Dear All, At the GNSO Council meeting on 17 July, the Council agreed to form a drafting team in response to the ICANN Board request on ICANN Geographic Regions as set out below. The group is open to Councillors, constituency members and interested community participants. Chuck Gomes and Olga Cavalli have already volunteered to be on the drafting team. Please let me know whether you would like to join this drafting team with Rob Hoggarth as staff support by Thursday 31 July so that we can identify a regular meeting schedule. "The Board recognized that any potential change to ICANN Geographic Regions would have "wide-spread effect" in ICANN and that it should seek the views of the other Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees before taking further action. The ICANN Board directed Staff to summarize and analyze that community input and to subsequently prepare a report for consideration to the Board. The GNSO is kindly requested to provide input, if any, on the suggested formation of a community wide working group, and its mandate. Staff is targeting a Board report, summarizing all responses received, by early September. We hope that the GNSO will be able to provide input on the relative importance of the Geographic Regions structure to the At-Large community in general and to the value of a community-wide working group specifically, by that time. We expect that the proposed working group, if ultimately formed, will reach out to the broader community to seek further input and perspectives." Thank you. Kind regards, Glen Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org