting by sending an email to Glen de St. Gery, gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org. Be sure to indicate which day/or both that you will attend. If you cannot attend in person, but want to dial in, please advise Glen of which days you will want to participate. We expect to offer dial in on 2/7 for the portion of the meeting that involves presentations and are exploring dial in for February 8 in terms of ensuring that remote participants can hear effectively and participate. If you would like to prepare a submission or comments to present during Day One of the meeting, please let Glen know. There will be a deadline for submitting at least an outline of your talking points if you wish to make a presentation, so that the schedule can be managed, and materials posted to those who are participating remotely. Contributions in this segment on day 1 can be short statements, proposals for changes in particular segments of the Strategic Plan; or suggestions on how to achieve a particular outcome described in the Strategic Plan. Comments from the participants in attendance will be accommodated as well, but to have the full scope of your contribution understood and incorporated, providing written comments will help those attempting to capture your contribution and incorporate it. For purpose of finalizing the agenda and plans, a small group of councilors from the gNSO are working together. You can provide comments and suggestions to them by emailing the gNSO Secretariat, as noted above. We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam. Marilyn Cade