RE: [council] 3 Council members or 2?

Milton Thanks for being frank in your personal view. It does not surprise me that all elected representatives of a constituency vote in the same way - hopefully in line with their constituency determined stand on an issue. For an elected member to vote against the policy position their constituency had decided to adopt, would likely be unacceptable to the constituency - regardless of the region the GNSO representative comes from. However, to focus simply on the voting on GNSO Council of constituency members misses the argument as to the desirability of the greater regional diversity that 3 versus 2 constituency representatives bring. In a well functioning constituency, the GNSO representatives perform a number of roles including bringing to the GNSO discussions their culturally diverse experiences, contributing that diversity to discussions, task forces and work groups and bringing back to their constituency their perspective - again, enriched by their particular diverse cultural experience - for discussion within the constituency in the process of determining a constituency policy position. Hopefully you have experienced this diversity and enriched perspective in the consultation that NCUC reps have engaged in between the matters and discussions of the GNSO Council and the NCUC constituency policy determination process? I for one, not withstanding that some on Council might wish to offensively "lump" me into a general category of "white middle class male", consider that my experiences are different to those of my NA and EU colleagues. I hope that my experiences, and those from others around the world, contribute value in the discussions that are held on Council. Besides the benefits of greater cultural diversity, the other major benefit of 3 versus 2 constituency reps, is the acknowledgement that for most of us ICANN is job in addition to our day jobs and hence we are quite constrained in the time that we can devote to ICANN. For that reason, having 2 rather than just 1 representative colleague to share the work and available for reflection on GNSO Council matters, is crucial. You can see that like Ken and others, I think this is an issue that needs to be given proper consideration by Council in sufficient time to be put before the Board to ensure that they can properly consider the issues and make a determination such that the individual constituency elections will not be disrupted through uncertainty. Bruce, I look forward to this being on the Council agenda - if not on 17 July, then at our next meeting. Regards Grant Forsyth Business Constituency Rep -----Original Message----- From: Milton Mueller [mailto:Mueller@syr.edu] Sent: Sunday, 13 July, 2003 10:05 To: council@dnso.org; Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au Subject: [council] 3 Council members or 2? While we are weighing in on the 3 members per constituency issue, I may as well make it clear that I and most NCUC members I have talked to prefer to remain with the current plan to have only two GNSO Council representatives per constituency. In part, this stems from NCUC's own unique situation, in which we have rarely been able to generate regular and informed participation by all three GNSO Council members. We look forward with relief to the prospect of only needing two members to devote so much time to GNSO Council activities. But we believe the argument applies equally well to the other constituencies, because we note that in almost all cases (the only exception typically being the NCUC, which is actually has the most diversified interests) all three representatives vote the same way. What, then, is the point of having three representatives? If I saw the AF or LAC-region members of the ISPCC, CBUC, IPCC, registrars or gTLD registries consistently voting differently from the NA or EU-region members, I would feel differently about this. But the record shows that invariably the commercial constituencies vote the same way regardless of what region they are from on every significant issue. --MM
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Grant Forsyth