[bc-gnso] stepping back for a while...

[Mike O'Connor]

hi all,

this is a quick note to let people know that i'm resigning from all ICANN working groups effective at close of business tomorrow, Thursday.  the reason for the goofy timing is because i'm on deck to run a DSSA meeting tomorrow morning and i'm pretty sure my fellow co-chairs would kill me if i left them high and dry like that.  

the other nice thing about this timing is that it wraps up the "Launch" phase of the DSSA effort and also coincides with the end of my commitment to serve as the interim GNSO co-chair to that working group (i volunteered to serve through the first 3 meetings of the group in order to give people time to get to know each other better before selecting their "real" GNSO co-chair).

basically the equation kinda looks like this.  i get to spend hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours working on deliverables that are provided to a Council that can then selectively pick and choose to approve/rewrite portions of our work and forward the stuff they like on to the Board.  oh, and i get to spend thousands of dollars of family lunch-money to get to the meetings to watch this happen.  can you spell "self-funded volunteer professional staff?"  

but wait, there's more…  let's not forget the perfect adherence to the bottom-up policy process that happened during the VI working group.  in that case the pain ranged through the GNSO all the way up to the Board.  yum!

i know, i know.  the policy points that are causing me to boil over *today* are in fact incredibly minor.  ask anybody in the IRTP working group, or the BC about those.  that's not why i'm so grouchy.  it's the pattern in the way in which policy outcome are arrived at that frosts me.  either working-groups are the place in the bottom-up process where policy gets formulated…  or not.  looks like "not" from here.  not being too smart, it took me three or four times through this to finally get the message.  kinda like having your hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.

fortunately, i'm trained now.

there's an old joke that might bear repeating in this circumstance.  Descartes walks into a bar.  the bartender asks "the usual, sir?"  Descartes replies "i think not" and disappears.

so i think i'll disappear, at least for a while.  a little breather.  on the plus side of the ledger, i've made a boatload of ICANN friends and, through the miracle of Facebook, i hope you'll stay in touch.  and i hope to share a glass with some of you this evening at the Gala.

i'm still a huge fan of ICANN and what we do.  it's just a little too expensive (financially and emotionally) for me to stay in the game right now.  

thanks!

mikey

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