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<p class="MsoPlainText">A few weeks ago one of our WG members said something to me that I think might be a good challenge for many of us as we begin 2017: “<span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I think people (including me) need to snap back to attention.
I think we lost focus because of the incredible amount of lost traffic on minutiae that was so hard for non-ICANN insiders to follow.</span>”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">If this applies to you, I hope you will respond.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I can tell you that no one gets more frustrated with minutiae than me. I have just been at this for so long that I have learned minutiae for one person is important to someone else so I
have realized that I have to have a lot of patience. Still, I often find myself wanting to push faster ahead and the leadership team has to pull me back.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">It has taken us about 11 months to get to where we are and it may seem like we have made very little progress but I am hopeful that we have laid some building blocks that will make our work
ahead easier. We need to all keep in mind that the ICANN community has been grappling with Whois (RDS) issues for most of its 18-year existence with very minimal progress. If we are going to change that pattern, we will have to be patient and persistent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">As we ended 2016 we reached the critical deliberation stage of Work Plan Phase 1. None of us should think that that will be easy or quick; it won’t be. But I am confident that we will start
to see more concrete results of our efforts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I encourage all of you to start off this year by completing the poll that was distributed last week. You have until Friday of this week to complete it. Here is the link to the poll:
<a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V3CWZBL">https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V3CWZBL</a> .<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Happy New Year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Chuck<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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