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
Hello All,
>
> The GNSO Council and ICANN Board working dinner will be in
> '
>
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