All,
Please see below for communication with the chairs of GNSO SGs & constituencies regarding Friday 22nd November.
Jonathan
From: Jonathan Robinson [mailto:jonathan.robinson@ipracon.com]
Sent: 12 November 2013 10:46
To: 'kdrazek@Verisign.com'; Michele Neylon :: Blacknight (michele@blacknight.com) (michele@blacknight.com); 'Elisa Cooper'; 'Kristina Rosette'; 'tony holmes'; 'Robin Gross'; 'William Drake'; 'Marie-Laure Lemineur'
Cc: 'Glen de Saint Géry'; 'gnso-secs@icann.org'
Subject: RE: GNSO Council - Induction & Training - Friday 22 November 2013
Dear All,
You are due an update on this session. If you are not the person who will be participating, please pass this message on to the relevant person from your group who will be attending on Friday 22nd November.
The objective of orienting and preparing the GNSO Councillors and the Council as a whole for a productive year ahead remains the same. To this end, we have already held an introduction webinar and invited all new councillors (as well as any existing councillors who wish to) to attend. A copy of the presentation used is available here:
http://gnso.icann.org/en/node/42593
Each of the 2013/2014 councillor has been sent a copy of the agenda for the 22nd November session and I have attached it for your information. It includes some detail on the session which you (or a designated colleague from your group) will attend from 10h00 to 11h30 on Friday 22nd. The relevant exert is copied below.
Opening the session by Council Chair and GNSO leadership to orient the Council within the GNSO:
The thinking here is that the Council is very firmly rooted in the GNSO and so any development work should be based on and a clear perspective from the various groups and constituencies that comprise the GNSO. Primarily, it will be good to get some input as to how your group (SG or constituency) views the Council and the work of the Council and how you interact with the Council via your councillors. Non-exhaustive examples of points you may wish to provide input on are as follows:
A. Does your group instruct your councillors how to vote on any given issue or do they have latitude / discretion?
B. Does the work cycle of the Council work for your group? (Do you get agendas on time, do you have enough time to consider motions)
C. Are you aware of council driven attempts to improve working methods, productivity and effectiveness? If so, does your group think good progress is being made? Could anything else be done?
D. Are there any areas of policy development work that your group thinks the Council should be tackling which it currently is not?
E. Is your group particularly positive / negative about any work which the Council has initiated and managed over the past year?
Coming in as council chair in Toronto, it struck me that we needed to do a better job of orienting and engaging councillors from the outset of their terms. Clearly, it is desirable that they get some of this through their prior work and experience in the group that selects them as councillors. But, effective induction initiated by the Council seems to me to be necessary. This format and content is a first and so it may need work to get it right. Any other input on the initiative overall will also be welcome.
I look forward to seeing and working with you in Buenos Aires. Safe travels and see you there.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
From: Jonathan Robinson [mailto:jonathan.robinson@ipracon.com]
Sent: 20 September 2013 14:14
To: 'kdrazek@Verisign.com'; Michele Neylon :: Blacknight (michele@blacknight.com) (michele@blacknight.com); 'Elisa Cooper'; 'Kristina Rosette'; 'tony holmes'; 'Robin Gross'; 'William Drake'; 'Marie-Laure Lemineur'
Cc: 'Glen de Saint Géry'; 'gnso-secs@icann.org'
Subject: GNSO Council - Induction & Training - Friday 22 November 2013
Importance: High
Dear Colleagues,
I am writing, I trust, to remind you of an event we are planning to run in Buenos Aires. On Friday 22 November, the plan is to run an induction and training session for the “new” GNSO Council i.e. the Council to be seated and in place from the ICANN Buenos Aires meeting onwards.
The background to this is that, when I started in as GNSO Council chair in October 2012, it struck me that the preparation or induction was in place for incoming councillors was limited and necessarily remote i.e. by email and telephone. Significantly, the first time the then “new” council got together in person was many months later in Beijing.
There are many good reasons to orient and prepare councillors for their work on the Council in the year ahead and so this is one initiative that we agreed to pursue at our council leadership / staff session back in Amsterdam in January 2013. We subsequently applied to ICANN for funding for an event and this funding was agreed. The support will finance the event and an overnight stay, but not travel, so it must necessarily occur simultaneous with, or adjacent to, an ICANN meeting. Hence the reason we arrived at Friday 22 November 2013. The event will run from approximately 10h00 and will be completed with a dinner in the evening.
The intended attendees at the meeting are the full GNSO Council which will be in place subsequent to the council meeting on Wednesday 20 November i.e. the then “new” council. The agenda hasn’t yet been fully developed but the objective is clear; ensure that incoming and existing councillors are as well trained and oriented as possible and moreover, that the whole council is as well-prepared as possible to function effectively together in the year ahead. By function effectively together, I mean that they can work effectively together as a council and be clear on the one another’s relationships with, and responsibilities to, their respective constituencies and/or groups.
Therefore, the reason I am writing to you is twofold as follows:
1. To ensure you are aware of this event and well placed to ensure that your incoming councillors are too.
2. To ask whether you could offer yourselves, or if you are not available, an alternate member of your leadership group, to participate in the first session (Friday 22 November 10h00-11h30) in addition to your councillors who we expect will be there for the full day and evening.
The purpose of 2 above is to make sure that, from the outset, the Council as a whole is as well aware as possible of the relationship with and connection to the broader GNSO and the groups constituting the GNSO.
If you have any questions or suggestions relating to this event, or indeed any aspect of the chairing of the Council, please do get in touch with me. I am personally committed to a well-managed and effective GNSO Council and am open to any feedback in how best to achieve that.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
Jonathan Robinson
Chair
ICANN GNSO Council
Tel: +44 (0)20 7993 6103
skype: jonathan.m.r