Hello All, With respect to the Council meeting on 7 June, I would like to get a sense of how the Council wants to handle the current new gTLD recommendations. As others have pointed out, some of the recommendations require further work with respect to developing dispute resolution processes. There are also no doubt some recommendations with stronger support than others. The intent is that the recommendations as currently drafted by staff are capable of supermajority support based on the discussions during the new gTLD committee meetings. My current concern is that if we don't move the work we have done to some kind of vote - which may accept all or some of the recommendations by super-majority vote - we are in danger of losing the consensus that has been built up through many meetings. I also feel we are at the point of diminishing returns. No significant new issues were raised in Lisbon that had not already been discussed in the new gTLD committee. I feel that there is a community expectation that the GNSO Council either conclude its work, or at least identify which bits are concluded to allow the Board to consider the recommendations and to allow staff to begin to do further work. We don't want the GNSO to be seen as the barrier to new TLDs (either IDN or non-IDN based). If we can't make some sort of statement about the level of consensus of the recommendations, it becomes hard to justify ICANN staff spending additional time working on the implementation details. I expect that as staff begin working on the implementation details of dispute processes and other implementation details, that they may seek further clarification of the recommendation, or even recommend the removal of a recommendation if not external dispute process can be developed. I would also expect that we will get more input on the dispute processes once detailed drafts are published - this will ensure that issues such as freedom of speech are properly addressed in the dispute processes. No doubt as new people become involved in ICANN and the GNSO - there will be desire to reset the clock, and start the policy development again. I feel however that we will never get a perfect answer, and that it is better to proceed in such a way that minimises risk in the first round, but also allows flexibility to update the recommendations based on experience of the first round. It would be useful to hear the views of Council members on this topic via the Council mailing list prior to the Council meeting next week. Regards, Bruce Tonkin