Hi Councilors, 

The council small team on Review of Reviews is still doing its work but due to the time sensitive nature of some of the decisions SO/AC chairs are making, I wanted to share an update of what came out of the last SOAC chairs meeting.

In the SO/AC chairs meeting on August 31st, a stable draft charter of a Cross Community Group (CCG) was agreed upon which I have attached to this email.

Because of the time critical nature of the anticipated work of the CCG and the anticipated deliverables coded in the charter that are expected by the ICANN84 meeting, while also acknowledging that SOs and ACs still need to discuss the charter draft according to their internal processes for formal approval, the SOAC Chairs agreed to formally send the stable draft to the board with a caveat that formal approval from SOs and ACs is pending.

It is also leadersip's understanding that the board will be requesting nominating organisations to nominate their nominees for the CCG group for the group to start working circa mid-late August. For GNSO nominations, we think the SSC should be tasked with this.

As a result, leadership is sharing this stable draft, with the expectation that councillors will discuss the charter with their groups before our August meeting and ideally, only egregious errors or omissions will be expected to alter the stable draft. 

Finally, on the topic of bylaws amendment, there was support from the SOAC chairs to have the board proceed with the the bylaws amendment in parallel to the CCG work. Our understanding again is that the board intends to lead this bylaws amendment process and will formally communicate this to the community. 

I have also attached the letter sent to the board by the SOAC chairs.

Remain blessed,
Tomslin