Hi Avri, In preparation of this week's Council call, I would like to volunteer to contribute to the work of the planning group because I think this is one of the most important and urgent work items and because I believe that there is a merit in broadening this out to all constituencies that care to be represented. I realize that some see downsides in adding one member per constituency - however constituencies are the structure we have at the moment and I would hope that having more than one representative from e.g. 'the commercial side' will not distract in any way from the constructive character of the work going forward. Best wishes Ute -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Avri Doria Sent: 18 March 2008 18:56 To: Council GNSO Subject: [council] "Improvements" Planning Efforts Hi, Attached a copy of a message that is being sent to the Board concerning work that is beginning on the GSNO Improvements. As you will note we have started a planning group together with the staff. This group is going to be doing the high level planning of how we will organize the main work of the GNSO Improvements Project, and will not be responsible for any substantive decisions or recommendations about the improvements themselves. Currently Chuck and I as well as several members of the ICANN Policy staff, including Denise, Liz and Rob, are members of this group. This is just the core of this group. We have invited the Board BGC GNSO Review Working Group to add a member to this group and need to add more GNSO members. We want to satisfy three goals simultaneously in adding members to the group; - insure that a diverse set of perspectives is included in the planning group - include some participants with relevant organizational experience - keep the group small. In the GNSO Improvements Project we will not need to restrict ourselves to council members, but for this planning committee, I would suggest that we do choose from among council members and constituency members. I also think that adding a person from each constituency might be unwieldy and hope that we can limit participation to a few people who can be trusted in this planning task by several constituencies. As you can read in the note below, we are planing to organize several other Standing Committees and other work teams and there will be a large number of opportunities for participation by council members, constituency members, and others in the ICANN community in the groups making the actual recommendations. I would like to initiate conversations on the list on the designation of 2-3 other members of this group. I would like to resolve this as soon as possible, with resolution during our upcoming meeting at the latest if not before. Thanks a.