Dear Councilors, Item 11 on the agenda of the December 1 Council meeting is a discussion on planning for ICANN58. On November 23, James sent an email the Council list requesting feedback on several questions related to meeting planning. The attached document provides an overview of responses to the following questions: (1) Do we prefer a Single or Split Constituency Day? (2) What is the right number of High Interest Topics (HIT)? The current Block Schedule drafts contain five HIT sessions. (3) Any thoughts on the best way to solicit topics for HIT sessions, and how to choose the top 5? (4) Similarly, any thoughts on how to address the inevitable conflicts between working sessions and HITs? (5) Any other specific feedback you’d like us to bring to the SO/AC meeting Rubens, Michele, Donna, Rafik, Ed and Carlos provided responses to the above questions. Please reference the attached for full text of the comments, but staff notes a few common threads in the responses that may feed into further discussion in the Council: - There were several responses supporting a single constituency day. Rubens, Michele, and Rafik supported a single constituency day. - Several responses supported either reducing the number of HIT sessions or rethinking the HIT concept. Ed suggested having a single HIT. Rubens supported having 1 or 2 at most. Rafik suggested 3. Michele and Donna recommended taking a step back to look more broadly at goals around the HIT concept and then planning accordingly. - Rubens, Ed, and Carlos all supported the notion that when in doubt, make meeting A more like meeting B than meeting C. The issue of scheduling was also raised in the Council session in Hyderabad (transcript here: http://schd.ws/hosted_files/icann572016/c8/I57%20HYD_Mon07Nov2016-GNSO%20Pub...). Several themes came up in the discussion, including: - Improving communication during the planning process - Revisiting the rubric used for scheduling: take a step back, clarify and prioritize objectives for ICANN meetings, develop schedule based on priorities to use the time effectively - Focusing meetings on ICANN’s core, substantive work - Managing and (to the extent possible) avoiding critical scheduling conflicts - Avoiding duplication of content across sessions - Scheduling sessions in a way that maximizes productivity and does not overload participants Please note that the above is not intended to be a full summary. It highlights some of the points that have been raised to support further discussion. Kind regards, Emily Emily Barabas | Policy Specialist ICANN | Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Email: emily.barabas@icann.org | Phone: +31 (0)6 84507976