Dear Heather,
 
thanks for your initiative here! I agree that a high degree of transparency is expected and that “somebody” has to take the driver seat in planning/organizing these meetings.
It must be clear what we’re talking about:
I personally think we should just discuss the meetings and agendas of the entire GNSO resp. council. Planning/organization of meetings on SG/C-level should be left under their responsibility. What should the council here talk about? Rationale and ranking?
In addition, I’m not convinced that the output of a “meetings team” would be better than what we have at present. Even the coordination of the 2 VCs may be a challenge (during my term we rotated between the VCs). I saw and still see this job having an administrative character, and I’m very much in favor of putting this load to the VCs. The decision or – less formal – confirmation of the meeting types and agendas is up to the council on the basis of interaction with the resp. communities.
 
In practice:
maybe a first planning frame could be shared at the first council meeting after to solicit council input
since the attendance of people with otherwise full agendas is needed for the various topics (e.g. Board, ICANN leaders...), nail them (and their secretariats) early – friendly but definitely
If you miss a rationale for the VCs being charged with the (administrative) task, I’m sure the SCI replacement would be happy to fix this in the GNSO procedures Smiley.

Looking forward to the next council call

Wolf-Ulrich

 
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 12:56 AM
Subject: [council] Improvements to f2f GNSO meeting planning?
 
Dear Council colleagues,
 
With the meeting request notice having been sent round to the leaders of Cs and SGs recently, I'm wondering if now is an opportune time to raise some concerns raised by both Houses about the process of developing the GNSO meeting schedule.
 
The two main concerns I've heard are that 1) the decision-making process of which GNSO meetings get onto the ICANN schedule isn't very transparent and 2) there isn't a clear rationale for this task falling to the Council Vice Chairs, given the limited remit of Council under the Bylaws. I'd have to say I agree with both.
 
My understanding is that some years ago, there was a community volunteer-populated "meetings committee", but that this died a slow death as it met infrequently, was too large to be effective, and struggled to meet difficult deadlines. It faded into nothingness, and our GNSO support staff took up the task. When concerns were raised about staff making the scheduling decisions, staff brought the Vice Chairs into the process.
 
I don't think we can fully alleviate these concerns prior to Hyderabad, but we can try to shift our practices to introduce an opportunity for input from the broader GNSO community. What I'm thinking is that if SGs and Cs are willing and able to get their meeting requests in a few days earlier than the 12 Sept deadline (say, one week after the upcoming Council meeting, so Sept. 8th) then the Vice Chairs (sorry, Donna, I'm volunteering us for speedy action) could ASAP assess requests and circulate a list showing the outcome of that assessment to the GNSO community (via SG/C chairs or Councillors, whichever seems most efficient/suitable) for comment/input before the request list gets submitted to the ICANN scheduling team.
 
SGs and Cs who aren't able to get their requests in early won't benefit from this simply because we're to short on time for this meeting, and even the turnaround for comment on those that are submitted in time won't be generous. That said, this could be an experiment, and if we start Copenhagen planning immediately with this kind of process, I hope we can achieve the twin goals of getting the community involved and meeting our scheduling deadlines with a workable schedule as an outcome. In short, Council Vice Chairs would still be involved, but in more of an administrative capacity, with community input into the decision-making.
 
I've put this out on the list in advance of our upcoming meeting to give time to think about the idea in advance. Hyderabad planning will be an item on our upcoming agenda, and this could factor into that discussion.
 
Best wishes,
 
Heather