[council] New Friday schedule

Mon May 7 22:57:36 UTC 2012

Stephane,

Certainly, Steve's note (and the earlier one from Bruce) are indeed
"thoughtful," but the notion that we can be comfortable with the
subjective standard of "Once in while there are Board actions that have
some content and even a bit of drama...we will have a public Board
meeting" stretches credulity with regard to the community.

I think we can say we have not heard the last of this in as much as we
have not yet heard the first of it.

Talk to you later in the week.

Cheers,  

John Berard
Founder
Credible Context
58 West Portal Avenue, #291
San Francisco, CA 94127
m: 415.845.4388

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [council] New Friday schedule
From: Stéphane_Van_Gelder <stephane.vangelder at indom.com>
Date: Fri, May 04, 2012 8:49 am
To: GNSO Council List <council at gnso.icann.org>

Councillors,

On the subject of the new Friday schedule, please see below a response
from Steve to a comment I made as part of the discussion around this on
the ICANN Chairs' list.

I asked Steve if it was OK to share his response with the Council and he
agreed.

IMO, this response adds a lot of context to our possible discussions on
the matter.

Thanks,

Stéphane

Début du message réexpédié :

De : Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com>

Objet : Rép : SO and AC plenary time at ICANN meetings

Date : 4 mai 2012 14:49:44 HAEC

À : Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder at indom.com>

Cc : 

Stéphane,

Thanks for your thoughtful note.  We're gathering inputs, getting the
Prague meeting organized and will be sending at least one additional
note to the community to cover these items.

The Friday Board meetings had been very lightly attended and didn't
really provide either insight on the Board's thinking or opportunity for
the community to interact with the Board.  The other parts of the Friday
schedule, reports from the Board committees and reports from the SO and
AC chairs do provide a little bit of room for interaction, mostly around
the SO and AC chair reports.  I think that's something we want to make
sure continues in some fashion, and we will weave this into the overall
schedule.  We will also allocate time for interaction with the Board
during the Thursday afternoon session.

Once in while there are Board actions that have some content and even a
bit of drama.  The XXX decision in San Francisco and the decision in
Singapore to move forward with the gTLD program are the two recent
examples that come to mind.  For matters of this import, we will have a
public Board meeting.  In Singapore, we did this at the beginning of the
week.  This was a big improvement and really helped set a positive tone
for the entire week.  I think this is a good pattern, and I'm inclined
to follow this when it's needed.  I don't know how often we'll have to
do this; I suspect it will be less than half the time.

Another element in our thinking is that it's usually inappropriate to
rush through a resolution at the end of the week based on developments
during the week.  We need to take some time to develop the proper
documentation.  So, instead of trying to cap the week off with
resolutions passed on the basis of the week's work, we will report on
what's come up during the week, what happened between the last ICANN
meeting and this one, and what we plan to do following this ICANN
meeting.

I look forward to inputs from you and the other chairs of the SOs and
ACs.

Finally, we'll work hard to get this right by Prague, but if what we do
in Prague is not good enough, we'll keep working on it.

Thanks,

Steve

On May 4, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Stéphane Van Gelder wrote:

Chris,

My two cents on this.

I think the Board is right in moving towards decisions of this kind
without necessarily going through the time consuming and work heavy
process of a public consultation. For things to get done in an
organization such as ICANN, the body placed in charge of that
organization much enjoy some element of trust from the community to take
decisions like these.

However, for that trust to be well deserved, the Board must also be able
to listen to feedback from the community and act on it promptly. In this
case, I am hearing very clear messages that there needs to be some kind
of interaction between the Board and the community in a formal setting
such as the one that was provided by the Friday Board meeting. I feel it
is therefore crucial for the Board sessions planned on Thursday to act
as effective replacements to the now defunct Friday Board meeting in
that regard.

I also think the Board must actively address the loss-of-transparency
issues that this Friday program change has raised. I for one will be
watching very carefully in Prague to see if the new Thursday sessions
live up to the community's Board transparency requirements.

Thanks,

 Stéphane Van Gelder
Directeur Général / General manager
INDOM Group NBT France
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