I support the need to address the concern of the risk that the present approach has for ICANN and participation.
From the BC perspective, our members need time to get approval for travel -- and usually, an international meeting will take a few weeks to get approval for unplanned international travel. The lack of a firm agenda limits the ability of the user oriented commercial constituencies to fully prepare and also to generate enthusiasm and ability to travel to these often remotely located meetings. I would suspect we are not alone.
Not being there in person, I'll give the BC proxy to Tony Holmes or others regarding this issue. HOWEVER, I think we need to address both the issue of programme planning, where we have asked for, and had a commitment to have a programme committee. Professional organizations have programme committees that work professionally, and with deadlines for getting topics and speakers agreed. A Programme Committee should include representations from all the SOs, and the ALAC; development of a programme is different than development of a meeting. And, so we need to address both the meeting planning aspect, and the development of a programme. As to the present approach now in place, I am sure that the ICANN staff would love to get away from "just in time" planning. I had suggested that the Programme Committee start to meet on the Thursday afternoons, while the Board is on retreat, or if not, then perhaps the day after.. but the point is that these meetings are a tremendous expense to both ICANN, the hosts, and to the attendees; given how important these sessions are to our work, and they are indeed a critical aspect of the community sharing information and benefiting from the workshops and the interaction, we would all benefit from a well developed programme. I would also like to raise the issue of a full commitment to funding for the Council's policy development activities, including the additional staff/experts needed, and the travel support needed. I don't see a firm commitment to the travel funding; and frankly, the face to face working sessions are much more effective than other models tried to date, especially on the more complex issues we are grappling with now. I have been developing a few ideas that I'll post to the Council members tomorrow. It is just a few thoughts I've been developing over a few weeks, as I've been studying the Operational Plan and Budget and thinking about what it portrays in terms of priorities. I see a lot of new staff in the Operational Plan and the budget but I am not sure that there is a sufficient focus on the policy development and support functions and how to strengthen it, rather than do work around to it. I think you had one other "big" item you wanted to do the update on, too, right, Bruce? Have a good dinner, all and I'll see you all Wednesday a.m. Marilyn -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 10:51 AM To: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: RE: [council] GNSO Council /ICANN Board dinner, Monday 26 in FES 2 Hello All,
The GNSO Council and ICANN Board working dinner will be in
'FES 2' at 7:30 this evening.
I will endeavour to catch Paul or Vint today to get a feel of what they would find useful for the dinner.
From the discussions on Sunday it appears that the Council didn't want
to focus on a single topic. It would be useful for Council members to post to the list any issues that they think should be raised with the ICANN Board. Even if we don't have a single issue, I think we do need to be fairly focussed on a limited number of important issues. We should also avoid duplicating any discussions that may have been had with the Board in individual constituency meetings. I would like to recommend that we at least raise the issue of meeting planning again. Regards, Bruce