[Ws2-transparency] Materials for Tomorrow's WS2 Transparency Call

[Michael Karanicolas]

Hi Mike and John,

I'm sympathetic to your positions on this, and I broadly agree that
written dialogue is a more efficient and inclusive way to take things
forward. That said, I don't think it's within the transparency
subgroup's mandate to challenge ICANN's procedural approach to
consultation. I think that the best avenue forward is to ensure that
our process also includes a robust written component, as I think we've
been doing so far, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to
engage.

Best,

Michael

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 9:55 AM, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
> On Aug 17, 2016, at 8:09 PM, Mike Rodenbaugh <mike at rodenbaugh.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Michael.  I do understand the difficulty with scheduling conveniently for us all, and that we need to rotate call times to share the pain.  For me, it is more important to have robust written discussions on the list, because more people are able to participate more thoughtfully than on group conference calls.
>>
>> Actually, I think it raises another transparency issue, that so much "decision-making" is done on conference calls in ICANN working groups, rather than via written communication.  Forcing people who want to participate, to review call and chat transcripts, is incredibly inefficient and thus practically impossible.  ICANN Staff has gotten much better at summarizing WG calls in writing, but still in my recent experience I am seeing far too much judging of "consensus" on important points, via very limited indications of relatively few participants in conference calls.  I don't know if that is part of this group's remit to address, but something I have been thinking about so I throw it out there fwiw...  At least we can decide how we want this group to operate.
>
> Mike -
>
>    The conference call based efforts raise some important questions regarding
>    openness and transparency, and I have always found this mode of operation
>    to be somewhat unique to ICANN.  In the IETF and the RIRs, the predominant
>    mode of operation is via email list, and that provides excellent transparency
>    and openness to all participants - particularly those with less available time
>    for these efforts and/or limited bandwidth.
>
> /John
>
> Disclaimer: my views alone
>