Hello Bruce, Thank you very much for your various and detailed responses. I will make sure the NCUC hear your point. I think you have perfectly understood our concern and objective, which was/is not to create polemics; in any event, I personally do hope that the NCUC approach will help the Council accomplish an even more careful and, in a way (just in away), rigorous job. The NCUC did not at all mean to question the ability of the Council members to handle the current issues at a meeting to be held in Washington. If it has been perceived so, please all accept my regrets on behalf of the NCUC. To my colleagues who seem to reduce our position to an argument about the location, I would just like to recall that the issue in the first place was not the location as such, but the opportunity of a specific agenda item. And the end of your message below, Bruce, particularly the question (3), along with your reference to an older practice with the "the 'General Assembly' portion of ICANN meetings" indicate to me that the Council as a whole may need to take some decisions or to clarify some processes - so, hopefully, this debate will not have been useless to all of us. Now and last, I would like to invite the leadership to proceed with and attend to its duty (which it has been doing anyway), taking into account our concern (whatever forms or arguments have been used to express it), just as the concern of any other constituency. En espérant travailler avec vous tous en bonne intelligence - Cordialement, Mawaki --- Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au> wrote:
Hello Mawaki,
I thank you for effectively raising the concerns being expressed within the NCUC.
1/ Given this particular and sensitive issue of gTLD, which has been on and on for a good while, we have heard the same arguments for and against gTLDs for years, and what is most needed is not more comment, but decisions (at least on positions and recommendations, as far as the GNSO Council is concerned). The idea that we, the Council and our Constituencies, don't know what our position is, or need to hear more, does not convince none of my constituents. Instead, it is beleived that what we really need to do is to put our heads together and come up with a common and final
position.
It does surprise me to hear that we should be limiting public input to one mechanism - online comments to the website, especially when this has not really been found to be adequate over the past several years.
It is also concerning that we should be saying that we don't want to listen to people because we have already made up our minds.
2/ And to better achieve this, we need not to expose ourselves to further pressure and lobbying from interest groups, which my fellow constituents beleive is going to happen in D.C. In effect, we are concerned that opening this meeting in Washington to public comment turn this into lobbying meeting that will easily be dominated by Washington insiders who are far to reflect the variety of possible and existing positions on this sensitive issue of value to all of us, both as ICANN bodies and globally.
Remember that it is the Council that makes its recommendations to the Board. This seems to be implying that you are concerned that Council members are not sufficiently experienced to judge input based on its merits rather than its source (ie inferring that the Council would consider a comment made in Washington on a higher basis simply because of the location where the comment was made).
The mere fact that this issue is of concern to members of the NCUC - would imply that the NCUC Concil members will be vigilant to ensure that all input is treated appropriately based on its merit rather than who has submitted it or where it is submitted.
It seems however that in the Council teleconference we may need to separate the decision on a public comment forum, from the core objective which is to make progress on the policy work.
The decisions that need to be made seem to be in order:
(1) should we hold a physical meeting between now and Wellington to move things forward on policy efficiently
(2) if so, where and when
(3) if we hold a physical meeting, should we offer the oppportunity for oral public comments
Regards, Bruce Tonkin