In particular, at the Dublin public meeting there were discussions with members of the GNSO’s commercial and non-commercial community about the potential future direction of the GNSO linked to the recent independent review efforts. You may have noted a number of viewpoints recently expressed that the current GNSO review has been limited to just operational matters whereas some had urged a broader structural assessment. Rather than field individual community inquiries, Board members seemed interested in facilitating broader community discussion to see if the community itself had an interest in pursuing those structural conversations more broadly.

Recently, leaders of the GNSO community’s non-commercial community met for their Intersessional Meeting in Los Angeles (February 4-5) and continued general discussions about the potential future directions of the GNSO.  That group agreed to establish an informal group effort – not a formal process yet – and to try to continue their conversations in Marrakech (see - https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56149573&preview=/56149573/58722580/transcript_plenary3_040216.pdf. 

It has been considered that continuing the conversation in an informal “birds of a feather” environment may be a good way for giving interested community members the opportunity to share their views, update each other on their various thoughts and efforts and give them all an opportunity to see these various threads and how they might be connected/related.