ICANN Regular Board Meeting
 ICANN Meeting - Cairo
 Friday, 7 November 2008
 
 >> Ladies and gentlemen, chairman, board of directors, ICANN, Peter Dengate Thrush.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the board.  And good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the audience.
 Thank you for getting up and coming to watch the board.
 Declare this meeting of the ICANN board of directors open.
 We have an agenda for the business of the day.  And the first item is the approval of the Board Governance Committee recommendation regarding board committee minutes.
 This is something that we have worked to get some uniformity across the corporation, or the committees of the corporation.
 And, Roberto, as the chairman of the Board Governance Committee that has been working on this, perhaps you could take us through this resolution.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Thank you, Mr. Chair..
 Whereas, ICANN is committed to operating in an open and transparent manner.
 Whereas, the Board Governance Committee, BGC, has developed a recommended process for drafting and posting committee meeting minutes.
 The BGC recommended that within ten business days, staff prepare detailed notes of each meeting that are to be used for internal purposes and only for board access.  Within two business days after each committee meeting, staff shall deliver to the committee, and make available to the full board, a preliminary report, which shall include the general topics discussed during the meeting, the actions taken, and the actions to be taken for future meetings.  That preliminary report, once approved by the committee, shall become the minutes of the meeting and shall be posted on the committee's page on the ICANN Web site.
 Whereas, the BGC has recommended that the board encourage all committees to follow such a process.
 Whereas, the board agrees with the BGC recommendation.
 Resolved, ICANN board committees should draft and publish minutes summarizing the discussions and actions taken during committee meetings.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Roberto.
 Let's just see if there's a seconder for that, and then we'll see if there's any further discussion.  Jean-Jacques Subrenat, thank you.
 It's moved, Roberto, seconded, Jean-Jacques.  What I can say is a very good resolution concerning prompt recordal and distribution of information after committee minutes -- after committee meetings, and then regular publication of the work of the committees on the Web site.
 So I'm going to be voting in favor of this.
 Is there any other discussion?
 Dennis.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Well, I certainly support that, Peter.
 But I notice that it says "should draft and publish minutes."
 And I wonder, should that language be stronger?  "Shall" or "will" or whatever.
 I notice the resolution doesn't include an important element in the whereas, with the two business days.  It's not actually in the resolution.
 So I leave it to you.  But I just make those comments that I think there -- "should" is a bit weak.  I think the intent is "shall."  And I think two business days is -- maybe it's implicit.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Dennis, I think that's right.  And I think both those would be treated as a friendly amendment by Roberto and Jean-Jacques.
 Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Actually, I thought we said within two business days after each committee meeting, staff shall deliver to the committee and make available to the full board the preliminary report.
 That was --
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Roberto, that's the recommendation.  The resolution doesn't actually reaffirm that.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Oh, thank you.
 Yeah.  I see the point now.
 I need a few minutes to wake up completely.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Roberto, can we have some coffee delivered to your part of the table?
 Perhaps make sure that Dan or, John, you've recorded the references.  Let's just see what we have done there.  Just --
 So it now reads "shall draft and publish minutes" -- we need, then, to add the two days.  Shall draft and publish within two days, isn't it?  Of the -- how soon after adoption by the committee is your point, Dennis, isn't it?  Or do you not -- is it not so important after confirmation?  The important date is getting it out after the meeting, isn't it?
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   I'm happy to be silent on that.  But the "shall" is important, I think.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Peter, a way to shortcut this would be to just say, should draft and publish minutes in accordance with the procedure recommended above.  If you want to make sure that the resolution captures what's been agreed to by the Board Governance Committee.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Well, let's just put a time in after -- after adoption.
 Committee should -- shall draft and publish minutes -- what's a reasonable time?  What was intended, Roberto, for publication.  We have two issues of publication.  The first is after the meeting at which the minutes record.  And we want those out within two days.  And the next decision is, once they've been confirmed as minutes by the subsequent meeting, how soon after that confirmation should they be published?
 So, Roberto, was there some thought in BGC as to how soon after confirmed they should be published?
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Well, what the BGC has been focusing on was the fact that we were -- although we were recording the conversation, the debate, and so on, we had two problems, first of all, that this recording of the conversation by notes or minutes, was circulated too late for people then to remember exactly what happened and be able to make some comments and adjustment.
 And, secondly, that there was no uniform process for all the committees.  And the thought was that we were going to find a procedure that was acceptable and acceptable for all the committees, but not necessarily optimal in the sense that we could then fine-tune this in the next month.  But at least we should establish the principle that within two working days, we were circulating a report on the conversation that people with a fresh mind still could make corrections, and then that those things had to be given to the board so that all the directors were aware of what those committees -- what all the committees were discussing and doing.
 And, now, I have to confess that what was then the formal process in terms of when exactly those minutes have to be published for public consumption, that was something that is left a bit to general counsel to -- to advise on.
 But the main important thing is that we have a prompt record of what happens that is known by the whole board.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   So that was the main thought.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  I think I have a solution.  If we could just put the word "promptly" back in the body of the text, that will do.
 Last sentence will read "that preliminary report, once approved by the committee, shall become the minutes of the meeting, and shall be posted promptly on the committee's page."
 So that's the first thing.
 So, Dan, or John, could you put the word "promptly" into the body of the....
 It shall be posted....
 The paragraph that's currently at the top of the screen, that paragraph.  In that main paragraph, in the last sentence, "that preliminary report, once approved by the committee, shall become the minutes of the meeting, and shall be posted promptly."
 Thank you.  And, now, we'll adopt Susan's recommendation, prescient as always, Susan, if we go to the end and make this resolution "shall draft and publish minutes in accordance with the procedure recommended above."  So that's done.
 Okay.  Thank you, Dennis.  That was a good catch.
 Any further discussion about what this resolution was trying to do and now what it actually does?
 If not, I'll put that resolution to a show of hands.
 All those in favor, please raise your hands. 
 Rita, are you on the telephone?
 Any opposed?
 Abstentions?
 Carried.
 Diane, -- or John, are you able to just make sure we've got contact with Rita?
 Let's move to the next resolution.
 Update on GNSO improvements.  I'd like Denise Michel, if she could come and give the board a quick summary of progress since the last board meeting and an indication of the next steps.
 Denise.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:   I can speak -- there we go.
 I could project.
 A full set of slides describing the GNSO improvements effort and status and next steps are linked on the Cairo schedule page for the forum yesterday.  And also will be available on this page.
 We also, on the ICANN Web site, have a GNSO improvements page where all related documents, status reports, and backgrounds also are linked.
 The -- and just briefly, I'll give you a very quick update on activities here in Cairo and going forward over the next few months.
 This emerged out of ICANN's ongoing initiative to -- for improvement and started with -- really, with an independent evaluation that was provided by the London School of Economics.  In 2006, the board appointed a working group on GNSO review to consider the independent evaluator's report, expensive community input and consultation, and provided a comprehensive set of GNSO improvement recommendations to the board that touched on literally all aspects of the GNSO, from operations, to policy development, staff support, community interaction, information sources, and other elements.
 These recommendations were approved by the board except for the recommendations on council restructuring, in which the board went back to the GNSO community, asked them to create a working group, come back with a consensus proposal for structuring the council.
 That proposal was subsequently approved by the board at the last two board meetings.  And there are a couple of outstanding issues for which the board is seeking additional community input.
 These two issues are:  One, how the GNSO council elects its two members of the board.  There was a proposal provided in the GNSO Working Group on this topic. They have questions and concerns on this approach.  Staff is actively soliciting input, particularly from the GNSO constituencies, about this issue.  And this is something the board will be considering at its -- expected to consider at its next board meeting.
 The second outstanding issue for which the board is soliciting additional input is the role of individual users in the GNSO.  The Board Governance Committee recommended that registrants in particular be part of the composition of a new stakeholder group structure that is now being put into place.  The GNSO's working group recommended that it be expanded beyond registrants and we're looking at -- the board is considering how to ultimately resolve this issue for the GNSO and the composition of its -- particularly, the stakeholder groups on the noncontracted side of the GNSO.  As well as how that is -- works in conjunction with the At-Large Advisory Committee and its supporting infrastructure.
 We've also opened a public comment forum on that issue and are encouraging any interested members of the community to provide additional input and suggestions to the board on how that will be resolved.  And, again, we expect that to be an item for the board's agenda at the next meeting.
 Taking these comprehensive recommendations approved by the board and the new structure that the board has indicated should be transitioned to -- with the transition complete in June of 2009, the GNSO has approved a planning structure that's outlined here.  The steering and operating committees met for the first time here in Cairo.  They're expected to create work teams that are open and will be encouraging any interested members of the community to join in this effort.
 The committees and work teams are expected to divide up the various recommendations and tackle the implementation.
 Next slide, please.
 So we should have slide 14.
 Some of the activities that are coming up within the next couple of months will be, developing charters and work plans, working with the community in developing charters and work plans for the various steering committees and operating committees on developing proposals for new policy development processes, working group models.
 Next slide, please.
 New communications support, ways of supporting constituencies.  Another item that's out for community consideration is, we're doing a survey to get some initial input on how ICANN can better support the constituencies within the GNSO.
 We've also issued draft templates for entities interested in petitioning the board to create new constituencies, issue draft templates to support the constituencies in responding to the board's new request that they apply to the board for renewal of their constituency.
 And we're also starting to assist the constituencies and other interested parties in thinking through the important transition to creating new stakeholder groups.
 Those are also active action items.
 The GNSO will be coming back to the board with a more comprehensive implementation plan.  And there is a -- specific timelines and action times that we'll be working with the community to come back to the board on over the next few months.
 Again, more detailed information is available on the Web site.  And I'd be happy to answer any questions.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks very much, Denise.
 Are there any questions for Denise from the board?
 Or any other comment?  Thank you, Denise.
 Susan.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you, Chair.
 As Denise indicated, one of the open questions for the board is the propriety of having one elected member to the board being sent up by the contracted house, and one being sent up by the noncontracted house.
 As I said on our October 1st call, I want to remind the board that this recommendation to allocate seats in this fashion was the center point of a very difficult deal worked out by a hard-working working group inside the GNSO.  And I hope that the board will affirm this recommendation.
 We have been warned that it might be inappropriate to have subgroups of the GNSO sending individual representatives to the board.  It seems to me this is not a real issue.
 Everyone who joins the board becomes a board member, with fiduciary obligations to the organization as a whole.  And we already have many subgroups of ICANN that send representatives to the board.
 So I just wanted to say that.  And I hope that my colleagues will take that on board.
 All of this, of course, becomes hopelessly complicated in light of the board review recommendations.  But just taking this part by itself, it seems to me that that recommendation should be adopted by the board.
 Thank you, Chair.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Susan.
 Any other comments on GNSO improvements?
 In which case, I would, on your behalf, like to repeat the thanks to all those involved in the work that's gone on since the meeting in Paris.
 At the meeting in Paris, things were rather severe, and we were up against deadlines and had been a deadlock.  And we gave the GNSO 30 days to break the deadlock.  And I think we've all been impressed at the work that went into that from the GNSO Working Group, well supported by ICANN staff.  And we've got now a solution.
 So I'd like to have those thanks recorded.
 I suppose the other point is, it's going to take us some time for that to -- for us to become familiar with that and for that to bid in.  And during that process, Susan, we will be thinking about the point that you raised.
 If there's no further comment on GNSO improvements, I'd like to move to a resolution dealing with single-letter domains at the second level.
 And I wonder, Bruce Tonkin, if you could help us with that.  Explain a little bit of the background, the process by which these come to the board, and then the resolution itself.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Okay.  Do you want to start with a bit of background and then the resolution?  Okay.
 I guess this resolution is referring to a request for approval from the dot coop and dot mobi registries for a change in their contract that would allow them to offer single-letter domains to some of their registrants.
 A change to the way a registry provides its services in ICANN can really happen through two main methods.  One method is where the GNSO community as a whole would like to standardize on a particular process.  And there's a policy development process to do that.  And once that policy is approved by the board, that then becomes mandatory for all registries to provide that service in the same way.
 So the most common example of that would be the process for doing transfers between registrars.  The GNSO developed a standard method of doing transfers, and all ICANN gTLD registries use the same process for transfers.
 With respect to single-letter domains, there are some people in the community that have requested a policy to unify that by the council.  The GNSO Council at the time was focusing its resources on new gTLD work and chose not to develop a policy through the policy development process for a single way of allocating single-letter names.
 The other process we have is that registry operators can use a process which is called the registry services evaluation process.  And that -- again, that whole process was developed through the GNSO in a policy development process.  And so dot coop and dot mobi have chosen to use that process to request a change in their contract.
 And that focus of that process is, first, testing to see whether there are any security and stability concerns with the proposal; and, secondly, if the staff or community believe that there may be competition issues, then ICANN can seek advice from an external agency with expertise in competition matters to provide advice.
 In the case of the dot coop and dot mobi evaluation, the -- it was thought, and there was no feedback from the community that indicated that there were any competition issues, so advice was not sought externally on that matter.
 And advice was sought on the technical and security issues that may be introduced by introducing single-letter names in dot coop and dot mobi.  It's worth recognizing that there are already single-letter names existing within gTLD registries today, including a few examples in dot com.
 So with that kind of background of how this has come to the board, I'll now read the resolution.
 And it states that whereas dot coop and dot mobi have submitted requests pursuant to ICANN's registry services evaluation policy to amend their registry agreements to permit the release of single-character second-level domains.
 Whereas, the proposed release of single-character domains in dot coop and dot mobi would be consistent with the recommendations of the GNSO Reserved Names Working Group.
 Whereas, ICANN has evaluated the proposed amendments to the dot coop and dot mobi sponsored gTLD registry agreements as new registry services pursuant to the registry services evaluation policy and has posted the amendments for public comment and board approval.
 Whereas, the board concludes that the proposed amendments to allow the release of single-character names in the dot coop and dot mobi sponsored TLDs is limited to the unique circumstances of these TLDs, and the approval of these amendments does not establish a precedent that applies in all other circumstances.
 Resolved that the dot coop amendment is approved, and the president and general counsel are authorized to take such actions as appropriate to implement the amendment.
 Resolved, the dot mobi amendment is approved, and the president and general counsel are authorized to take such actions as appropriate to implement the amendment.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Bruce, for the explanation and reading the resolution.
 Is there a seconder for this?
 Susan.
 Is there any further discussion about these contractual amendments which will allow the release in those TLDs of those single letters?
 Susan and then Dennis.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Just very briefly, I want to thank Bruce for his very clear explanation of the background for this and to celebrate these resolutions as evidence that the RSTEP process works, it can be objective and predictable, and has been followed in this instance so that we can approve these particular registry services.
 Thanks.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Susan.
 Dennis, and then Demi.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you, Peter.  And I'd reiterate that.  Thank you, Bruce, for that elucidation of the background.
 I notice that the resolution and the background to the resolution are silent on the details of how this is going to be implemented, including the financial details.  And I just want to confirm, Chairman, that that is appropriate, we're not involved in the financial details of the gTLD allocates these domains, except through the agreed processes.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.  In this case, the proposal put forward does include an allocation mechanism.  But that is really outside our scope.  As long as they fit within their contractual obligations and then subject to any compliance with national competition law, that's really not our -- we don't have a control over that aspect.
 I have Demi, and then I think Harald, was it?
 Demi.
 >>DEMI GETSCHKO:   Thank you, Chair.
 Of course, we are dealing with modification in existing contracts.  And just to make sure, you know, in a general comment, this modification has a very small impact in the number of existing domains, but in some case can have a significant value on the market.  Then I think the allocation framework may have to be carefully considered in each case.  And I'm not speaking, especially -- specifically in this case of dot coop or dot mobi, but just raising the question that in single-letter domains, maybe we have to carefully examine the framework of the allocation of these domains.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Demi.
 Harald.
 >>HARALD ALVESTRAND:   Just wanted to make -- oh, this is an echo -- to support the point that no matter how these domains are allocated, it's not going to cause any money to flow to or from ICANN.  So we are just in a position to say it should be reasonable for the users.  So we don't care about the economics.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Well, it's also that the RSTEP process has included an examination which includes the potential to have the matter referred for competition analysis if that's thought appropriate.  And it hasn't been.  So there is a safety net.
 Any further discussion on the resolutions for these two TLDs?
 Paul.
 >>PAUL TWOMEY:   Chairman, just to be -- to inform the board that there is not, at the moment, a formal submission in from dot com in the RSTEP process being processed at the moment.  Just to give a point of clarity.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Paul.
 So we're dealing only with these two specific charter TLDs, not the dot com space.
 Any further discussion?  If not, I'll put the resolution to -- which will have the changes we've discussed.
 All those in favor, please raise your hands.
 Any opposed?
 Rita, can we -- I understand that you and Ramaraj are online.
 Can you do a sound check so that we can try to hear you again?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Sure, Peter.  I approved the resolution.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Can you hear me?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ramaraj?
 >>RAJASEKHAR RAMARAJ:   Yes, approve.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Excellent.  So any opposed?
 Any abstentions?
 Carried unanimously.
 Thank you.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Peter?  Before -- Dennis.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS: Before we move on, can I advise that the acoustics up here has a tremendous echo.  And I'm finding it difficult to hear the speakers around the table.  So perhaps all the speakers could speak even more slowly, because there is this echo.  And I'm finding it really, really hard to hear.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.  I agree.  And I can't -- I also can't tell where the sound is coming from.  So....
 Let's take that precaution.  Rita, I wonder if you could deal with the next resolution, which is the approval or not of the GNSO's recommendations on inter-registrar transfer policy.
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Sure, Peter.  Thank you.
 Whereas, the inter-registrar transfer policy is an existing consensus policy which was implemented in 2004 and is currently under review by the GNSO.
 Whereas, on the 4th of September, 2008, the GNSO Council adopted a PDP recommendation for modifying transfer denial reasons number 8 and number 9 in the inter-registrar transfer policy.
 Whereas, on the 16th of October 2008, the GNSO Council changed the proposed new text in the PDP recommendation for transfer denial reason number 9, in response to public comments received.
 Whereas, the GNSO Council votes on the 4th of September and on the 16th of October regarding the PDP recommendation both carried with supermajority support, which means by more than two-thirds of weighted votes in the council.
 Whereas, the recommendation, when implemented, will usefully clarify the two IRTP denial reasons covered, thereby enabling consistent application of these provisions to the advantage of all parties concerned.
 It is resolved that the board adopts the GNSO Council's PDP recommendation as a modification of the existing inter-registrar transfer policy and instructs ICANN staff to implement its provisions.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rita.
 Is there a seconder for that resolution?  
 Dennis.
 Thank you.
 Any discussion about the impact of this resolution or the reasoning behind it?  If not, we can move to a vote.  All those in favor of the resolution, please raise your hands.
 Any opposed?
 Rita, do you vote in favor?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   I do.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ramaraj, do you vote in favor?
 >>RAJASEKHAR RAMARAJ:   Yes, I do.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Carried unanimously.
 The next item on the agenda is a discussion about the site -- the location of the June meeting.
 Are we --  I understand there's been some calendar work being done on this.
 We'll just defer that until that calendaring has been achieved and move on to a status report on the at-large community summit.
 And I think, Denise, I wonder if you would be able to tell us -- just update us on the -- just briefly on the status of this particular project for the at-large community.  Thank you.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:   I'd be happy to.  There are no slides.
 But the at-large community here in Cairo conducted extensive meetings, planning for the at-large summit that they'll be holding in Mexico City.  Over 100 representatives from at-large groups all over the world will be coming to Mexico City.
 They are progressing with their planning and developing agendas for this.  As soon as we get the final costs on the Mexico City meeting, a full plan and budget will be submitted for board approval.  That's expected within the next 30 days.
 I'd be happy to answer any questions.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Denise.
 Yes.  What -- how many people might we expect to see at this summit?  And roughly what the overall cost is going to be?
 >>DENISE MICHEL:   So the -- the budget allocation contained in this fiscal year's budget is 500,000.  And there are expected to be, I think, between 100 and 125 at-large representatives participating.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Jean-Jacques, and then Susan.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Thank you, Peter.
 I wanted to put a couple of questions to Denise.
 About the location and the timing of the event vis-à-vis the ICANN meeting itself, is there a sense that there is a possibility in timing, but also physical location, that there is some sort of overlap and interaction between this summit which we are supporting and the ICANN meeting?
 >>DENISE MICHEL:   Yes.  The -- one of the purposes and intents of the summit and the objective of the community is to very much have that integration with the ICANN meeting and interaction with all the various ICANN stakeholders who will be at the Mexico City meeting.  And so the plan, as I understand it, is for them to start that Saturday and Sunday, the weekend before the official start date, to have preliminary meetings, and then continue on in conjunction with the ICANN meeting, ensuring that participants also have an opportunity to attend some of the other ICANN events that are planned for that week in Mexico City.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.
 Susan.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Just to follow up on Jean-Jacques's question.  We heard concern that the at-large meeting will be in a different hotel than the ICANN general meeting.
 Is that true?
 >>DENISE MICHEL:   You know, perhaps Paul Levins would like to --  I have no information yet on the -- on venue.  I don't know if we have any -- I think Paul Levins might have some more information on that.
 >> NICK TOMASSO:  Our intention for the at-large summit is to have --  (microphone feedback) 
 Are you all awake?
 The intention is to have at least some of the sessions in the meeting, main meeting hotel -- excuse me, there is a -- something going on back there.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Rita and ram, you'll be interested to know that a small fire has broken out in the middle of the conference room.
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   A small fire?
 [ Laughter ]
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   My God.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   It may well be a computer laptop battery that overheated.
 So we'll just take a second or two to ensure the safety of all the people surrounding the area.
 >> Somebody should take a picture.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Somebody should take a picture.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Is that another Sony battery?
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   And also, the echo is gone.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Right.  The trial lawyer in me says we're all going to be witnesses in a product liability case coming soon.  Sorry?
 >> We're not credible.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Dan.
 >> If any of you have your headsets on, distinguished members of the board, let me reassure you, it's smoke without fire.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Just briefly, we were on the location of the meeting in relation to the ICANN meeting.
 >>NICK TOMASSO:  It is our intention to have at least some of the at-large summit meetings in the main meeting hotel and have some of those sessions incorporated into the main meeting schedule so that there can be participation by main meeting attendees in the at-large summit.
 We are physically looking at the space of the hotel, as well as the opportunity for adjacent or very close-by hotels so there's minimal inconvenience for anyone in moving back and forth between the two.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Nick.
 Any other questions or comments?  Jean-Jacques.
 Is this something you want Nick to stay for?
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   No, no.  It's just a comment to, actually, the at-large structures.
 I think we must note the exceptional nature of this effort which is being made by the at-large community and also the contribution of ICANN.  And I really encourage all those involved to make the best of this opportunity to engage even more, more widely and in a more strategic manner, the at-large community on this occasion.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Jean-Jacques.
 Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Yes.  I think that there's no point in discussing all the fine details of, you know, where the rooms are located and all this.
 But I think that we should go on record on the fact that every effort will be done in order to make this summit a success.
 We have also to consider the fact that the at-large summit is important because we are going to have also, hopefully, press coverage.  It's an event that, in the history of ICANN, is a landmark.  And we should give the possibility also to people from -- also from outside the at-large community to go and look at it, people from other constituencies.
 So this has to be taken really well into account in the logistics.
 Now, I understand that in organizing every meeting, we have some limitations and we have some constraints, and so maybe the perfect solution cannot be found.  But I would like to see the commitment of ICANN in making the venue of the summit an element that is a key element in -- of the Mexico City meeting, considering the possibility of -- and favoring the access of, for instance, people from the community in Mexico, but also from -- people from the other constituencies of ICANN to the at large to participate and to see how the at large works and to participate to the event.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   You have a fan, Roberto.
 Dennis.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Just a comment that I think this is an extremely important event, and I'm very, very supportive of it and I hope it will be very successful.
 But there is just a practical matter that there is a budget for this event which is nontrivial, it's half a million dollars that we've put in the budget.  And there is no plan to increase that.  So there are constraints is my point.
 So no matter how enthusiastic and supportive we are, there is a financial constraint which the summit has to fit within.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  All right.  Well, I think we've received that report and comments have been made and read into the record.  And I think there's general support that this is a good thing and we need to make sure that it happens with the best possible results.
 Let's move, then, to the -- item 7, the working group on geographic regions review.  This is something that we do every few years to make sure that our geographical allocation of countries and regions fits things.
 And I'll call on Demi Getschko to take us through this resolution.
 Demi.
 >>DEMI GETSCHKO:   Thank you, Chair.
 Whereas, the ccNSO raised issues regarding the assignment of territories to ICANN geographic regions and noted that any change -- (Audio interference) -- any change to ICANN geographic regions (Audio interference) -- could have widespread effects in ICANN, subsequently, the ccNSO Council asked the ICANN board to appointment a community-wide working group to review issues related to geographic regions, consult with all stakeholders, and submit proposed changes to the board.
 Whereas, the board asked for input from the ICANN community in November 2007 on ccNSO's request for such a working grouping, and recently, the ALAC, GNSO, and GAC have indicated there support for an appointment of a working group on this topic.
 Resolved, the board authorizes the formation of a community-wide working group to study and review the issues related to the definition of the ICANN geographic regions, consult with all stakeholders, and submit proposals for community and board consideration relating to the current definition of ICANN geographic regions.  The board requests that all interested supporting organizations and advisory committees nominate two candidates to serve on the working group, the composition of which the board would like to approve at the December board meeting.
 Resolved, the board requests the working group, as its first order of business, to draft and seek community input on a proposed charter and submit the draft document for community review and board consideration and approval at the March 2009 board meeting in Mexico City.  In drafting the charter, the working group is directed to focus, but not limit, its work on criteria for assigning countries, dependencies, and recognized geopolitical entities to a geographic region and to take into consideration the relevant ccNSO board paper, the recent GNSO comments, and other community advice, including the GAC's original advice on the topic in 2000.  Further, the board directs ICANN staff to support these efforts.
 Thank you, Chair.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Demi.  Is there a seconder for this?
 Thank you, Jean-Jacques.
 This is something that we do periodically.  I have -- we are aware from presentations from the ccTLD community that the current structure does cause some difficulties.  There are people in some regions who, as a result of the current allocation procedures, are effectively barred from taking part in some ICANN work or standing for office and building. 
 So there is substance to this work.
 Is there any further comment from the board on the formation of this working group?
 Steve Goldstein.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Chair, when I joined the board and saw this talk about geographical distribution, it certainly made sense, the principle.
 And when I started looking at the regions and the definitions, it was almost too much for me to handle, because it just seemed so different from anything I had experienced.
 So I just want to say that I welcome this reexamination, and I think it's a very good thing that we do it.
 I support it wholeheartedly.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks.
 Any further comment?  Harald?  Jean-Jacques.
 >>HARALD ALVERSTRAND:   Just me too.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Harald.
 Jean-Jacques.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Yes, a brief comment on the background for this.  I think it's a very timely proposal for a resolution, because we have been told every day, and we witness ourselves, the huge transformation in the Internet world.
 And I think this is one of the measures not only to correct, in some measure, the present situation.  It is also looking forward.  And preparing the Internet world but also ICANN and its structures to the new reality which will emerge in the coming years.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks.
 Any further comment?
 If not, I will put the resolution.
 All those in favor of forming the working group according to this resolution, please raise your hands.
 Rita, how do you vote?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   In favor.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ramaraj, how do you vote?
 >>RAJASEKHAR RAMARAJ:   In favor, too.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Any opposition?  Any abstentions?  Carried unanimously.
 Now, I think we have the travel proposal, it might be good to clear that out before we go back, but we seem to have lost our feed.  It's come back just as I say that.
 If that's the case, Mr. Secretary, could you put up the resolution relating to the allocation and selection of the June 2009 meeting?  And perhaps if I could ask Steve to take us through the resolution as we now have it.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Thank you, Chair.
 Okay.  First of all, in past, our meetings on Friday mornings have been pretty pro forma.  I'm sure of the impression that everything is prearranged and that you would be seeing on a Friday morning is a well rehearsed scenario.  That is not the case this morning.
 There are many considerations around the meeting in June.  There are considerations of cost, which would be a part of any bid and managing cost.  There are also considerations of cultural and geographic equity to be concerned, our sensitivity to the large populations in -- I guess given our definition of regions, what we would consider north Asia or Asia as opposed to AustralAsia.
 So if you have seen people scurrying around we have been trying to work some last-minute creative solutions, and I think we have reached one.
 And so what I shall read will be the approval of a site for June 2009 in what we are now calling Asia-Pacific region.  But inform you also that we are already in negotiations to change our schedule beyond then, our meeting schedule beyond then, to also accommodate another Asian location for the third meeting in 2009.
 And so our current resolution, which I am asking for approval, goes as follows.
 Pardon me?  Oh, I'm sorry.
 We have already changed it on the screen.
 Whereas the 35th ICANN meeting is to be held in June 2009 in the Asia-Pacific region.
 Whereas, the regional rotation was amended in 2007, and the Asia-Pacific meeting was deferred due to logistical and budgetary considerations.
 Whereas, the Asia-Pacific region is one of the most significant growth areas for the Internet.
 Resolved that the board endorses Sydney, Australia as the location of the ICANN Asia-Pacific meeting to be held in June 2009, and adopts a budget for the meeting not to exceed 1.973 million U.S. dollars.
 Resolved, the board adjusts the regional rotation to defer the European meeting in October 2009 and hold that meeting in is Seoul, Korea.
 The board requires staff to negotiate the cost of the Seoul meeting with a budget similar to that of the meeting in Sydney.
 Is that the end of the resolution?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   And I would add to that parenthetically that Europe will not be disadvantaged because the planning would also try to move the European meeting, now scheduled for the end of 2009, into the North American slot at the end of 2010, given that we had to have a meeting at the last minute in North America last year because of the schedule difficulties with Asia-Pacific.  Then the North America meeting at the end of 2010 will now be occupied with a European slot.
 So I hope that people will see this as a fair and equitable rearrangement of the schedule and certainly one that responds to the needs and aspirations of our Asian colleagues for 2009.
 Thank you, Chair.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Steve.
 Is there a seconder for that resolution?
 Dave Wodelet, thank you.
 Any further comment on that?
 I have Dennis and then Raimundo and then Harald.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to the support staff for crafting an amended resolution which tried to capture some of our discussions.
 However, I do think that the resolutions need to be considered in more detail, because I am uncomfortable with the board micro-managing the schedule of meetings.  I'd like to suggest that rather than say in the second last paragraph "the board adjusts the regional rotation" that the resolution say the board requests the management and staff to explore adjusting the regional rotation.
 And similarly in the last paragraph, the board requests management and staff to explore, some wording.
 Because I don't think that the board should be micro-managing the management and staff.
 Staff have clearly operated within the parameters that we have previously agreed, and I think we should reflect, if we are giving new parameters, we should reflect on those in a more careful manner.
 I'm not against the sense of the resolution, but I just think it's inappropriate to mandate that, and it's meddling.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, I think I agree, Dennis.  We don't want to be seen nor do we actually want to do that kind of thing.
 Is there any further -- sorry, I had Raimundo and then Harald.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:   Thanks, Peter.
 I support what Dennis just said about the micro-management of the meetings.  But I would like to add one point to the resolution.
 It's the fact that the Board Finance Committee recommended the budget, so this is not something that has not been studied.  Recommended the budget for the Australian meeting.
 So I think it should be added in the whereas saying that it's the recommendation of the Board Finance Committee about the budget of that one.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, there is a board finance recommendation in relation to the Sydney budget, so there's no reason why that couldn't also be added as a recital, please, John.
 And whereas the Board Finance Committee has approved.
 Thank you, Raimundo.
 Harald.
 >>HARALD ALVERSTRAND:   So I would add into the record that one reason why this is somewhat disorganized and last minute is that, for various logistical reasons, there was no paper presenting to the board the exact reasons why staff had chosen to go with the recommendation for Sydney.
 When I saw the reasons that they had, including multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people's money that we would have spent doing something else, I found the arguments for Sydney compelling.  But I was unhappy that those numbers were not available to me in a reasonable time frame.
 Now, how much we weigh the individual factors is something that the board needs to set clear policy on so that staff can have good direction for negotiating meetings and presenting to the board clearly how they have -- how they evaluate the proposals against the criteria.
 So I'm hoping that we will be much clearer in why we did things in the future and have that documentation in front of the board at a reasonable time.
 But I support the meeting -- I support the motion as amended by Dennis.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you for that support, Harald.
 I think, just as a matter of record, we should note that there was large amount of very good staff work that went into this.  Where there may have been some confusion is that staff have actually been delegated with most of this, including the decision-making, and had presented this on the basis of reporting.  And I think some staff members felt a bit surprised that the board intervened in that process.
 The board was thinking that this was being presented for board decision.
 So we have a little bit of confusion about exactly where the responsibility for this decision-making lay.
 And that happens from time to time.  And what I would say for the future is that we will very shortly be constituting a committee on public participation.
 One of the major strands of public participation in ICANN is the meetings, and I expect that committee, when it's set up and running, to make sure that the line of authority for making the policy is very clear, including, then, the delegated authority to the staff to carry out that policy.
 So the situation that you found yourself in, Harald, hopefully won't reoccur.
 Any further?  Roberto and then Demi.  Sorry, Steve.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   I am extremely uncomfortable.
 On one hand, I think that I would like to start by commending the very good work that staff has put in the evaluation.  And I think that they did the best they could given the circumstances, and given the elements that we, the board, have given them to make a choice.
 This said, I think that what made me uncomfortable in the discussions we had in previous circumstances about the choice of a meeting location in Australia, New Zealand, in Oceania, AustralAsia, how do you want to call it, versus I would say mainland Asia is simply a fact that there are values that I think ICANN has.  And the reason why we do the rotation of the meetings is to meet different cultures, different languages, and different environments.
 And in my opinion, the root cause is the size of the Asia-Pacific and immense variety of cultures, languages, races, religions, in that continent, which makes it very difficult for us to make choices.
 The fact that we had a meeting in India, for instance, in mainland Asia doesn't mean that the Asian continent is covered and that a meeting in Korea, for instance, will be in a completely different -- almost in a different continent than the meeting in India.
 So my perplexity about the choice of Sydney was based only on the fact that, in my opinion, we have not taken sufficiently into account the immense variety of cultures in Asia.
 And so the need for ICANN to go in those places, ensuring a variety of locations in mainland Asia.
 However, I think that this is something that cannot be made the responsibility of the fault of staff.  This is, in my opinion, something that we have failed as board to provide to staff as one of the element to take into account for the choice.  And I take -- I don't even want to involve the whole board.  I think that I feel this way, and I should have spoken earlier.
 And so I take the responsibility on myself in not having made clear that this was, in my opinion, one parameter of the choice.
 That is what made me uncomfortable with the situation of the recommendation for Sydney, is that I had the perception that was based mostly on financial issues rather than a set of other parameters that had not been properly communicated to staff.
 And I think that welcoming the formation of participation, public participation committee exactly to explore those things and to be in the future not to fall in the same problem and to give proper indication to staff on what are the parameters to be used to make the choice.
 This said, going to this current text, what makes me extremely uncomfortable on this versus a plain decision saying, okay, it's Sydney and we are extremely sorry that we couldn't take into account other bids that would have had added value and recognize the value of other bids and leave it open for the future.  
 If we are trying to make a commitment on dates and venues for the future, I think that we will be in a bad situation.  Also in terms of being able to define some of the details contractually.  And that in itself is a bad thing.
 But what worries me even more is that in order to find a patchy solution, we are changing things that are already in the way.
 Like to the best of my knowledge, we have already bids coming in, for instance, for Europe and for the annual general meeting.  And we have already asked for bids for 2010.
 We have solicited contributions for those.
 So maybe we can serve a current problem, the one that is just before our nose, but we create a problem in Europe for the bidders that have already bid and have been already engaging and spending money in doing this thing.
 I'm not saying this because Europe is my region.  But I would do the same for every region.
 So I'm sorry for being so long in this explanation, but I really wanted to make clear that I am extremely uncomfortable in this situation.  And I don't -- I am not ready to vote on this resolution in those terms.
 Although the plain decision of where to hold the meeting in June 2009, I'm absolutely convinced it has to be taken today and has to be taken by this board today.
 So I would accept whatever result comes in terms of the decision of the -- on the meeting in June 2009, but please -- I don't know a polite word for this -- don't screw up the rest of it in order to have the impression of having solved the problem and create two or three down the road.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Roberto.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Steve Goldstein, then Demi.
 Steve.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Thank you, Chair.
 I have several things to say.
 First of all, I thoroughly support the sentiments that you have voiced and that Roberto has voiced about establishing guidelines, clear guidelines, for staff with the soon to be established -- what are we calling? -- public participation committee, which will consider not only meetings but what we do -- not only meeting venues and criteria for same but what we do at meetings and how we conduct meetings and other means of outreach that we have by way of publication, so forth.
 I am also encouraged that my really esteemed colleague, Jean-Jacques Subrenat, has stood up to offer to chair that committee, as I have come to know him and learn of his vast experience as serving as a French Ambassador in many parts of the world and to learn not only of his cultural sensitivity but his facility in many languages, including, I just learned, a very passable Mandarin and now learning Finnish.  I think he is certainly the right person for leading that new thrust.  So I am very encouraged by that.
 Looking at the resolution, I note that the finance committee recommended the adoption to the board.  The board does the approval, and the finance committee, on which I have been serving, only made the recommendation.  So thank you for that change, John.
 And as far as European arrangements, Nick Tomasso our new meetings director has told me that to the best of his knowledge, no commitments whatever have been made for arrangements within Europe; that we were only receiving expressions of interest.
 In other words, no negotiations between the parties expressing interest have been made with any hotel venues and so forth.  So that to the best of his knowledge, there will be no major disruption on the European scene as far as negotiations are concerned.
 We'd be catching this early enough in the sequence.
 Thank you, Chair.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.
 I wonder if I can keep this moving a bit more briskly.  I have Demi and then Rita and then Paul and then Susan.
 So if you are going to say something that other board members have already said, perhaps consider whether you can be as brief as possible.
 Demi.
 >>DEMI GETSCHKO:   Thank you, Chair.
 Although I agree in principle with the recommendation, I have some points I want to raise.
 First of all, of course the prospective hosts that are willing and offering to host the ICANN meeting in June have some agenda commitments.  Then I wonder if we can just set up the October meeting without consulting with Seoul organization.  I raise this point.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Demi.
 Rita, are you online?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   I am, Peter.  Thank you.
 I just want to say very briefly for the record in case people are listening to this discussion, reading the minutes and wondering what is going on, basically we got presented, the board, a proposal for having the meeting in Sydney, and I think there was a lot of work done by the staff and the board was given very practical and rational reasons why Sydney should be the chosen venue.
 Some members of the board were uncomfortable with that decision.  Roberto told you some of the reasons.
 There were two other options that were presented to the board, both in Asia, obviously.
 After review of the facts, more of the board decided that it would be optimal to hold the meeting in Sydney, but a bunch of us, including myself, preferred an alternative yesterday.
 Given that we need to decide the meeting venue today, we were told, I assume, that this resolution that we are seeing for the first time is a compromise.  And while I very much appreciate a compromise and I appreciate the work that was done to put this resolution up, I am also not at all comfortable with the notion of the board locking in a future meeting venue and rearranging the meeting schedule to accommodate this specific scenario.
 So that is the reason that I am going to vote no on this resolution.
 Thanks, Peter.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rita.
 Paul.
 >>PAUL TWOMEY:   Thank you, Chairman.
 This, I think, is a very unfortunately circumstance around this discussion, and I want to talk to a couple of the aspects because I think the proposal is actually a good one.
 But to talk through some specifics, just to pick up on what Rita said, for people who don't understand.
 The board had a board meetings committee, which its first role in the early days essentially was to do all of the staff function.  It used to go and visit sites, it used to evaluate the sites, and it used to make the decision as to where meetings should take place.
 This was at a time when there was very little staff in the ICANN context.
 As more staff capacity was available, the meeting committee, over time, eventually was doing some of those parameters, but decided in the meeting in Los Angeles in 2007 that actually this function should now be not run by a meetings committee and that the meetings committee itself should be disbanded.  I felt it was felt then at the time there was a set of criteria set for the staff process to do evaluations, and that set of criteria should be utilized by the staff.
 The -- A further -- those evaluations focused on, quite specifically, not on costs, quite a lot on the costs of actually running the meeting, and a very detailed request for proposal that people can see online which has a lot of detail in it which has not come up in discussion.
 And just to give you practical examples, size of the meeting rooms available, ability to have the meeting rooms within limits.  A lot of the mechanical things that the community has come to take for granted in the running of the meetings.
 And as you will appreciate, not every hotel in the world has the same process.  Even to take that example, there has been a lot of interest from the community it wants to have the meetings in hotels, not in conferences center.
 There is a whole series -- If you look at the RFP online, you will see, it's a very detailed document that has been worked through over a ten-year period to ensure that there is a common experience.  And those of you who have been coming to ICANN meetings for some time, I think you have almost got to the stage where you think it's just another hotel and basically the same experience.
 Meetings take place at the same time, same place, same size rooms, ability to move from one to the other, size of the meeting rooms, where can they have breakfast, can they serve you food.
 The RFP literally defines now the size of the tables and chairs to be used in certain meeting rooms.
 The GAC has a requirement that the room has to be in a certain shape.
 So I think people should really think this through very carefully.
 I understand there are some emotions here.  The community and especially the committee had developed up a very detailed RFP.
 In addition to that, there was concerns expressed, reinforced, I think, after the -- a shifting, late shifting, of a meeting to India, around managing costs carefully.
 So there's a set of very clear, objective criteria that have developed and which the board committee had actually left the staff to implement.
 The further constraint is that we don't go out and propose and select sites.  We do a process that, personally, I think is always doomed to disappointment.  We ask for proposals.
 And the realities are, in Latin America, people have tended to come together and give us one proposal.  In Africa, people have tended to get together and give us one proposal.  And in the other parts of the other three regions, people have competed.  So we get competition from proposals.
 And I am the first person in the Asia-Pacific, coming from the Asia-Pacific, to say I actually think that region, for these purposes, is way too diverse, way too large, and makes very little sense in some of these criterias that people are putting forward.  It's a very diverse place.
 So we take proposals.  There were four proposals put forward in this round.  And the staff did an evaluation against those objective criteria that were given to them to go through, basically, who has the big enough room sizes, who can put together the seating configurations, and, very importantly, who can -- how do we manage the cost elements, food and beverage costs, costs of meeting rooms, costs of hotel rooms, transport costs to be involved, et cetera.
 So people should be also conscious that the community's demands for what they want in meetings that is resulted in these meetings now are averaging over $2 million each, or about $2 million each.  Or more.
 And so, you know, this is serious money.  It's $6 million, $7 million a year.
 So the cost was a key thing that the community has made important, and the board made that a specific issue after the meeting in India.  We all were very conscious that this was a very important priority.
 A proposal received from Australia, independently done, although, like all proposers, they ask -- putting forward proposals, they ask staff for assist, help, and objectives, and staff have given those, myself included, to all of the bidders.
 The proposals, when they are received, were evaluated.  I can tell you, those of us who happen to be Australians on the board or on the staff, bent backwards to try to deal with this issue of perceived bias.  And I am personally very upset with some of the accusations made yesterday.  I just cannot believe they were said.
 The importance to which we place upon operating this process neutrally I cannot overestimate.  Indeed, I think you will find that the staff involved applied a negative bias on a bid from Australia specifically because of that issue.
 I personally ensured, while I did give assistance or advice to people from all the bids, and certainly that one, if any questions got asked, I have played no role at all in the decision-making, and specifically said I wanted nothing to do with the decision-making, A; and, B, it had to be done purely on the objective criteria.
 Paul Levins helped implement that process.  But we have just hired one of the world's experts in running meetings.  Nick Tomasso has been running meetings for IBM for 20 years.  And we specifically asked Nick to go and do this evaluation because of the concerns we knew people would raise around perceptions.  
 So Nick went and did the evaluations.  
 The proposal in front of you today has, in order, according to that criteria, the two candidates.
 Now, it is quite appropriate for the board to now be saying and people in the community to be saying, "We want further criteria to be included," right, which are essentially political criteria, in the selection of the candidates.  But, then, if they're going to do that, they have to be clear to the people putting the bids up that there's a political criteria.
 And there's a question of fairness to bidders here.  People have put on bids against the criteria we make very public.  All right?  And understand the sensitivities here.  We have received communications from heads of government on these bids.  
 So it's quite appropriate now to reconsideration of these further issues going forward.  But I want to be very clear about the process.  Any accusation of bias in the process is unfounded, and open book on this.  Any accusations that this has not been well done according to the criteria is (inaudible) valid.  And any description and discussion now that we ought to have in our further discussion, public discussion, about the nature of this criteria, is also valid.
 But I just wanted to put that all on the record, especially -- I'm going to come back to this point -- especially, people here need to think very carefully, frankly, about how demanding they are of what they want in the meetings.
 They are incredibly demanding about the sorts of things, the sizes of rooms, meetings, "When can we have breakfast?" et cetera.  And there's been a ten-year process of evolving an RFP to that process.  And that's the key of the evaluation process.
 So I just want to remind us about that and put it on the record.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Paul.
 Susan.  I think we'll close this after that.  You get the last -- Jean-Jacques.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you, Chair.  Very briefly.  No one has mentioned bias.  Right now, we have a broken process.  And the board will fix this process in the future. we were presented yesterday with two choices that were quite close to each other in terms of cost, in my view.  Seoul $300,000 more than Sydney.  In my view, the price differential was outweighed by noneconomic values that would be served by meeting in Seoul.
 There is no Korean, Japanese, or Chinese member of the board at the present moment.  We do not have adequate representation from northern Asia on the staff.  I was quite moved by the comments along these lines from people speaking from the floor.
 I don't think we should preplan October 2009.  And so, for this reason, because I think it will lock in high costs for Seoul if they know we're going there in October 2009, I'd like to vote against this resolution.  I do not seek to undermine staff.  I think that there are values that outweighed the economic ones.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Susan.
 Jean-Jacques.  Dennis.  I really do have to close this down.
 Raimundo Jean-Jacques.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Thank you.  I will not repeat what has been said very excellently by Rita and by Susan.  I share their views entirely.
 There are, however, a few additional points I would like to make.
 First, I would like to go along with Peter and say that if there have been accusations of any sort, that is certainly not called for.  That is not justified.
 Steve Goldstein was kind enough to say some flattering words about me.  But I would like to make clear that these are two separate issues.  I would think it's to be a mistake in matters of governance and principle to establish any sort of link between the two.
 I'm sure that's clear in his mind.  But I just wanted to make it clear for everyone.
 Now, the three main points I'd like to take up are, first, process, principle, and the reason why I will not vote in favor of this resolution.
 Process.  I think it's a moment where I'll call our mantra, actually, for clarity and transparency is at stake in a way also.
 Whatever the reasons of management, which I understand, the result is that we were shown this choice of Sydney yesterday, late afternoon, or in the afternoon.
 Now, I see in the amended proposal, which is on the screen, that the board finance committee has recommended the adoption of the budget for the meeting in Sydney.  So the budget committee was aware.  But the board, as such, was not aware.
 If it was so important to have, at all costs, a decision today in the board meeting, well, perhaps it would have been not a bad idea to have the board informed in some way a bit earlier.
 Now, the most important, I think, is the principle.
 I have heard today in this morning's discussion words such as "sensitivity," I think it's more than just sensitivity.  It's the meaning of representation, of equitable representation.  Micromanaging.  I don't have a sense that, as a member of the board, by speaking about this I am trying to micromanage in any way what the management has done well.
 But sometimes what appear to be technical issues deserve to be elevated to another level.  And this is what we're speaking about today.
 I think it is a question of representation and of choice at a certain moment in the Internet's history.
 So for all these reasons, I would go along with Rita and Susan and vote against this resolution.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Jean-Jacques.
 Raimundo, and then Dennis.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:   Thanks, Peter.
 I'm persuaded, and I have said this many times in the board list, that the organization of our meetings is absolutely out of control since the meeting of '07.  We have been working with the decision taken by the -- by the old meetings committee in February '07, which there's no trace of that decision.
 I've been told many times that that decision was taken.  And that decision had meetings in -- apparently because there's no trace about that -- a meeting in Delhi, or India, in February 2008, and in Africa in February 2010.
 I've always said that for the people of the southern hemisphere, any meeting in February is a very, very bad date.  And we had the experience in Delhi.
 And everything has continued as if nothing's said.  We had the experience in Delhi in cost and in attendance.
 The attendance from Latin America to India was very, very poor.  And I am persuaded that if we are going to repeat this in Africa in 2010, we are going to have the same thing.
 If you take a look to the organizations of the Internet in Africa -- AfriNIC, AfNOG, AFTLD -- they never make meetings in February, for the same reason I mentioned.
 So I would like now to insist and to put that in the record that the new committee should review absolutely all the rotations and all the places and take into account what happened with the southern hemisphere.
 Thank you very much.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   A very quick thing.
 I hear this metropolitan agenda that the only reason why the meeting in India overran the cost was that it was done in February, whereas, if it was done in January or March, it would have been -- the cost would have been different.
 And I think that this is -- personally, I think it's nonsense.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And Dennis.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:  I think we have to be mature about this.  We have a set of procedures and processes which we'd agreed, which management and staff has followed.
 I don't think we should meddle.  I think the discussion is a very good guide for the future, having reflected on my friendly amendment, I now feel that even that is too much meddling and the last two resolved should be struck.  And I would like to see --  And I'm not suggesting we do this on the fly, because, otherwise, we're crafting resolutions on the last-man-standing basis.  But my view is that we should strike the last two "resolveds" and just have the resolution to endorse the Sydney meeting as proposed by staff, and that would be my vote.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I'm going to have to take this formally.  If you're seriously proposing another amendment to this amended resolution, is that your intention?
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:  I'm saying, Chairman, that I would like the last two resolutions -- "resolveds" struck and just vote on the single resolution, the board endorses Sydney, Australia.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Is that a seconder for that amendment?
 No.  I'm sorry, Dennis, that fails.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Okay.
 >>RAJASEKHAR RAMARAJ:   Ramaraj.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Right.  I'm going to put the resolution as it now stands.  Perhaps we can just check that we have it all in front of us, because we're relying at this stage on the screen version.
 Scroll, please, to the top.
 Let's go through and be clear what we are saying, whereas, the 35th ICANN meeting is to be held in June, whereas the regional rotation was amended.  Whereas the Asia-Pacific is the most significant whereas the board finance committee has recommended the adoption.
 The board endorses Sydney, Australia as the location of the ICANN Asia-Pacific meeting and adopts a budget, resolved, the board requests management and staff to explore adjusting the regional rotation and they may come back and say, of course, Dennis that it can't be done.  Resolved, the board request management and staff to explore negotiating the cost of the Seoul meeting.  That's it.
 So that's what we're doing.
 Approving Sydney and seeing if we can't adjust the schedule to fit in a Seoul meeting.
 All those in favor of the resolution as on the screen, please raise your hands.
 Rita, how do you vote?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Peter, I vote "no."
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Ramaraj, how do you vote?
 >>RAJASEKHAR RAMARAJ:   I vote in favor.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   If I could just have the hands up, we may need to do a count.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.  Counting Ramaraj.
 All those opposed, please raise your hands.
 One, two, three against.
 Abstentions?
 Demi and Bruce.
 I'll declare the motion carried.
 Bruce?
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.
 Just wanted to make a comment.  I, as most people would be aware, I'm a citizen of Australia.  And I reside in Australia.
 I have abstained because I think there would be a perception that I'd have a bias in this decision.  So not only have I abstained on the motion.  I haven't participated in speaking for or against the location.
 But also, I just want to put on the record that I have not been involved in the proposal from Australia, and also would like to make it clear that none of the applicants have approached me in any way.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bruce.
 Anybody else want a statement recorded?
 In which case, let's move on.  Thank you.
 The next item is an update on the President's Strategy Committee.  And I'll call Paul Levins to just give us an update on that.
 Thank you, Paul.
 >>PAUL LEVINS:   Thank you, Chair, I'll try and be brief.
 This is -- I just thought it would be worthwhile very briefly, particularly for -- first-time attendees at this meeting to provide a little bit of background to the President's Strategy Committee.
 It was formed in 2005 following a board resolution at ICANN's meeting in Vancouver.
 The purposes of that committee, the -- explain some of this background will be clear in a moment -- is to provide advice to the president by way of strategic issues facing ICANN.
 And those observations and recommendations contribute to the ICANN strategic planning process.
 As I said, that committee was appointed in 2006.  The members of that committee are -- have obviously changed over time.  You know, since 2006.  But presently are -- co-chairs are the chairman of the board of directors, Peter Dengate Thrush; the CEO, Paul Twomey; Raimundo Beca, board member; ambassador Jean-Jacques Subrenat, board member; ambassador Yrjo Lansipuro from Finland.  Marilyn Cade, and Pierre Dandjinou.
 The committee's been working pretty extensively over the time since it's been developed.  It had meetings in Marrakech, where it held a public meeting and public discussions of a draft report, which, importantly, dealt with issues around internationalization, which those of you who are familiar with the current discussions that the PSC are holding, the current consultations, will be aware is a significant issue.
 So there's a history that the PSC has in talking about these issues.
 Indeed, it published in July 2006 a report on the very question of international private organizations that was prepared by Ambassador Hans Corell, who, amongst many other things, was, as I understand it, general counsel to the United Nations for a period of time, for an extensive period of time.
 In December 2006 in São Paulo, there were further public discussions of that draft report.  In March 2007, a final report around some of these issues was presented to the board.
 Various other activities, but I'll skip forward to February of 2008, this year, when the midterm review of the Joint Program Agreement with the United States Department of Commerce was held.  And one of the inputs to that process was -- amongst many, was a proposal by the government of Canada that the -- or a proposition, I should say, by the government of Canada in their submission that issues to do with transition really needed to be brought forward and heavily concentrated upon in a discussion between the Department of Commerce and ICANN.  And they proposed that the forum to commence that and do development work was, in fact, the President's Strategy Committee.
 That view was one that the chairman agreed with.  And in his comments, if you like, by way of summary of the joint project midterm review comments, proposed that that was the way to deal with some of the concerns, the structural concerns, if you like, around some of the issues to do with accountability, security, and so on, that were raised during the context of the midterm review.
 In Paris, the PSC presented a set of draft documents called improving institutional confidence, and a transition action plan and an FAQ.  There was consultations on those documents in Paris.  You can find, in fact, the video of those consultations.  If you want to revisit some of that later one evening, you can turn that video on off the ICANN Web site.  There's a dedicated President's Strategy Committee page.
 In July and August, we held comments on those draft comments.  And I'll very quickly list what I think you will agree -- I hope you will agree -- is a rather extensive attempt at outreach.
 Uruguay was the first of these meetings in August 2008, Christchurch New Zealand at the APNIC meeting in August also; Geneva at the IGF preparatory meeting in September; Paris, as I've already mentioned; the Washington, D.C., ICANN consultation, which was held in September 2008, at which we had, importantly, European Commission and member states represented, range of embassies; Dakar, Senegal, the Internet Governance Policymakers event in Africa the 13th of October, quite recently; the Arab League meeting in Cairo just before this meeting.  And future meetings to be held in Mauritius and Hyderabad, Mauritius in November, and Hyderabad at the IGF meeting in December of this year.
 So I'll wind up by -- we've had at least three sessions where some of these issues have been discussed, firstly on Monday afternoon at a cross-constituency discussion, some of these issues were visited.  Secondly, we had a report back on some of those issues from the cross-constituency yesterday morning.  And, thirdly, we had, of course, a 45-minute to an hour-long session on these -- reporting back on the progress and talking about some of the issues, what the PSC believes it's heard, yesterday -- just yesterday afternoon.
 The timetable going forward is that we hope to publish a timetable and a legal memo on this important issue of international not-for-profit status very soon, if not early next week, by the end of next.  We will also be publishing a work plan, which we'll be entitling "From Design to Implementation," which, effectively, is an attempt to draw together those two documents but also add on the very detailed explorations of work that's been done around some of the issues that the PSC has been hearing.
 In mid-January, the PSC is holding a face-to-face meeting to review the -- that draft design document.
 The draft timetable also suggests that by the end of January, there will be a publication of that draft design document, and a public comment period to follow.
 Now, very importantly, this is an advisory committee to the president, as I commenced -- where I commenced at the beginning of this outline.  And as a consequence, this needs to go to the board.
 It's not something that is making arbitrary or unauthorized decisions on behalf of the board or the community.
 As a consequence, all of this material will need to go to the board.  And we're targeting February for that discussion, with a publication of a proposed design document, all things being equal, if I can put it that way, and discussed by the board, with discussions on that document at the Mexico City meeting, to be held between the 1st and the 6th of March.
 So I think I'll leave my remarks there.  That's an outline.  As I said, please do visit --  These are very important issues, issues to do with capture, issues to do with internationalization of the organization, issues to do with accountability.
 So these are extremely important issues.  And amongst the very many other important issues, it would be extremely useful for the community to visit the President's Strategy Committee page.  Look, if you're unfamiliar with the work that's been done so far, look carefully at the extensive work that committee has done, informed by the community so far.  And please feel free to provide public comments and other feedback.
 Thank you, Chair.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Paul.
 Just before we -- ask the secretary to record that the CEO and president have sought permission to leave the meeting.  He has to be in Dubai on ICANN business, so he has been excused, with our wishes for safe travels.
 Now, are there any questions arising from the President's Strategy Committee report?
 If not, let's move to -- we're going to come back to receipt of reports from board committees.
 We have received some reports.  And as Dennis said, it might be appropriate to have a formal resolution simply receiving those.  So we'll have a look at that.
 We come to item 10, board response to discussions arising from Cairo meetings.
 We have a couple specific items arising in relation to topics, so we may just move past that to the independent reviews update first. 
 And if I could call Marco Lorenzoni, our new staff member responsible for conducting the independent reviews. 
 Welcome, Marco.
 >>MARCO LORENZONI:   Microphone?
 Okay.  Thank you, Chairman.
 Ladies and gentlemen, Marco Lorenzoni, director, organizational review.
 Next slide, please.
 The organizational review function was established at the beginning of October in order to provide dedicated support for review processes within ICANN.
 The main focus, at least at the beginning of my tenure, will be on the systemization of processes.  I am particularly thinking processes for hiring consultants, for putting on tender the requests for proposals, for providing objective criteria for the selection of consultants.  Father on, to provide methodological staff support to the board in assessing the value of the independent reviews that are to be carried out, and also in considering the interconnections between all the findings coming from the review process in a sort of global view that is considering all the organizations, not only the different parts of the organization that are under review.
 And, finally, to ensure continuity of the ongoing activities.
 For this, I will continue to work with Patrick Sharry for a while on the transitional activities of the present ongoing project, particularly for those that are at a later stage of development.
 Next slide, please.
 As you know, the review process in ICANN is structured in three different moments, the review stage, which is the moment where the external and independent evaluator delivers a report.  Improvement stage, which is the moment where the board, through the committee and the specific working group, is involved in the reconsideration and improvement of the recommendation that has been issued by independent evaluators, and then the implementation stage.
 We have presently eight different organizational reviews in our portfolio at different stages of advancement.
 The first is the GNSO.  You have been already reported by Denise Michel this review.  It is presently in the implementation stage.  There is an extensive report available on the Web site for more details on this.  And some inputs are always sought from the community.
 The second organizational review is the Nominating Committee.  The BGC is now considering the review, the consolidated report that has been submitted by the BGC/NomCom reporting group, and proposing some improvements for the Nominating Committee.
 Then we have the at-large review.  A report has been submitted and posted for comments in July 2008.  Then the working group has been involved in an extensive round of consultations with the community and produced a midpoint report, which is posted in all the six languages, for comment.
 Draft final recommendations for the community discussions are expected for Mexico City meeting.
 Board.  The review of the board is in an improvement stage as well.  The independent evaluator report has, as you know, been presented here in Cairo and is now posted for comments.
 The board review working group will consult the community.  And we expect an interim report for discussion at Mexico City.
 Next, please.
 Then we have the two reviews that have just started, RSSAC and SSAC, with a process which is absolutely parallel.  The consultants for those two reviews are here in Cairo, have been in Cairo, conducting a first round of very intensive interviews to start the data collection phase.  The inception phase is imagined to be finished at the end -- well, mid-December.  And the draft report for both independent reviews would be presented at Mexico City.
 Next, please.
 ccNSO.  ccNSO is the last -- well, is the next external review planned to be -- to take place, initiated during these days in Cairo, consultation with the chair of the ccNSO.  And even before Cairo, with the staff supporting the ccNSO in order to prepare terms of reference, a first version of the terms of reference for consideration of the board.
 And the draft terms of reference, I'm sorry, will be presented to the BGC or to the committee that will be in charge for the future organization reviews before being posted for future comment.  Then we will look for consultants.
 The ASO has been deferred.  An attempted date was March-April '09, but naturally, before launching any operation, a consults will be taken with the ASO and the board.
 The ASO has been deferred.  An attempted date was March-April '09, but naturally before launching any operation, a consultation will be taken with the ASO and the board.
 That's it.
 Thank you very much.
 Any questions?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marco.  Yes, and thank you for mentioning the new committee that we have set up to provide some board policy making and support around this very important area of regular review of the organs of ICANN.
 Bruce.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.
 Just a really quick comment, Marco.
 Given the number of reviews that are sort of going on in parallel on any topics, it would be great if the staff could present maybe a slide that shows the overlap of some of the recommendations from these reviews so far.  Because I know we have had -- there has been a recent report on the board review, there is a report on the GNSO, there is a report on ALAC, and some of these things are slightly conflicting.  And so I think we need to focus on where are those differences between some of the recommendations and those views so we have an overall organizational view.
 >>MARCO LORENZONI:   Thank you very much, Bruce.  And this is absolutely one of my priorities.
 I would like really to understand what are the connections, overlaps, consistencies, and maybe inconsistencies between the different recommendations.
 A document has been produced a few months ago already by Denise Michel before I took the position.  And we need to update this document with the findings from the board review that has just been presented.  And surely there will be such a document in the very near future from our side.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Does that take care of the point as far as you are concerned, Bruce?  I think we are now needing to focus, as you say, on this coordination of the various reviews, particularly in relation to those three:  the NomCom, the board, and the at-large.
 Jean-Jacques.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:  I would to take this opportunity to say how essential the role of the management has been in the review process, at least for the past year I have been on the board.
 I don't know how we could have done without this quality effort on their part.
 And I would like to take this opportunity, since I am on two of the review working groups, to welcome warmly Marco and to say thank you to Patrick, because I was on the committees which he was helping or servicing.  And that was very good.
 Thanks.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Jean-Jacques.
 Any other questions of Marco?
 Okay.  Thank you, Marco.
 We will move to the next item which is the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
 If I could ask Kurt Pritz, Kurt, could you just give us a quick update on where we are at with that and next steps, please.
 >>KURT PRITZ:   Can you hear me?  Thank you.
 There is a board resolution for ICANN to develop amendments to their Registrar Accreditation Agreement in order to provide better protection for registrants.
 That resolution called for ICANN staff to work with registrars to develop a set of amendments that provide these additional protections, and also for the ALAC and the GNSO to provide advice to the board regarding the set of amendments that were developed.
 The staff solicited community comment before working with the registrars to get a better idea of the subject matter and form of these amendments.  And they may take.
 And then after several meetings with registrars, this resulted in a set of 15 amendments that were posted for public comment.
 The amendments were posted in a side-by-side comparison with the existing agreement.
 They were grouped into some headings, such as improved enforcement tools, registrant protections, promoting a stable marketplace and just overall agreement modernization.
 They were posted for comment.  The comment was synthesized, and a report published.
 In accordance with the board resolution, the ALAC has provided advice regarding the amendments.
 And now in Cairo, ICANN staff met with representatives of the IP constituency, and in that meeting, the IP members requested clarifications as to why certain recommendations were not adopted.
 Staff described some of the thinking behind it but agreed that further sessions were required.  And that clarification will take place, and discussion will take place over the next couple of weeks.
 So having developed a set of amendments, then, how do we incorporate these and make them effective into the RAA.
 The Registrar Accreditation Agreement calls for them to be incorporated through a consensus policy, but that consensus policy, that definition really predates the existing definition of PDP that we have in the bylaws.  In fact, it's defined in the agreement as requiring a staff report, two-thirds support of the GNSO, and then a subsequent board action.
 So while in Cairo staff met with GNSO council members to describe this process, everything that's happened before this, even though, of course, they were aware of it, and this approval mechanism, the council members discuss the possible paths for approval, during that meeting, interestingly, the ALAC liaison recommended approval of these recommendations.  I will say that admitting that the ALAC report was critical of the amendments and thought they did not go far enough.
 But at the end of that meeting, the council sense was that a vote could be taken in the next couple meetings that the council convenes.
 They thought that putting a motion on the table that day was not appropriate, but would entertain a motion in the next meeting or two.  So staff will work with the GNSO council with that, and report back to the board when there are actions required.
 So that's it, Peter.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks very much, Kurt.
 Any questions of Kurt in relation to progress?  Bruce.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Just a comment, I guess, Kurt, on how you are handling feedback.
 I notice from your report that you had mentioned that you had met with a few constituencies, and I will just choose one for example which is the IP constituency, and that they had asked why certain things weren't included.
 Is the intent of the staff to actually formally respond to the feedback you have received on the RAA?  In other words, there was a public comment process, you have received feedback from ALAC and the IP constituency amongst others.
 Are you intending, as staff, to formally respond to that with reasons why some recommendations were not accepted?
 >>KURT PRITZ:   The synthesis document that was posted after the public comment period does indicate which suggestions were -- from the community were included for amendment.  And in cases where they weren't included in the amendments, why.
 Now, I don't know if that was done very clearly.
 For example, it was indicated that some of the suggested amendments might be more appropriate for a policy development process and not for a bilateral negotiation.
 Some of the amendments were really a business choice for -- you know, a marketplace choice for registrars and shouldn't be included in the agreement.
 I'm not so sure that that discussion couldn't be sharpened up and there be more explanation to the community.
 (no audio.)
 So I'm not so sure that that discussion can't be sharpened up in future communications.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.
 Thanks very much.
 Any further questions about the RAA?
 >>KURT PRITZ:   Was that Rita?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I think she was commenting on your loss of audio.
 Rita, are you with us?
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Yes, I'm sorry about that.  I just couldn't hear for a bit.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, we did lose Kurt and now he is back.
 Thank you, Kurt.
 Ladies and gentlemen, it's now nearly quarter to 11:00 and we have been going for two hours.  I am going to declare a bio-break of 15 minutes, and when we come back we will come to your item.
 We have a number of items still to go.
 Let's take the break and come back, please, to be re-seated just before 5 to 11:00.  Thanks.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Just very briefly, Chair, I wanted to talk about the public format yesterday, as we are leaving on our break.  It seemed to me that we didn't give enough time to public comment, and we didn't adequately respond to those comments.  So I hope in further, later meetings that will work.
 But let's all stand up and leave the stage now, which is a good bit of physical humor.
 (Break).
 
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Let's resume.
 Goodness.  Sudden change of volume.
 Now, Susan, I offered you a chance to say something after we resumed.
 I think you did say something after I closed the meeting but you probably want it on the record.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Actually, I did say what I wanted to say.  Briefly, one of the core functions of these meetings is to get people to talk to each other, and not that everything or even the most important things happen by talking up to the board.  That's not the nature of this organization.  But there are times when people want to get the board's attention and feel that they are being listened to and paid attention to.  And I'm not sure that the public forum yesterday accomplished that adequately.
 You did the best you could to stick in additional time, and that's appreciated, but overall, I think it could be improved upon as a public forum format.
 In terms of time and attention to the board.
 Thanks.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.
 I think you are responding to item 10, which I would like to come back to, which is a response to discussions arising from Cairo in general.
 We have another few brief reports.
 I wonder if I can call on Tina Dam to come and update the board on where we are as of today with the IDN fast track.
 And any other IDN matters that you think we need to be alerted to, Tina.
 Thank you.
 >>TINA DAM:   Thank you, Chairman.  Is this on?  Great.
 So the IDN ccTLD fast track --
 >> We cannot hear you.
 >>TINA DAM:   So -- sorry about that.  Okay.  Now I think it's on.
 So the IDN ccTLD fast track process is one of the two processes by which we can get IDN TLDs in the root for production purposes.
 The other one, of course, being the new gTLD process.
 But on the ccTLD side and on the fast-track side, this is a process that is linked specifically to countries and territories.  And there is a number of eligibility requirements and string criteria that has to be fulfilled for interested parties to enter into that process.
 We have had a lot of very broad and good community collaboration on this topic, on the fast track.  And because of that, we're actually really far down the road, and you have seen a draft implementation plan that was posted for discussion for this meeting in Cairo that includes all of the elements that so far has been agreed upon.
 In addition to a Module 7 of that draft report that contains some different elements that still needs to be decided upon.
 Some of those has to do with contracts or frameworks with ICANN.  Additionally, other kind of relationships for the IDN ccTLD operators to the ICANN community.  It has to do with fees or any other financial contribution models that could be set up.
 And it has to do with two other topics that are a little bit interlinked, which is variants, variant tables, both at the top level and at second level, and contention to -- well, other kinds of contention to other existing strings or strings that are applied for in the gTLD process.
 So those are the missing elements that we need some more community discussion on.  And we had quite some here in Cairo and we look forward to some more feedback online as well.
 In terms of looking forward, ICANN staff is going to gather all of that community feedback, and then we're going to take that in and make some specific proposals and put them on the table for the community for further discussions for the Mexico meeting.
 And then hopefully reach some consensus on those.
 So that's pretty much, Chairman, the fast-track process.
 In terms of other IDN topics, there has been a lot of work going on.  For example, the protocol revision is ongoing still.
 There is a full status report posted online.  I think there are about 30 slides or so, if anybody wants to go into detail on that, or I can take questions.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Tina.
 Questions for Tina about the fast track first and then any other IDN matters.
 Fast track.  Harald.
 >>HARALD ALVERSTRAND:   Just one question about strings.
 I saw a previous discussion that concluded that the maximum number of items under one fast track would be one territory, one item, one string.
 Well, the language that came out in the proposed -- proposal was one territory, one language, one script or one string.
 Now, this worries me a little bit because one thing is since this is a fast track, the solution at the start was we will do the absolute minimum possible to meet the requirements of the communities involved, and that anything that is controversial at all should be pushed off to the policy development process.
 And now it seems that people who want the same string in two different scripts would want them to actually resolve to the same.  And I mean from that, that's actually a question whether we have the technology to do that, which means that it's technically controversial.  It might be politically -- it might be process wise.  Not political, but process-wise controversial.
 So can you give me any insight into what public process, public policy process that was behind this change?
 >>TINA DAM:   So I can give it a try.
 It certainly was and is the intention that the fast-track process is a limited round, and that's why there is a number of different restrictions in there.
 One of those is, as you point out, one per country or territory per official language.
 What happened after the community finalized their policy or recommendation for how staff should make the implementation was that we submitted requests for information to national governments and ccTLD operators.  And among the replies that came back from that request was from parts of the community who wanted not only strings that would represent their country in their language but also the script based as you talked about.
 So in some parts of the world, there is a -- it would be adequate to say it would be one per language.  And in other parts of the world, it would be adequate to say it should be one per script, just based on how those language communities function.
 Now, I agree with you that we actually don't have the technology for that, or at least not that I am aware of.
 There has been some initial testing for how to make that possible, and the initial testing shows that that does not work in the DNS root.
 So we are going to have to do some additional work.
 That additional work is what I referred to as additional work in relation to variants.
 So it's true that in the draft implementation plan, we proposed that it would be one per language per script, per country and territory.  And that was an expansion of what the community had requested.
 In terms of whether we can go ahead and grant that and provide that mechanism I think is not only a policy question but is a technical question.  And I don't have any other answer other than this is what has been asked for, and we don't have the technology for it.
 >>HARALD ALVERSTRAND:   Thank you.
 I will look forward to community feedback on that question.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Any other questions in relation to fast track?  And then other.  Susan.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Just a few correction for you, Tina.
 I share Harald's concern about the extension of the working group's advice as to the scope of the fast-track process, and I look forward to an explanation of that extension.
 We were told at the beginning of this that this was designed to be a very limited process that would not preempt a full-blown PDP, and I hope that that is still the case.
 So I want to express concern and echo Harald's question.
 But I have some different questions for you.
 We were asked many times during this meeting to confirm that IDN gTLDs and what we're now calling IDN ccTLDs would be entering the root at the same time.
 The reason for the concern being expressed by the gTLD applicants is that the policy allows for short-form designations for the name of the country or even parts of the name of a country being permitted in the ccTLD process, and that those IDNs could, if entered into the root early, gain a significant time advantage, first-to-market advantage over the G's.
 Do you have any advice for us on this particular timing issue?
 >>TINA DAM:   I think the only thing I can say about timing is that right now, it looks like both processes are going to launch at the same time.
 That, however, does not mean that the TLDs are going to be inserted in the root at the same time.  And it also doesn't mean that they will be available for registration at the second level at the same time.  Because all of those elements are -- the last ones, are outside ICANN's control as ICANN staff.
 We cannot make a guarantee that the community applying for gTLD and the community applying for an IDN ccTLD is going to be ready to go live at the same time.  But we can see if we can aim the two processes launching at the same time, being available at the same time.
 Now, that said, the staff position on this has always been that if one of the two processes, the gTLD or the ccTLD on IDNs, if one of them gets delayed, then we are not going to delay the other one.
 So we are, in fact, moving ahead as fast as we can on both processes, and we did not have any intentions of making any delays.
 If, however, it's the community's or the board's opinion that we should move them forward purposely in parallel, even though one of them is delayed and then delay the other one, then I guess that's a conversation we have to take.
 But that has not been the staff's intention.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you for that response.  I'm sure the board will have continued discussion of this topic.
 A second question relates to the first.  Again, a concern about the asymmetry of the processes to which the G's are being subjected compared to the C's.
 The G's have a very elaborate framework for contention and evaluation of challenges, particularly contention, and the C's as far as I can tell don't appear to be subject to any of that.
 Again, if a short-form acronym was proposed by a G in this very public process, it might be possible for an opportunistic entrepreneurial country to pick up on that, see that proposed string, and register it through the fast-track process, thus preempting the G application.
 So the question for you is where are discussions on contention mechanism as between these two processes?
 >>TINA DAM:   So as you point out, in the gTLD process, there is a quite detailed contention mechanism included.
 On the ccTLD fast track, there was no recommendation from the community as to how to go about that.
 On the staff side, we have talked a lot across the different teams in the implementation of the two processes because if they are going live at the same time, there needs to be some sort of mechanism and process by which you decide how far are you in one process before you can hit contention with the other one.
 And that is increasingly difficult because of the time of which strings are being made publicly available, as you say.
 We have put it to the public and to the community to discuss it and give us some feedback on what their recommendations might be.  We are going to -- based on all that feedback, we are going to draft a procedure up that would work for both the gTLD process and the ccTLD fast track and propose that and put it on the table for some more community discussion.
 So that's one of the things where we need to put more details out, but we didn't want to do that before the Cairo meeting because we wanted the community to have a chance to come back with their recommendation and more information for us before we did that.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Terrific.
 And obviously there are lots of questions that have been raised at this Cairo meeting about agreements and fees.  We won't be able to resolve any of these questions today, but I just want to make sure they are on the table as additional issues.
 You have already raised them.
 Thanks very much.
 >>KURT PRITZ:   Can I help answer that question, too, Susan, if you don't mind, Peter.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Please do.
 Thank you.
 >>KURT PRITZ:   While it might not cover the field, there is some symmetry across the two processes where there is a CC application for a meaningful represent representation of a country name, then in the G process, as it is presently written, a meaningful representation of a country name requires the approval of the relevant government.
 So then you would have two applications that both require the approval of a relevant government because, in fact, it's a meaningful representation.  So the government would have to resolve its own contention in that case.  I don't think it completely covers the field, but that's what was envisaged when the contention process was.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Kurt.
 Janis has a question.  Janis.
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   No, in fact I have an answer to Susan's last question concerning the policy and different gTLD and ccTLD approach.
 We don't see the policy process -- or the process which is taking place on CC side because that process is determined by the local authority, most probably in the conjunction, working together with local Internet community.  And the process itself is carried out internally.
 And what we see here in ICANN, we see only end result of the product of -- the end result of the policy and the process.
 It is to say we will get the name of operator, we will conclude whatever agreement with that operator, and the board will take decision on allocation and entering this proposed string in the root.
 So -- And that also clearly differs the G space and CC space.
 And from being chairman of the GAC, I can confirm that within the GAC we have a very clear understanding that the launching of the two processes, new gTLD process and ccTLD fast track process, should be done simultaneously in order to avoid any time difference and play on the time difference in favor of one or another.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Bruce, did you have any questions or have you been....
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   I just wondered -- I guess this is partly -- I have a couple of questions.
 One I would like to address to Tina generally but also a question to Thomas as the IETF liaison.
 So first with respect to Tina.
 One of the comments that came from the public forum yesterday was an applicant I believe for a gTLD string that was asking the question why they couldn't have a single character IDN string.  And by that, it would actually obviously be multiple characters in ASCII.
 Has that been looked at all from the IDN process within ICANN?  The potential of having a single character?  Let's say it was a single Chinese character in the root, which is made up of multiple ASCII characters?
 >>TINA DAM:   So basically, what you are saying is if you have a single character that's an IDN, what goes into the root is xn-- and then a sequence of ASCII characters, meaning what goes in the root is longer than one character.   At least four, xn--.
 There has been a lot of discussion about that topic in the technical community.  As far as I know there is not a consensus as to whether a single character in the root is technical safe or not, and because of that we are putting the limit above the two characters -- sorry, above the one character.
 So that means that you cannot have a single character in the gTLD process or in the ccTLD process.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   And then my question for the IETF liaison, Thomas Narten, on the board, is what's happening with respect to updating the IDN standards and how will the timing of that interact with the timing of the sort of launch of the IDN fast track and new gTLDs?
 >>THOMAS NARTEN:   Thanks, Bruce.  So in answer to your question about the part of the IETF, the IETF is still working on the IDNA, this document, and that's being tracked here by Tina and others.  And there's a feeling that the work will get done, but in the event that the work in ICANN gets ahead of the IDNA work in the IETF, we are pretty confident that we know that we can still choose TLDs that are safe to use.  Because in some cases we are talking about a lot of edge cases, and it would still be possible to pick the TLDs that are known to not cause problems in the area that are under discussion.
 So as we get closer to the point we're ready to do that, we will look at that more closely.
 But my sense is we feel we can deal with that at the moment.
 The other thing I would add, Harald might want add something to that as well.  He is heavily involved in the work on the IETF side.  But a couple comments on the single-character restriction.
 This is an area that covers -- it's not just a technical issue.  This sort of goes into the area of what is technical versus what is policy.
 And in the current ASCII space, and we had the restriction that no single-letter -- or no single-letter TLDs in the ASCII case are allowed, but it's less clear when you move to IDNs what a character is.  
 Because, you know, there's the -- I guess the glyph in the languages being used, I think, it's translated into an ASCII character set that's expanded.  So it would make more sense to talk about the glyph.  And one issue, then, is when you start getting at that level, what -- while is may not make sense to have meaningful single-letter ASCII names, they are much more common in other character -- or in other languages where the glyph may actually be the equivalent of what we would think of as a word.  So it's much less clear.  You can make the easy distinction that a character does or does not make sense is sort of based on syntax.
 So I think, actually, at the end of the day, that's going to be an ICANN decision more so than really an IETF decision, because this really varies on a, you know, script-by-script basis.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Does that answer your question, Bruce?
 Any other questions for Tina about IDNs or fast track?
 >>TINA DAM:   One clarification or addition to the protocol?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Of course.
 >>TINA DAM:   It's just that Thomas is right when you says we can see if the TLD string is valid, and if it works well, and if it's going to work under the protocol.  But it's going to be equally important that all the strings that are registered under that TLD also are in accordance with the protocol.
 And that increases the number characters, and potentially languages and scripts that we need to have in this early implementation.  And that's probably where it's going to be a little bit more difficult.
 But we do have a lot of good feedback from the technical community on that.  And we're going to continue that dialogue as well.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Dennis, a further question.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Just a comment, Peter.
 I don't know if it's been said, but may I say thank you to the management and staff for the enormous amount of work that's been done in this, as probably has been said in the sessions through the week.  But it really has been very impressive.  And thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, thank you, Dennis.  I think endorsed by everyone.
 Thank you, Tina.
 Can we move, then, hand the microphone to Kurt, who's ready to take us through just a quick discussion about where we're up to with the new gTLD draft RFP.
 And, Kurt, obviously, we know -- you can keep it reasonably brief.  We're running short of time.
 >>KURT PRITZ:   Yes, sir.
 Can I have the next slide, please, Jason.
 This is meant as a report to the board about activities that occurred here this week in Cairo.
 So, first, a brief description of the meetings that took place.
 Second, topics discussed.  Those are the messages we heard from people in the ICANN and Internet community.
 Not all of the messages, but some, and those that we think are most important for considering amendments to the draft RFP.
 Third is finishing.  What do we need to do to finish?  Or, probably more accurately, what do we need to do to start.
 And, then, finally, because the timeline for the final launch of the first TLD round is very important to everyone, a discussion of the timeline and what staff is going to do after that.
 Jason.
 So there are several meetings this week in Cairo, as you know.
 There was -- to start, last weekend, there was a couple meetings with the GNSO Council to review the applicant guidebook.
 In addition to that, there were meetings with individual constituent GNSO constituencies.  Also, discussions were held with the ccNSO and GAC during their meetings here.
 There were two introductory sessions, one held in English and one held in Arabic, to introduce the new gTLD process to those who attended this meeting that were not familiar with it.
 And, finally, there was a workshop about understanding the draft applicant guidebook and to provide an understanding of how to read it and how to understand it.
 Jason.
 So the next couple of slides are a description of the messages we heard this week.  And I've sort of -- I've tried to group them under headings for organizational purposes.
 So there were -- financial aspects were deeply discussed, the evaluation fees, you know, how much and when.  To provide specificity about the availability of refunds.  And to provide a better estimate of what the dispute resolution panel fees are.
 There was also a lot of discussion around timeline and when applications will be accepted.  And also, you know, as Susan just described, there's the timing of the gTLD and IDN ccTLD -- that's a lot of letters -- process and their possible interactions.
 There was a lot of discussion about dispute resolution procedures, particularly, there were questions about whether there should be post delegation objection and dispute resolution procedures in order to better enforce community-based restrictions or better enforce or find infringement of rights and enforce or maintain others' rights.
 There was also a discussion about waiver of rights.  And that is that if parties entering into the process or entering into the dispute resolution process are asked to waive rights, that might serve to discourage them, because they might be giving up another remedy.  So we want to ensure that we're not -- incenting the process the right way.
 There was another waiver discussed, and that is what happens if there's a clearly objectionable string and nobody objects to it.  How could that be handled and how could that be addressed?  I think that's an important issue.
 String contention.  We all speak shorthand here.  But that's when, for example, there's two or more identical applications, or applications for identical strings.
 Then there's -- associated with that, there was the contention resolution process and how community-based applicants are treated differently, how community-based applicants are measured, and whether that scoring mechanism was appropriate.  And also, there was a lot of discussion about a last-resort mechanism for resolving contention cases.
 Finally, in the evaluation, there was discussion about the evaluation procedures themselves.  It was urged upon ICANN to make the selection of technical and business evaluators in open and transparent process.  And I think that commitment was made and always intended.
 There was a lot of discussion about geographical place names and how that's going to be handled.  Again, this can be an interplay between the IDN process and the gTLD process.
 And so a lot of that interaction has to be addressed with specific procedures, I think.
 And then, finally, there was discussion around terms in the draft registry agreement, how amendments might be made to that draft registry agreement in a fashion where necessary amendments can be made across several hundred agreements in a rather rapid fashion, but retaining the other parties' ability to negotiate changes.
 Registry fees were discussed, the amount of registry fees and when they would be paid.
 Whether or not there should be price controls on registry services, and not so much for the initial asking price of a Roger, but whether or not there should be price controls on renewals, so that registries weren't incented to raise prices markedly after registrants made significant investment in their names.
 And, finally, there was a lot of discussion about the separation of registry and registrar that will -- must be resolved before the publication of the next draft.
 So what do we need to do to finish?
 Well, first, there will be publication of this draft guidebook in additional languages.  That translation is about 90% complete.  All the modules are translated, and most of the associated memoranda are translated.  So you'll see that put up in the next several days, I think.
 It's for staff to review and analyze public comments, synthesize that, describe the synthesis to the community, and suggest amendments to the -- suggest amendments to the draft agreement, to the draft procedure, sorry.
 Then we need to finish the implementation model and post the final draft, the final version of the applicant guidebook.
 As soon as staff gets back to Marina Del Rey, we'll start procuring the independent panels that will be used to evaluate the applications.
 And, of course, we'll continue our global communication and outreach activities.
 So with regard to the timeline, there are certain assumptions that are built into the current timeline.
 First, that there's going to be another draft version of the applicant guidebook before the final guidebook's published.
 Then that the board will approve that final version of the final guidebook before publication, and that there will be, in accordance with the GNSO, implementation advice, a four-month communications period between the publication and the final draft and the acceptance of applications.
 So if you add all those critical path items together, you get a timeline that looks something like what's on the next slide.
 So the current public comment period will close on December 15th.  And then will be reissued, a draft guidebook will be reissued on February 15th, the next version of that.  The public comment period for that would close right after the Mexico City meeting.  So all the organization wanting to work together to draft final comments can do that at the Mexico City meeting.
 We think, then, the final version of the guidebook would be complete at the start of May and be available for board approval at the May board meeting and be posted around the end of May.
 And then if you add four months onto that at the end, you get to September 30th.  So that's when applications could be accepted.
 Now, hearing what we all heard during this meeting, there are some opportunities for pulling that schedule forward.
 Jason.
 Thanks.
 There could be consideration, instead of publishing a second draft guidebook, we could go right to the final guidebook.  Based on the comment we received at this meeting, which is considerable in the interest of the parties, we think it's advisable to publish another draft, however.
 Another avenue for accelerating the schedule would be to accelerate the four-month comment period.  For example, if the second draft is very close to what we think the final version would be, we could start that four-month comment period coincident with the launch of that draft.
 There's a balancing, however, if there are changes that might affect applications in progress.  And, really, the other balancing is that four-month communication period is intended to inform those that are outside the ICANN community and get them caught up.
 So staff is going to take on investigating possible schedule acceleration and report back to the board and the community.
 So, Peter, that concludes my comments.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Kurt.
 Questions from board members about the timetable, the process?  Susan.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you, Kurt.
 When I began my service on the ICANN board, the first thing I wanted to push for was new gTLDs.  And I am very anxious to see this go forward.  And we've heard so many comments from people saying they want it to go forward.
 That being said, I am concerned -- and I hope the board in the future will be concerned -- about some quite breathtaking elements of the applicant guidebook that exists.  And some of these issues you have raised in your summary, for which I thank you.
 The four -- I'm just going to pick the four most outrageous elements that I want to bring forward in my last half hour on the board.
 The first is the morality and public order element that we've talked about in the past.  As presented in the applicant guidebook and in the explanatory memoranda accompanying it, there would be no limit to who could bring a morality and public order claim and no constraint on the subject of that claim, essentially, nothing.  Anybody could complain about something, and three panelists who keep their decision completely secret could decide that it offended morality and public order.
 And then the decision of those panelist is not even final.  It just becomes another element that then may get bounced back to the ICANN board.
 So you've got complete discretion, plus no finality.  I'm not sure what we're gaining through this.
 So if I were king, I would suggest that we find some way of very narrowly tailoring the limits on expression that are properly the subject of objections and constrain jurists making those decisions.
 Of course, the judges will say they want complete discretion.  That's their job.  They want to have the ability to make wide-ranging decisions.  It's not ICANN's job to serve as a gatekeeper in this fashion, handing over, at least temporarily, this authority to a panel.
 So that's my brief summary of the problems, as I see them, with morality and public order as it's been implemented in the draft.
 And please correct me if I've gotten this wrong.
 The second outrageous element of this, in my view, is the suggestion in one of the explanatory memoranda that auctions appear to be the best means of resolving contention among competing applications.
 Governments auction spectrum because a government can be said to stand for its citizens and to have the right to collect monies on their behalf and deposit those monies into the treasury for the good of that bounded group of citizenry.
 I cannot imagine on what basis ICANN would say that it has the right to auction off domains, top-level domains.  And even if somehow it does have that right, the mischief created by trying to figure out how to allocate that money is staggering.  You'd have to create a second ICANN to deal with the deployment of funds.
 So you and I have discussed this in the past.  But I want to say it again, I really think it is potentially destabilizing to assert the authority to hold an auction in this context.  And I'm not persuaded by the argument that merely flipping a coin would be illegal.  These applicants will have gone through a lot of process before they get to the contention stage.
 So forget auctions.
 The third outrageous element, in my view, is --
 [ Applause ]
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Oh, thank you.
 -- geographic names.  Geographic names.  The GNSO fought over this for a long time and made a policy recommendation that objections based -- coming from communities, or let's put it the other way, that if an application seems to be targeting a community, it can be objected to.  They're very clear that opposition must be objection-based, that the burden of going forward must be on the objector.  That's the policy as stated by the GNSO.  And the policy, frankly, that the board approved.
 The guidebook flips the burden around and suggests that the applicant has the burden of coming forward with documents of support or nonobjection from the relevant government.
 And I don't understand how this could have happened.  The board approved the GNSO policy.
 I hope there will be further discussion about that.
 Possibly the most outrageous element of this entire package has not yet been explored by the board at all.  And that's the base contract that would be provided to registries.
 Now, these guys are willing to sign a napkin.  They've been waiting for these applications to be opened for such a long time.  They have zero leverage.  In this context, ICANN is a monopoly, handing out a contract that is essentially nonnegotiable.  It is up to the board and management and staff to restrain ourselves in making this contract.
 Here's what happened.  The whole point of ICANN is that it's made up of private parties signing agreements with each other, a private registry signing a private agreement with ICANN.
 These private parties have agreed that, in the future, if the community comes up with a mandatory consensus policy, they will change their activity, they will be bound by future consensus policies.
 An important element of this is that ICANN has an obligation to treat equally -- to treat parties equally.
 ICANN is abusing its power in this draft contract.  We're apparently frustrated with the consensus policy model, so it's blown up in two different ways.
 One is that the proposed draft contract really has a belt and suspenders approach.  First, it allows ICANN to amend the contract for any reason, subject to a veto of the registries, and on any topic.
 So the whole bounded nature of consensus policies is gone.
 Second, just in case anybody tries to invoke the consensus policy structure, it dramatically expands the scope of what it understands consensus policies to be.  Everything is included.
 So the contract can be unilaterally amended by ICANN on any topic unless the registries as a body vote to overturn.
 It's quite -- it's actually completely inconsistent with the Board Governance Committee's GNSO Working Group report of February 2008 that made very clear how this structure is supposed to work.
 So I really find that a destabilizing change.  I'm not sure where ICANN gets the authority to do that.  It's apparent that registries will sign this, because they will really have no choice if they want to go forward.  And it eliminates the essential bargain that was the basis of ICANN's creation.
 So otherwise, it's great, Kurt.  But I just wanted to get all of that on the record.
 Thank you very much.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?
 Thanks, Susan.
 Other comments or questions for Kurt?
 Harald?
 >>HARALD ALVESTRAND:   The four-month public comment period, just checking, because I don't remember everything that we -- that went into the proposals.  I think no human brain can contain that.  I'm very happy that the staff is doing this enormous job.
 The formal comment period, was that based on the specific input from the community?  And which group approved this?  And can we ask them what they meant by the beginning?
 >>KURT PRITZ:   That was one of the pieces of implementation advice that the GNSO provided, along with the policy recommendations.
 So it's -- they provided specific pieces or specific items of implementation advice for ICANN.  And that was one of those.
 >>HARALD ALVESTRAND:   Okay.  So I would not want to be in a position to overrule the GNSO Council.  But if the GNSO Council wants to advise us on when they think it's reasonable to start the four-month period, I would be happy to take their advice.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Anyone else?
 I would like to associate and agree with Susan's points, except that concerning auctions.  I don't use the same -- perhaps quite the same tone as Susan.  But I share the same concerns, particularly about public order and morality, on which the board has spent a considerable amount of time trying to get clear what the proper scope in relation to those issues were under the headings, particularly, of standing and standards.  And we have tended to seek to limit either one or both of those so that there was clear boundaries for everybody in relation to those disputes.
 So I am going to certainly come back to those with some interest.
 Similarly with geographic names, I'm concerned about the substance of that, the concept of that being a basis for a reservation or objection.  And, of course, I'm concerned about the reversal of the onus that results from adopting the way it's been put there.
 And I also share the concern about possibly fundamental changes to the basic principle of ICANN's core management processes.  And as we've said before, the genius of the policy development process seems to be put at risk by this approach.  So I will be coming back carefully to look at those as well.
 But, again, we've heard thanks and comments -- thanks from the board, and I can confirm, Kurt, that everywhere we've been this week, the community reaction to the RFP in terms of the quality of the work and the volume of it and the huge advance that this makes in this very important process, on behalf of the board, thank you to you and your team for all of the work that's gone into that.  And I know it is a big team and I know many of them are in the room, and I want them to really feel that.  This has been a very well received exercise.  And they should feel pretty satisfied.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Kurt.
 Well, I think we're down to a general item now about response to discussions arising from Cairo.
 Does anyone have anything else on the board that has come up that we haven't covered in terms of these latest reports, structural reviews, registrar accreditation, fast track, and now the new gTLDs?  Other things, of course, have been going on.  If there's something that came up that board members want to raise, now is the time.
 Steve.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Thank you, Chair.  
 I think I echo the sentiment of my colleagues that we very much welcome the speech from Secretary-General Touré of the ITU and the follow-up remarks that he made at a lunch with the board, which essentially reinforced the points that he made in his public presentation, you know, especially his reaffirmation that the ITU has no intention of competing with ICANN, but looks toward ways that we can explore matters of mutual interest.
 So with that in mind, I would ask that we, as a corporation, board, staff, whichever is appropriate, or both, explore ways of communicating with the ITU on matters of mutual interest.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Steve.  Yes, I think that's well worth noting the speech of the Secretary-General of the ITU.  It was excellent to have that.  And just for the record, also very robust discussion with him over lunch as we explored matters.  And perhaps go on the record and thank you ITU liaison member on the board, Reinhard Scholl, for his assistance in facilitating the visit by the Secretary-General.
 Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Just a very quick addition.
 I think that I share with Steve the sentiment that the intervention, the contribution of the Secretary-General of the ITU was one of the many high points of this excellent meeting.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   So, with that noted, is there any other item of business of matters arising from Cairo?
 No?
 Well, let's move on to the next item, then, which is item 16.
 Raimundo, I wonder if I could ask you to begin the process of thanking people who have contributed.
 And the first item is in relation to the Nominating Committee.
 Can I ask you to do that?  Thank you.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:   The resolution reads like this.
 Whereas, on 11 September, 2007, ICANN appointed Hagen Hultzsch as chair of the Nominating Committee.
 Whereas, the 2008 Nominating Committee consisted of delegates from each of ICANN's constituencies and advisory bodies.
 Resolved, the ICANN board expresses its deep appreciation to Hagen Hultzsch and all of the members of the 2008 Nominating Committee for their dedication, hard work, and successful efforts.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Is Hagen in the room?
 Any sign of Hagen Hultzsch?  All right.
 Move to the next, thank you, Dave Wodelet.  Could I ask you to give the thanks to our very generous sponsors for this successful meeting.
 >>DAVE WODELET:   I'd love to.
 The board extends its thanks to all sponsors of this meeting.  Telecom Egypt; Vodafone; Afilias Limited; LINKdotNET; NeuStar, Inc.; TE Data; VeriSign, Inc; AfriNIC; AusRegistry, Safenames Limited, China Internet Network Information Center, CNNIC;  Core Internet Council of Registrars; Directi Internet Solutions Pvt. Limited, d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com; EgyptAir; InternetX; Public Interest Registry; RegistryASP; CentralNic USA; Community DNS; EURid; ICANNWiki; and Iron Mountain Digital.
 The board also wishes to thank domain.info for providing photography and filming for this meeting.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  There a seconder for that?
 Thank you, Jean-Jacques.
 I think we carry that in the usual way with acclamation.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Now, another important resolution thanking our hosts, the staffs, the scribes, the interpreters.
 Bruce, I wonder if you could do that for us.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.
 Just in advance before I read this resolution out, there are many names in this resolution, and I apologize in advance if I mispronounce some of them with my accent.
 The board wishes to extend its thanks to the local host organizers, Ministry of Comunnications and Information Technology, MCIT; and National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, NTRA.
 The board extends special thanks to Dr. Tarek Kamel, minister of communication and information technology, for his participation.
 The board would also like to thank Manal Ismail, Director of International Technical Coordination at NTRA; Christine Arida, Director of Telecom Planning and Services at NTRA; and Nermine El-Saadany, Director of International Relations Division at NTRA; and both MCIT and NTRA staff.
 The board expresses its appreciation to the scribes, Laura Brewer, Teri Darrenougue, Jennifer Schuck, Charles Motter and Susan Wollenweber, and to the entire ICANN staff for their efforts in facilitating the smooth operation of the meeting.
 The board thanks Anne-Marie Greis, Samira Abdel Sayed, and the entire team of the interpreters for interpreting these meetings into Arabic, French, and Spanish.
 The board also wishes to express its appreciation to VeriLan Events Services for technical support, and Com Tech for their audio/visual support.  Special thanks are given to Raed Eskander, Alber Nagib A. Malak, and Mohamed Ali.
 The board would also like to thank Eman Hassan, Samar Aziz, Mohamed Abdallah and the event staff at the InterContinental Cairo CityStars for their support and for this beautiful facility to hold this event.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Is there a seconder for that resolution?
 Dennis.
 I think again we carry that by acclamation.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And now a rather special resolution as we move to farewelling some of our own.  
 Rita, could I ask you to propose a resolution of thanks to Susan Crawford.
 >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Yes, Peter, I will.
 It's with a very heavy heart that I wish Susan well today.
 Susan, in my view, exemplifies a rare combination of someone who has tremendous insight and knowledge of the Internet industry, and that is coupled with a deep, deep passion and concern for the entire Internet community.
 I greatly admire Susan's tireless quest to always do the right thing.  She has an incredible work ethic.
 Her opinions are always thoughtful and are formulated only after careful research and deliberation, and her contributions have truly enriched our board discussions.
 It's been a wonderful privilege working with you, Susan, and I will miss you as both a colleague and a friend.
 Now to the resolution.
 Whereas Susan Crawford was appointed to the ICANN board by the Nominating Committee and started serving on the 4th of December 2005.
 Whereas Susan has served the board with considerable energy and skill, bringing her clarity of thinking and exposition to complex issues and with considerable charm and good humor.
 She as served as the chair of the ICANN conflicts of interest committee, meetings committee, and reconsideration committee, and as a member of the board governance and compensation committees, and has provided excellent insight, leadership, and expertise in these roles.
 Whereas Susan has served with great integrity consistency to the core principles of ICANN.
 Whereas Susan is concluding her service as a director of the ICANN board at this meeting in Cairo.
 It is resolved that the ICANN board resolves that Susan Crawford has earned the deep, deep appreciation of the board for her term of service and the board wishes her well in all of her future endeavors.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rita.
 Is there a seconder for that resolution?  Raimundo.
 Would anyone like to speak to the resolution?
 Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   I would like to add my personal comment.
 I think that I -- what I have always appreciated about Susan is the fact that she has two normally opposite gifts:  The ability to explain rationally and to follow rational thought, and also the ability to put passion in the argument.
 And what I have appreciated most with situations, unfortunately many, in which we were of -- our positions were different, and it has been a learning experience to dialogue and to have a civil debate with the -- with such a passionate and lucid and rational person.
 Of course, I have enjoyed also the moment in which we were on the same side.  But I think that to be able to have a relationship when you are on the opposite side is one of the most experiences that one can have.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Roberto.  I have Jean-Jacques, Dennis, Raimundo, Steve.
 Jean-Jacques.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Thank you, Peter.
 I would like to bring my testimony as someone who joined the board about a year ago, and to say that in our imperfect system of board rotation, I would have liked to see you much longer on the board, for instance.  But in any case, there is a challenge of continuity, and there is a challenge of keeping to the core values.  Not of the organization, or not only, but more widely of the public interest.
 This is this feeling which has really dominated, in my mind, your contribution since I have met you.
 And for a new board member, it has really been something of extreme importance to have people like you, and you in particular, to serve as a benevolent guide to the real issues.
 Thank you so much.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Jean-Jacques.
 Dennis.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   As another new board member of only one year's duration here, I have only known Susan for the year.  I have delighted in working with you, Susan.  I'm very disappointed that you are leaving.  You are young, you are a star, I expect you to shine brighter still, and I look forward to watching your progress.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Raimundo.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:   I had the privilege of having been with Susan during all the tenure of her term, which means three years.  And in those three years, I learned a lot of her, and in those three years I had the opportunity to be on the same side, on the opposite side, and I appreciated both.  And I would like to appreciate that.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Raimundo.
 Steve.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Thank you, Chair.
 Susan, you have been my really stalwart tour guide from the moment that I joined the board.  And most particularly, you taught me how to vote no respectfully and responsibly.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   We go from one Steve to the other.
 Steve Crocker.
 >>STEPHEN CROCKER:   Thank you.
 Susan, I have noticed and appreciated your interactions before you came on the board and was absolutely delighted when the nominations committee selected you, and it's been a complete pleasure to be in your company and be educated by you.
 I've admired your intellect, your dedication, your courage and your good heart and your always positive spirit.
 I will have the privilege and, in some sense, the obligations that come with it shortly when I move over from the seat that I'm sitting in to occupy the seat that you are vacating, and I expect that I will carry a burden of both missing and remembering the kind of contributions and the level that you have set in looking for the highest level of service that we can provide to the community and to this organization.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.
 I have Thomas and then Bruce and then Harald.
 >>THOMAS NARTEN:   Just a few words here.
 I just have to say that I admire Susan's energy and thoroughness and passion for pushing the organization to improve itself and her continuous drive to push ICANN toward achieving its ideal and never losing sort of that side and what the community wants.
 And I think she has had a much bigger impact on the organization than she sometimes admits, and I will certainly miss working with her here.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Thomas.  And then Bruce.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you.  I think one of the comments I would add in addition to those that have already been made is it's been interesting sort of watching Susan in the different roles that she has performed with ICANN, I think going back to dot coop originally.  Maybe earlier than that.  But the interesting thing is Susan has very much stayed involved in the GNSO community and really listened, I think, to concerns people raise, so whether it's with the registries or the registrars or other parts of the GNSO, I think she has listened very carefully.  And I think those listening skills are some of the most important skills for all of us in this community, that really take an effort to listen to what other people say rather than just putting forward our own views.
 And after Susan listens to concerns that have been raised, she then advocates for them very strongly in the public process.  And I know Susan always pushes us to improve public participation and improve opportunities such as the open mic sessions for people to give public comment.
 So I really like to commend Susan for really acting to listen to people and create opportunities for people to raise their issues so that we can address them.
 So thank you, Susan.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Dave.
 >>DAVE WODELET:   I guess I'm on.
 Susan, I just want you to know that you have not only earned the respect of myself, but my mother as well.  She has always said that if you do something, leave things better at the end than when you started, and, indeed, you have done that, not only for ICANN but for myself and many, many others.
 So we are both a winner for having known you and a loser at your departure, and you certainly will be missed by many.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And Harald.
 >>HARALD ALVERSTRAND:   I just want to say thank you, and I can sign up to anything every other person has said.  And keeping the understanding of why we have ICANN and figuring out how that relates to the decisions before the board.  This is terribly important, and I don't know how I can -- how we can do that without you.  We'll try.
 Good Luck.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Chairman, can we actually approve this resolution?
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I'm not sure this resolution has enough support yet so I am going to add my voice to it and ask Susan if she would like to reply.
 Susan, you and I were friends and passionate about ICANN before either of us were on the board and I have always been attracted by the energy and intellectual clarity you bring to the issues and some of those have been talked about.  And since you have been on the board you have been an absolutely tremendous asset, to me as a board member and also more recently as Chair, for support of the processes without ever losing sight of the goals.  So it's been tremendous.
 I am going to miss you tremendously personally, and the rest of the board will as well.  And with your permission I will announce you are going on to something wonderful.  Susan has been appointed as a member -- a part of the transition team for the incoming president of the United States.
 So it's really a huge honor.
 [ Applause ]
 [ Cheering and Applause ]
 (standing ovation).
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you all.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   So that's recognition from others of the caliber and skills that we have been so lucky to share for the last few years.
 So Susan, please accept this as a small token of appreciation from the board on behalf of the entire ICANN community, and now you have a chance to say a few words.
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   Thank you.  Thank you all.  
 A friend took me home from a law school event recently and in the car he looked at me and said, "Now that we are alone, can I ask you a question?"  And I said, "What?"  I was looking for something kind of salacious.  Who knew?  He said, "Where is the Internet?  Where is it?"
 It was quite a question.  And I said, "No, it's just a language.  It's a way of computers speaking to each other.  If you can break things into packet and you have a distinct identifier, you are done, you are on."  And it is these very simple elements, none of which require asking permission, that have given rise to an explosion of human communication, which is what the Internet is.
 I'm so happy that in the United States we now have a president who understands the Internet and, in fact, used it to gather millions of people to work on his campaign and raise money.
 It is quite a development.
 I am so proud to have served the Internet by serving on this board.
 I want to thank my fellow volunteer board members, each one of whom, each one of whom does his or her very best and cares very much about the Internet, and does it with great good will and good humor.
 And I also want to thank the staff, each one of whom has treated me with great graciousness and welcomed me, even when I was being sharply critical of what was going on.
 I just have three short things to say, and really only one message.
 So here are the three short things.  And they are hopes, really, because that's what this week was all about in America, so I'm bringing that message here to Egypt.
 So here is the first hope.
 I hope that ICANN will react less out of fear than sometimes I think it does now.  Will react less as if it's responding to threats from the outside.  That's my first hope.
 My second hope is that ICANN -- which is really a pretty small part of the Internet infrastructure, folks.  This is just names and numbers.  We should be able to coordinate this with some lightheartedness at times, but I hope that ICANN will operate with much more straightforward, not ad hoc processes eventually.  That we'll come to a stage where you will be able to say A plus B equals C.  I look forward to that day.  We are not quite there yet.
 But each little talk like this can have only one message, and here it is.  This is the only thing I want you to take home from this.
 I hope that ICANN will take in more of the Internet DNA, that it's okay to let things go, it's okay to have decentralized sources of authority, it's okay to let people communicate and not be a gatekeeper to permit this huge flowering of human communication that is the Internet.
 [ Applause ]
 >>SUSAN CRAWFORD:   So that's it.  That's my only message.  It is that hope for a sense of sort of Internet-like humility in ICANN's role.  That it welcomes and embraces all and lets things happen with stable processes.
 So that's it from me.
 It has been a remarkable experience to be on this board, utterly remarkable.
 I admire everyone in this community for all the time you spend on these processes, and you are doing great work, and I wish you all Good Luck for the future.
 Thank you so much for the honor of being able to serve you.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Now I understand that Reinhard may have to go so I wonder if we can bring that one further forward, and if I could ask Jean-Jacques, would you do the resolution thanking Reinhard Scholl for his services.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Very gladly.
 Whereas Reinhard Scholl was appointed liaison to the ICANN board on behalf of the technical liaison group to serve during the year 2008.
 Whereas Reinhard has provided excellent insight, leadership, and expertise in this role.
 Whereas Reinhard Scholl has concluded his term as liaison on behalf of the technical liaison group at this meeting in Cairo.
 Resolved, the ICANN board resolves that Reinhard Scholl has earned the deep appreciation of the board for his term of service, and the board wishes Reinhard well in all future endeavors.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Is there a seconder for that resolution?
 Roberto.
 Would anybody like to speak to it?  Raimundo.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:   I would like to express my admiration of the -- in the way in which Reinhard has played the difficult role of being the representative of -- or somebody appointed by ITU to be here, and he has done that in a very efficient way and always with very good and positive contributions.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Raimundo.
 Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   I just want to go back many, many years in my previous life when I used to work for the European telecommunications standards institute, for ETSI, and Reinhard was an expert working at ETSI.  And at one point in time I started participating to the meetings that were the formation of ICANN.  And once Reinhard came to me and said, "Well, you have to explain to me what is all this, why you are going to those meetings, what is this Internet's policy?  What are the problems about?"  And I tried to have a kind of -- explain what was happening at those meetings.  And he was shaking his head from his point of view of a very technical person for kind of perplexity about dealing with policy.
 And I think that it has been a pleasure to learn a year ago that he was joining here our forum in order to talk about Internet policy.
 And I think that he has done an excellent job.
 But it was a pleasure for me also for this personal reason, and previous experience with Reinhard, and I enjoyed very much to have this collaboration of this year with him.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks very much.
 Is there anyone else who wants to speak to this resolution?  Then I declare it carried by acclamation.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Reinhard, could you come forward, please.
 Reinhard, when you started, there was issues surrounding our relationship with the ITU.  Your first attendance I think was involving discussions about all sorts of legal issues.
 The end of your term is marked by a complete turnaround, I think, in our relationships with the ITU and that's marked by the presence and the speech which has been commented on by the Secretary-General.
 So thank you for your role and your time on the board and helping bridge that particular gap.
 And here is a small token of ICANN's appreciation for your service.
 [ Applause ]
 >>REINHARD SCHOLL:   Thank you very much, Peter, and the entire board.
 I thought the ITU was a complex organization, but little did I know about ICANN.  So Roberto, I am still quite puzzled.
 I admire the dedication of each and every single board member, and just the incredible amount of time that they are bringing to accomplish the tasks.
 I wish I could, well, wish the board to work a little bit less but I know this is just wishful thinking, in the next couple of years.
 I am also very happy about the words that Steve and the proposal that Steve Goldstein came up with, and I can tell you that the intention to collaborate together, the ITU and ICANN, is really sincere.
 So thank you very much.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And could we go back a step to the vote for the nominating -- chair of the Nominating Committee.  Hagen has come to the room.  Hagen, would you mind coming up on stage just briefly?
 Thank you.
 Hagen, I won't go back and get them to re-read the resolution that was passed in your absence, but you are, with your experience, familiar with what it said and it will be in the record.
 What I do want to say, just to confirm my grateful thanks for the service you are putting in, the work that the Nominating Committee is extremely important.  The effort you put into that particular role has been enormous, changing some of the processes for improvement, and I look forward to more of that.
 Can I ask you to accept on behalf of ICANN just a small token of our appreciation for the very good work you are doing in this very difficult job.
 >>HAGEN HULTZSCH:   Yes, it has been a pleasure to be in service and I would encourage everybody to provide SOI's or the coming round we are starting very soon.
 Thank you.  It was a pleasure.
 Sorry for being absent.  I was on a conference call.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Not at all.
 Thank you very much, Hagen.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Next, could we have Demi and a vote of thanks to Steve Crocker.
 >>DEMI GETSCHKO:   Thank you, Peter.
 For me it was really an honor to meet Steve and this board and to have the opportunity to be together with the author of RFC number 1 and one of the pillars of the technical structure of the Internet.
 Besides all the technical skill of Steve Crocker, he is also an excellent person and very, very accessible one, and we learn a lot in this board and exchange ideas and have been guided by him in this area.
 I want to express my warmest thank you for being together with the board, but I know that we will be again, for some period, in the same board in other positions.  And it is not a farewell, not even a goodbye, but it's thank you for all the things that you are doing.
 Thank you.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Is there a seconder for the resolution?
 Lots.
 Dennis.
 Is there anybody who would like to speak to the resolution?
 Steve Goldstein.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   My good friend Steve Crocker.  I just want to reminisce a bit that when I first joined the board on the flight to São Paulo, not knowing what I was getting into, getting -- not knowing what was in for me, I had the good fortune that you were on the airplane and moved over to sit next to me, started telling me all about the board, about ICANN, what to expect.  And I recall at about 2:30 in the morning I had dozed off, you were still going strong, but I just couldn't stay awake anymore, and I do thank you very much for your mentoring.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Anybody else wish to speak to the resolution?  Jean-Jacques.
 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:   Well, it's more a comment, actually.
 I think that if I were to state all the things I like about Steve, it would last a long time.
 I just point out that his humor actually connects with what Susan has just provided us as a key for the future.
 There's nothing tragic about the Internet or about ICANN, and Steve exemplifies that attitude very well.
 In addition, I think I wouldn't speak very long because it would have an obituary flavor, whereas, on the other hand, we are actually welcoming him in a different position, not more important, not less important, but his contribution will stay with us.
 Thank you, Steve.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Bruce Tonkin.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Just a quick comment.  And as Jean-Jacques says, Steve is not leaving.  He's just changing his role slightly by having a vote.  But he has very much participated as a full board member ever since his involvement in the board.
 And I think one of the benefits we have with Steve, as we did with Vint Cerf, is that we have someone on the board that has a connection with the beginning of setting up the Internet protocol standards.
 And I think it's important that we have a mixture of people coming into the ICANN community and joining the board that have a completely fresh and new perspective, but we also balance that with people on the board that have seen it all and have that sort of deep history in what's worked and what hasn't worked on the Internet in the past.
 And I think, increasingly, as we're making many changes to the DNS system through introducing new top-level names, introducing IDN-related top-level names, it is important that we manage our risk and manage the security and stability of that system at the same time as innovative and create opportunities for new ideas and new uses of the Internet.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bruce.
 Dennis.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Just very briefly, I'd like to say a few things.
 Steve has a great way of analyzing things.  And after taking a deep breath, he usually says something like, "There are "N" things I want to talk about," and then lists those three or four things.  And he realize that he's really analyzed everything very quickly and astutely and has provided you with a full perspective so that you can further analyze.
 That's a tremendous skill, and I'm very pleased, particularly in the security area, which I have a particular passion about and little knowledge.  And, Steve, you've been tremendously helpful in that area.  And I'm glad you're staying on the board.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Roberto.
 >>ROBERTO GAETANO:   Yeah.  I'm very glad that you are leaving but still staying with us.  And I hope we'll have another chance to have a nice drive along the countryside like we did a while ago.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   If there are no further speakers, I will assume this resolution also to be carried by acclamation.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And invite Dr. Crocker to come forward and accept a small token of our thanks and also an opportunity to say anything he wishes on the changing of his conditions.  As everybody has commented, we're not losing Steve Crocker, because he has been appointed to the board in a different capacity, having served as a liaison from the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, he now comes on as a full board member.
 So, Steve, if you were leaving, I would be terribly, terribly sad.  I will agree with everything that everybody has said, particularly the analytical skills, which is something that I value extremely, extremely highly, because your knowledge of the technical conditions mean that that analysis is tremendously helpful.
 But the other thing I'd like to add which nobody has said is your complete and total commitment both to the Internet technically, but also to the people who use it.  Most of the issues that we face, you tend to analyze, having gone through the technical issues.  Your first reaction, once you've understood what's being proposed, is to consider the impact of this on the applicant.
 And as a result, you've kept us steered in that direction on many, many occasions, which I think is tremendously useful, something that I appreciate.  And I look forward to that contribution while you're on the board.
 So, in a usual way, a small token of our appreciation for your current role and a huge amount of appreciation for your taking up the new one.
 >>STEVE CROCKER:   Thank you very much, Peter.
 Just a couple of quick things.
 The comments about the -- my history reminded me that once upon a time, I used to be the youngest person in the room, in general.  And now, I find that I'm regularly thought of as, well, that old guy.  We have at least some connection to the past.  I guess that will happen to everyone here.
 It's been a very -- a real privilege and honor to serve on the board.  The liaison positions were created, and the position that I fill was created as part of the reform.  And it wasn't entirely clear what that process was going to be.
 I must say that the entire board has welcomed all of us liaisons pretty much as full members, as much as the rules permit.  And it's been a very collegial and first-class operation, not at all with a sort of class distinction that one might guess at from reading the bylaws.
 I've been quite engaged in the board as a whole, as opposed to just the sort of narrow liaison function that comes with representing the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, and was attracted to join the board in a full position, and delighted to take that on.
 Let me mention, Ram Mohan will be filling my seat as liaison, and will, I guess, shortly be up here as we make the transition.
 And I think we will be very ably served.
 That you, all.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Which brings us to resolution 21.  
 Dennis, could I ask you to deal with resolution 21, which will be thanks to our absent board member, Njeri Rionge.
 >>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Yes, indeed, Peter.  Thank you.  
 I regret that Njeri is not here and is absent.  I have only Njeri -- again, I've been on the board for a year and only known her a very short period of time And I know that her career has blossomed spectacularly in Kenya and she has not been able to participate as much as she would have liked.  But when she did participate, she participated fully and actively and was a tremendous contributor to the board.
 On a personal note, again, I'd love it if we would have been able to visit Kenya while she was on the board.  But that turned out for various reasons, obviously, not to be possible.
 So may I read the resolution.
 Whereas, Njeri Rionge was appointed to the ICANN board by the Nominating Committee and started serving on the 26th of June, 2003.  She was appointed to a second term, which started on the 4th of December, 2005.
 Whereas, Njeri was served the board with considerable energy and skill.  She has served as chair of the ICANN audit committee and as a member of the board governance, conflicts of interest, and compensation committees, and has provided excellent insight, leadership, and expertise in these roles.
 Whereas, Njeri is concluding her service as a director of the ICANN board at this Cairo meeting.
 Resolved, the ICANN board resolves that Njeri Rionge has earned the deep appreciation of the board for her terms of service and the board wishes Mrs. Rionge well in all future endeavors.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Dennis.
 Is there a seconder for that?
 Jean-Jacques.
 Would people like to speak to the resolution?  Raimundo.
 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  With the departure of Njeri, I have the same feeling that Steve Crocker was mentioning.  In fact, when I came to the board in May 2004, Njeri was one of the directors at the moment.  And from that board, counting the liaison, the only ones remaining now, with the departure of Njeri are Roberto, Steve, and Paul.  All the others have left since I came.
 And I had the privilege to be with Njeri not only on the board, but also on the audit committee, which she chaired almost all the time except one term, when the audit committee was chaired by Vanda.  We had an excellent time in the audit committee, and I have had the opportunity to share the views and the patience with which she defended the role of the audit committee.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Raimundo.
 Bruce.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.
 Like Dennis, I haven't been on the board that long.  And my interactions with Njeri were mostly through committees such as the compensation committee.
 I think it's worth stating that ICANN was very fortunate in Njeri for several reasons.  One is, she represented a number of minorities, if you like, on the board.  One, she was female; two, she was from the African region; and, three, she had sort of genuine, I guess, senior executive experience, which was very valuable for the board as well.
 And I really hope that people in the community here -- let me stress, I don't think this is just the responsibility of the Nominating Committee, but also those in the community that can identify people like Njeri and put them forward into the Nominating Committee process.  Because I think her experience in sort of corporate governance matters and such has sort of -- staff performance, management, compensation, audit matters, are really skills that -- and the external board review also pointed out, that is a minority skill, I guess, on the board at this stage.  So we do need more people like Njeri, being female, from Africa, and with great skills to bring to the board.
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bruce.
 Anyone else like to speak?
 I will.  
 I think the fact of her renewal by the NomCom is an indication of the respect that the community held her in.  Renewal by the NomCom is a hard-won privilege. 
 Her service on the audit committee always stood out to me as being Sterling at a crucial time in the financial and administrative development of ICANN.  Her service there was excellent.
 And personally, I worked with her on the compensation committee, where, for all the reasons and the skills that she has that Bruce has outlined, her service was tremendously helpful.  And so I echo Bruce's point, and conclude by saying, yes, we need more like Njeri.
 Njeri, good luck.  Sorry you're not with us.  Go well.
 Anyone else?  In which case, let's also carry that motion by acclamation.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Well, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the business of this portion of the annual general meeting.
 Retiring board members and liaisons will now leave, and we will reconvene almost immediately with the new board and the new committee and have a number of short administrative resolutions required under the bylaws.
 Could I ask, then, any departing liaisons and board members who are still present to leave, and could I also ask the incoming board members and liaisons to come to the stage and take your seats for the first time as members of the ICANN board.
 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:   Steve Crocker won't know whether he's coming or going.
 (Regular Meeting Concluded.)