GNSO Wrap-Up Session Thursday, 29 October 2009 ICANN Meeting Seoul, Korea >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. I hope -- is this on? Testing. I don't see -- >>MARIKA KONINGS: I think it's on but I think the volume -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Need volume? How's -- we're still not on, huh? Testing. Is it coming across now? Okay. Hopefully everybody has had a chance to get food. Feel free throughout to get up and get more or whatever. It won't bother me. So we better get started. Can we start the recording and transcription? All set on that? Okay. Very good. Well, welcome, everybody, to our follow-up meeting. The last few times this meeting open-and I can't promise to do as good a job as Avri on this, but the last couple of these have been really fairly enjoyable. Everybody was relaxing a little bit, and I hope that will be the same case today. I did send an agenda around, and Marika has kindly posted it up there. Keep in mind that at these meetings, we don't ever do any voting or any specific actions, but there are some fairly important things for us to work on for going forward, and that's what the agenda's designed to do. About 2:30 local time here, we're planning -- Theresa Swinehart and she may be a little bit late because she has another meeting before then, but will be coming for about 10, feel free minutes to talk about strategic plan. That was something that investigative going to try to do in our council meeting yesterday and was unable to make it. So to take a quick look at the agenda there, it was also sent via e- mail, and the only thing that's been added since then is at the very bottom. If we have time at the very end, I will show you the presentation that I've drafted with some help from staff to give to the board tomorrow morning and give you a chance to provide some feedback there, so you can see I've added under "Other Business" a board presentation and Marika has that on her laptop to show if we have time. And then of course anybody else can add other business. Any suggested changes to the agenda? Okay. Thank you. Let's get started, then, and talk about some key action items we have under the new procedures. And Rob's going to give us just -- there are just a few of them that we need to be aware of and he's going to summarize that right now. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've identified six items that either are action items for the council to be thinking about at this meeting in the coming weeks, and also flagging some potential changes in process or in change of meetings that you all should be aware of going forward that some of you may not have picked up in the operating procedures themselves. So it's a pretty short list. Number one is not technically a council duty, it's more a noncontract party house issue, but Section 2.2(c) still calls upon the noncontract party house to elect a permanent vice chair. As Olga and I were talking about earlier, that's still an interim or provisional appointment, so that's something that still has to be clarified and resolved by the noncontract party house. >>CHUCK GOMES: If you don't mind me stopping you there a second, does anybody from that house have -- and there's no deadline that we're on right now except that it would probably be helpful to get it done sooner rather than later, but any estimate as to when that might happen? And it's okay if you don't know. I'm just asking. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I don't know. It would be my best informed guess that it would be in the next couple weeks. >>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chuck. Just for letting the house know, if the house decides, I'm willing to do it in a permanent basis as a vice chair. Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Olga. Okay, Rob, go ahead. >>ROB HOGGARTH: The next item is Section 2.3 of the ops procedures that talks about observers. It does a little bit of, I think, cleaning up from the past version, and the only thing the council may want to do is clarify its various observers to other supporting organizations or advisory committees. My recollection is that Olga's the only official observer and that's to the ccNSO. The ops procedures don't provide for a particular term, so that could become an ongoing obligation. I don't know if the council wants to consider that going forward, but you may on an annual basis just want to confirm that the current observer wants to continue in that role. The next item refers to Section 3.3, which talks about meeting notice, and the way I interpret it as well is agendas. And the particularly new area of that is that the council has to provide notice to the community seven days in advance of a meeting on administrative matters, but the additional language, I think, for this new council is 14 days in advance for policy issues, and so that might change the council's operations in terms of Glen's obligations to get an agenda out ahead of time. If you know that it will be a policy, it doesn't strictly define what it is but a policy-related item, then it requires 14 days notice, as opposed to 7. >>CHUCK GOMES: And I think the intention of that by the working team was to make sure that councillors had some minimal time period to be able to do -- consult with your constituencies. So you need some turnaround time. So -- so -- which I think was a good intent. Welcome, Adrian. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Welcome, Chuck. [Laughter] >>ROB HOGGARTH: One item that's in absence and I think has just been an ongoing practice of the council has been the time frame prior to a meeting where council members provide motions. That currently isn't provided for in the ops procedures, but you could undoubtedly continue that as just part of your working practice. It may be some future guidance that you provide to the work team to provide specifics or you might just leave that out of the procedures. >>CHUCK GOMES: So does -- in terms of the 14 days notice, that doesn't apply to motions, necessarily? >>ROB HOGGARTH: That's correct. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. >>ROB HOGGARTH: It's just notice of meetings and presumably that's an agenda -- some form of a broad agenda that provides notice to the community that the council is meeting. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks. >>ROB HOGGARTH: The next item refers to the meeting schedule, and you already have that reflected in your agenda. The new ops procedures provide for a 12-month meeting schedule that should be decided on within 30 days of the annual meeting, so the clock is ticking on that. I note that you're planning on discussing that today, so it seems like you've got that well under control. >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, we'll see after today. I don't see us finishing that today, but hopefully we'll get the process started with the goal of having it done in that time limit. >>ROB HOGGARTH: The last two items, just generally, reflect how you conduct your meetings and what goes on. They're relatively small points but I thought I'd at least alert you to them. Section 3.6 in one of its provisions provides that speakers have a three-minute time limit during meetings, but that's just guidance to the chair, so I thought I would share that. The other refers in Section 3.8 to meeting absences without notification. I think in the past, council members have been very good about letting the Secretariat, Glen, know ahead of time if they weren't able to participate. The new ops procedures seem to codify that and essentially provide that if a council member in two straight meetings has not provided that notification, that an inquiry will go out to the stakeholder group to ask why. Again, I think that's just more a matter of codifying the courtesy that's taken place before. That's it in terms of actual, you know, working processes or action items. I'd just remind the council that the work team, particularly Ray Fassett as chair, has advised you that their intent is to go back and do some more cleaning up to the existing ops procedures. As I went through them, I saw there's some areas that could benefit from some clarification and some cleaner language. And that longer-term, they'll be looking at other issues. For example, proxies, and talks about some other matters that you as a council may direct them to look at. But I think the plan of the work team was that in relatively short order, they would agree on some updates that they would share with the steering committee that would relatively quickly come to the council. >>CHUCK GOMES: Terry? >>TERRY DAVIS: Yeah. I do want to see Section 3.7 on the seating and visibility fixed before we get to Kenya. So that it's not an issue again. >>CHUCK GOMES: Good. Terry -- in fact, everyone -- I would encourage you, and I'm going to speak for Ray. I don't think he's here. I don't see him. Unless he's behind the pillar here. I think Ray's probably comfortable, if you have things like that, sending the -- your suggestions to Ray. If you don't have his e-mail address, we can get that for you or you can forward it to me and I'll forward it or whatever. But I think Ray would be comfortable, if there's some things that you would like them to look at further, like what you just suggested, Terry, please let's get that to the working team as soon as possible, because they're anticipating continuing to work on the procedures. There are some things that they haven't even covered in the procedures yet, so -- and there's no reason why they couldn't reconsider something that's already in there. >>TERRY DAVIS: Yeah, Ray and I have already talked a little bit on this, so... >>CHUCK GOMES: Oh, excellent. That's good. Rob, thank you very much for that. What I'd like to ask you to do, if you don't mind, is to summarize that and put it in an e-mail to the council list, so that everybody -- including those not -- for those of us that are here, we have something to base any follow-up action we need, but also for those that aren't here. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Great. Will do. Thanks. [Applause] >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Okay. Any questions or comments on those items? All right. The next one's a tough one. [Laughter] >>CHUCK GOMES: The council meeting schedule for the next 12 months. Now, as I indicated earlier, I really seriously doubt we could accomplish that in this meeting today. But hopefully we can at least map out how we're going to do that. And I tried to outline some steps there in that regard. And can you get -- I've got the agenda here. I can get it. >>MARIKA KONINGS: I can go back to it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. I have it here, so that's okay. So real quickly, a very brief discussion. Now, we know some of the key factors already, but let's see if there are any others. Obviously, time of day is a key factor, and that -- as it turns out -- comes out to be an impossible problem to make it ideal, to even fit the guidelines in the procedures for everybody on the council. It just -- you know, somebody's going to be in between that midnight -- or 11:00 p.m., whatever it is, and 6:00 a.m. Glen has done quite a bit of work on that and on I'll have her share that in a minute. So one of the factors obviously is time of day. Is it correct that consistency of day is helpful to people in your calendar? >>WILLIAM DRAKE: No? >>CHUCK GOMES: No? Okay. Adrian? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Go ahead. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: You first. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I have no real strong preference. I think at least just based on looking at the 3, 11 and 20 UTC schedule, I think it's probably going to be painful for everybody at some point. For me, it's more valuable to be able to plan ahead. You know, if I know now and can put in my calendar now, "This is when the meetings are," even if only for the next three months, then I can work around that. That is much better for me than two weeks before the council saying, "Oh, my god, we're not going to get such and such done, we need to try and block out another meeting," because at that point it becomes, at least for me, virtually impossible. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yes. And the work -- and the working team's intent of the 12-month schedule is to at least get something down. We may have to change it sometimes but hopefully that will do that. Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah. I -- along those same lines, it doesn't -- for me personally, it doesn't matter so much as to a consistent day or even a time. It's just so long as there is visibility, you know, as far ahead as possible. A Wednesday is no different to a Thursday and it's not like I need a council every -- you know, on a Thursday so that I remember that it's on a Thursday. I'll know because we get appropriate notification. So as to which day to have it during the week, whether one week it's a Tuesday or, you know, the next time it's a Thursday that's not really relevant. I think Kristina's point is valid. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now, I do think -- and correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think we want to avoid Fridays because Friday for some of us is Saturday for you. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: That would be avoiding Saturday, right. So we avoid Saturday. That's true. >>CHUCK GOMES: Olga. >>OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks, Chuck. I agree with Christine A planning ahead for me is important. I teach in two universities, so the sooner I know the agenda, the better I can plan my classes. Also, having a certain date in the week for me -- at least for me -- is very useful because I can organize my other different activities. I don't care about the time. I can handle -- I've seen the proposed time. One is midnight, which I can handle. In the sake of balancing the different time zones for all the council members. But having -- knowing ahead the date of the week for me is very useful. Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. I have Stéphane and then Bill. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: I don't care about the day, but I do care about the time, so I'm going to go out on limb a little bit and say that although we do all feel, I think, that it's important to have some rotation, I wonder if we can have a look at the list that Glen has sent us, which was very useful, so we can see who's in what time zone? When we're working out that rotation, who would be slightly less -- I can see Rosemary looking at me. I'm not sure I'm going to finish this sentence. >>ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: I'm usually in the wrong time zone. [Laughter] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: You know, if there are only two people, say, in a certain -- and I'm not looking at anybody in particular. That's a lovely sweater, Adrian. [Laughter] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: If there are only two people in a certain Tim zone, they're going to be -- >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: It seems like we have an easy solution here. All in favor of eliminating Australians? [Laughter] [Show of hands] [Laughter] >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: That's on the record, by the way. We're going to show which hands actually got raised, so... >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: Did you see the chair raise a hand? [Laughter] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: The chair, yeah. So, you know, if -- if the Aussies would be nice enough would allow us to rotate but not as often in their time zone. That's just a proposed solution that we can argue about, Adrian, but we're going to have -- to go back to being serious for just a minute, we're going to have some pre-meeting times, you know, to prepare for these meetings and everything, and it's -- I know it's a lot of work for everybody, but I would -- I would certainly appreciate if we didn't do the 3:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. UTC every other rotation. But that's obviously open to discussion. I'm just trying to, you know, start that off. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Bill? >>WILLIAM DRAKE: I recognize everybody wants to know as far in advance as possible. It's just that often we all have problems with things that come up. So I can't help wondering can't we just kind of like say, "Okay, default, it's the third week" and then Doodle? I mean, is Doodle just like not acceptable practice here? I mean, I know in lots of other collaborations I participate in, that's the way we do it, and it usually works out pretty well. >>CHUCK GOMES: Let's keep that in mind. I don't -- that way -- you know, that's one idea. In a moment, I'm going to ask Glen to share some of the information she's worked out, in terms of time zones, applying this stuff here. And I think what she's found is that Doodles don't really solve the problem very well because of that, but let's look at that. I'm not ruling that out. Okay? We'll examine it when she gives us some details. Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So I'm going to go against the previously-stated position. And in the spirit of me warming to the council and not being so obstructive, I think that we need to look at the reason as to why we're rotating, and it's -- if that reason speaks to better participation, then I can't believe I'm saying this but maybe we should try to make it easier where the numbers are. And so if there was a weighted distribution of the meeting -- so one rotated out of every, you know, three or four or something like that, but we got the most -- we saw that we had the majority of meetings for the majority of people, and then we did rotate occasionally, so that we could pick up, you know, and make it variable for the minority but the minority still had an input. So I know that's a change of position and I hope that, you know, everyone doesn't say "Well, jeez, why didn't you say this earlier," but I was just thinking because we want to get the most out of the council and I don't know that getting -- it really makes me ill saying it -- all the North Americans up at 2:00 in the morning is necessarily going to be conducive to, you know, getting the work done as efficiently as possible. So I'm at least suggesting that I think if you take an approach of the majority -- trying to get the majority of people inputting, the majority of the time, but still having consideration for the minority in an every -- you know, an every-so-often rotation, I think that I find that palatable. The other point is I also want to be on record as saying please don't do any of these -- necessarily for me as well because I travel a helluva lot and Glen knows this, and so, you know, to aim it that I'm going to be, you know, to do this to appease me as much as I really appreciate the sentiment doesn't, you know, necessarily -- and it may be other folks as well, you know, that if you're trying to lock it in so that -- especially when we're doing it so far in advance, there may be times that I don't know that I'm going to be, you know, a week out before I'm in Dubai or wherever in the world or a lot of these things have a lot of different contributing factors and I think to try to go into a great deal of planning and everything may just in the end just be as bad as if we had just sort of ad hoc, but that's -- hopefully that's helpful. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks. It is. Jaime. >>JAIME WAGNER: I would -- I would endorse -- I think it's -- hello? Is it working? >>CHUCK GOMES: You have to get fairly close. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah, it's working. >>JAIME WAGNER: Okay. I would endorse Kristina's request for an advance schedule for at least hopefully one year -- okay? -- but -- and also that this should be done ponder [sic] the participants' location. I mean as for the time of the day, to ensure greater participation, it should take the ponder -- I mean, it's correct, huh? -- to give weight to the location where the most -- there are more participants, and I think this can be done and submitted right in the next week and we can fix a schedule right in advance. For me it would be good to have a fixed schedule with 12 months or 6 months, at least. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Thank you. Edmon? >>EDMON CHUNG: Yeah. I have sort of similar comments but I think some consistency with time is useful. As much as rotation is -- is good. The other thing -- perhaps Han Chuan will hate me for this but I've consistently said that -- of course the same with probably Adrian, that I travel quite a bit, so it really doesn't matter, but I generally prefer late night, you know, maybe middle -- middle of the night kind of -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: He is. >>EDMON CHUNG: And -- yeah. It helps my schedule better. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Edmon. Stéphane? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Well, first of all, I think Edmon's made an excellent suggestion. Let him and Adrian get up. We've just been looking at some possible times with Glen, and -- >>CHUCK GOMES: She'll share those in a minute. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. We've been refining that, but if you want to share that, you can. >>CHUCK GOMES: No, no. I'm going to ask her to and you can join her.van okay. Let's do that, again. >>CHUCK GOMES: Is everybody okay with looking at the specifics of the dilemma that we have? Okay. Glen and Stéphane, however you want to do that? If you can kind of -- I think I saw at least three options from Glen and it sounds like you guys may have worked those a little bit. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: We've narrowed down the options a little bit and one option that -- we're looking at times across the board. 12 UTC, that's midday UTC, works out at -- can I just -- thanks, Glen. That is 5:00 a.m. L.A. time, 8:00 a.m. New York time, 8:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, and 1:00 p.m. in Europe. >>CHUCK GOMES: 1:00 p.m.? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah. 1:00 p.m. That's 1300. That's the way we say it in Europe. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's fine. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: What is that Australia time, Melbourne time? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Oh, we didn't look at that. [Laughter] >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I give up. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: So that's just one -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Just a second. There's a question here. Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Sorry. I came in a little bit late, but are we talking about making a decision on this right now or are we going to take this back or -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Let me clarify that. we're trying to get some general principles. I suggested we're not going to solve this problem in this meeting, but while we're all together, try to at least air the things so that if nothing else, all of us understand the complexity of what we're dealing with, that it's not a simple solution, which I think everybody knows already. So no, Mike, we probably won't solve this today, but let's take sufficient time -- without taking too much time -- to at least make sure there's pretty good understanding of the problem. Are you going to answer Adrian's question? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: What was your question? >>CHUCK GOMES: His question was what was the Australian time in that scenario. Sorry about that. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah. I'll answer it when I get around to it. So that was 12:00 UTC. We had another -- there was a 20 UTC, and that is Sydney time -- that's in Australia, right, Adrian? -- 7:00 a.m., Singapore 4:00 a.m., Brussels 2100 -- sorry? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Winter time. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah, winter time. Tokyo, 5:00 a.m. Argentina, 1700. And Moscow is, yeah, plus 3. >>JAIME WAGNER: (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: No. I'm talking about 20 UTC. Is that clear for everyone? >>ZAHID JAMIL: (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Sorry. I missed Karachi. 2:00 a.m. That's while I missed it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Shall we amend our previous decision about eliminating Australians and eliminate Pakistanis. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Do you want to talk to my wife? [Laughter] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. There's one third option, which fairness dictates that I give to you, although I would recommend we don't even consider it, and that's 3:00 a.m. UTC, which in Singapore is 11:00 a.m., in L.A. 1900, in Sydney 1400, in Karachi 8:00 a.m., and in Moscow 6:00 a.m., and in Europe 4:00 a.m., and I don't have Argentina on the -- we haven't -- >>OLGA CAVALLI: (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: And midnight in Argentina. >>OLGA CAVALLI: (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. Midnight or 1:00 a.m. So those are the three options. Let me just remind you 3:00 a.m. UTC, 12:00 or 11:00 UTC, and 1900 UT -- 20 -- sorry, 2000 UTC. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Can I just make a remark about those three times? Those are times that the board uses, and they have gone around this clock as well. >>CHUCK GOMES: So now -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: (Speaker is off microphone). >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: They rotate. >>CHUCK GOMES: There's a few other issues besides just the time of the meeting and possible rotation that we need to talk about here. But maybe before going to those, it seems to me that if we had two or three people -- maybe from different time zones, extreme different time zones, that would be willing to develop a proposal, it might be the most efficient way to make this happen, so are there -- are there some volunteers? Adrian's volunteering. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah, I'm happy to -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Stéphane -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: i (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: Eat your spaghetti. All right. Stéphane and Adrian. Is there someone else that -- that's kind of a good -- if there's somebody from Asia -- well, we've got Asia pretty well covered here. So is there somebody -- you want to work with them, Edmon? Okay. Anybody else want to -- okay. Very good. So let's -- let's -- >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Can I just say that the first meeting for us three is at 12 UTC. [Laughter] >>CHUCK GOMES: So now, so if you four -- I mean, is a week enough time to come back, or do you need a little more than that because we're traveling and so forth? Maybe by the end of next week? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: That's fine with me. >>CHUCK GOMES: Who will take the lead in driving that? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Stéphane. >>CHUCK GOMES: Stéphane? Okay. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Who is the fourth? Sorry. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Han Chuan. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Sorry. So who is it going to be? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. You're not doing it, Edmon? Yeah, I mean, whatever. What's simplest. >>EDMON CHUNG: (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. Fine. >>JAIME WAGNER: Do the people that will work -- have the location of everybody? >>CHUCK GOMES: Yes. >>JAIME WAGNER: Yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: It's occupant right screen up there and everybody will have it. >>LIZ GASSTER: I think Tim's is wrong. >>CHUCK GOMES: Excuse me? What did you say, Liz? >>LIZ GASSTER: I think Tim Ruiz's is wrong. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Yes. Tim Ruiz I put in -- that's right, yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: He travels some too, though. >>LIZ GASSTER: U.S. central time. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: But he travels and I'd rather add one to the Pacific time than -- >>LIZ GASSTER: Thank you, Glen. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Thank you for the volunteers on that, so a week tomorrow, I guess, we'll -- hopefully you guys will have something and hopefully we can first kind of talk about it on the list. The -- now, the other issue -- what's that? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Just to tell you that that's the 6th of November that we're planning -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Yes. 6th of November. Now, another issue -- yes, Mary. >>MARY WONG: Sorry I was late. Wendy Seltzer is in Colorado. >>CHUCK GOMES: So that's mountain time. That's going to be an hour earlier than Pacific. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Later. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yes, thank you. I said that incorrectly. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Thanks. >>CHUCK GOMES: It was correct in my head. [Laughter] Okay. Now, frequency of meetings, we've been doing every three weeks. We've been doing that for quite a while. We seem to fill up a meeting every three weeks. So if we make that less frequent, that could be a problem -- yes. A lot of us aren't being heard because you have to speak very closely to these mics. So please move them close to you at least when you're talking. Thank you, Glen. So real quickly, just not with a lot of words, but what's the feeling? Are there people that think we ought to continue it every three weeks? Does anybody feel strongly about that? Okay, got one. Couple. Another option would be to do monthly. What's the reaction - - how many people would kind of like to see if we can successfully do monthly? Four or five, six maybe. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Does this mean we will do longer meetings? >>CHUCK GOMES: We have to talk about that. Remember to talk into the mic because this is being recorded and transcribed. Margie? >>MARGIE MILAM: Monthly and longer time maybe. >>CHUCK GOMES: He didn't talk into the mic so you couldn't hear him. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I actually would prefer if the trade-off is between monthly meetings that are longer and meetings every three weeks that are two hours that we keep them to two hours simply because these issues are important to me but after about two hours on the phone, I start to really fade. And I think if we are going to be starting some of these calls at 11:00 p.m. or midnight for someone, I think that will be particularly true. >>CHUCK GOMES: Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah, your last point was I think the one if they are going to be scheduled late. And also if it is scheduled during your business day, it is often hard to find anything more than two hours, a block to do so. Or it's a long time to dedicate out of a business day as well, not that I ever get to experience it in a business day. >>CHUCK GOMES: I think for us to go beyond two hours is probably not a good way to go, whichever -- however frequently we decide to do it. Does anybody disagree with that? Because I think there's good agreement on that right there. What about -- so what about that? Let's say, okay, we're going to keep it at two hours max. Yeah, we've missed that a few times. But should we consider -- do you think monthly would work if we did it two hours? Okay, I'm seeing some heads. How many think we could make it work monthly? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Can I just say something. >>CHUCK GOMES: Just a second since I asked the question. Does anybody think monthly would work if we are limited to two hours? A few. Worth a try. Okay, go ahead, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Chuck. We went into this new council structure with at least one big priority which is to prioritize. If we in any way are successful in this, I think one of the things that we might be able to achieve is having fewer agenda items on our meetings and it might make it workable to have two-hour meetings. If we go into this saying there is no way we will change anything and one meeting every three weeks is already too busy and it is already too much work, then really we have already lost on the prioritize -- sorry, prioritization issue. So I think we should try to make it workable to have a monthly two- hour meeting and to prioritize our work so we can fit into that. >>CHUCK GOMES: I have Mike and then Kristina. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think just given the volume of work that we have before us, that we probably ought not to start working less as a council until we get it going. I agree, of course, it's very admirable goal and we should shoot to try to have less meetings. At this moment, with all of the things that are ongoing, I think we should keep to the schedule that we have been keeping. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. I skipped over Alan. I'm sorry about that, Alan. Go ahead. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I agree with what Mike just said. I note that when you asked for how many people think we could try for one a month, most of the people who put up their hands are ones that are new to the council who have never attended one of the meetings. This group runs about the tightest schedule of any teleconference I participate in in terms allocating short amounts of time and generally keeping to it. It may well be that we find we're finishing early. We don't have enough agenda items, we can reschedule meetings so they're once month. But I wouldn't start off that way because if we run over, it causes too many problems to either not being able to handle the items at all or not having sufficient time to discuss them. I would be delighted if we could get to a lower number, but I don't think we should schedule it now. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I agree with Mike. I just think that realistically just going back in my head for the past two years, I could probably count on my hand the number of times we have used less -- significantly less than two hours. And especially if we are going to be extending the period of time between meetings, I think at least between now and the end of the year we've got some pretty significant work to get done. I don't think it would be prudent to set it out any less frequently than every three weeks. >>CHUCK GOMES: And another factor in that regard is as the GNSO improvements team -- and they are all making pretty good progress as they begin to finish their work, we will have more and more deliberation with regard to those things in the next few months. So that's something to keep in mind. Stéphane? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Just a question to Alan, Kristina or Mike, would you be suggesting that we look at this -- say, we keep the same schedule for now and look at this again in, say, three months. Is that what you think we should do? >>ALAN GREENBERG: There is certainly no harm in doing that. I'm not sure enough will have changed in that period of time given what's on the books right now where, yes, the mode of council is changing but we've already to a large extent changed that mode. >>CHUCK GOMES: I think that's what I heard Kristina suggest, is if we find that we're using -- consistently using less than two hours, that might be an appropriate time to look at possibly changing the schedule. And we can do that. We're going to put out a 12-month schedule. If six months down the road, we need -- think we should change that, we can still do that and we'll map out a schedule from there. >>JAIME WAGNER: Since I'm new, I can make dumb questions. I don't know how much is prediscussed through the list and I think this can be done and it also depends much on the preparation of the chair, you know? How the chair conducts and prepares the meeting, the time that it takes and how it conducts. And I'm sure that Chuck will do a great job. >>CHUCK GOMES: Put the pressure on, right? I agree with what you are saying. If the chair does plan and prepare -- and I will be doing that with the vice chairs as well and staff -- that does help a lot. >>JAIME WAGNER: You should agree also that you are the person to do it. You have all the credentials. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks. Okay. Did I see a hand over here that I didn't write down? We're okay there. Okay. I think we have pretty good agreement right now that we're going to go with every three weeks. Now, we're going into a holiday season, so that may have to be adjusted a little bit. The other issue I had, we covered that. I guess we've covered the item -- the decisions that we needed to get a feel for today. We do need to talk about our next meeting. I put -- assuming that we stayed with Thursdays -- And we don't have to, and we can talk about that as well. I put down three Thursdays in November and identified some issues that I was aware of. For example, the 19th is the day after the IGF ends in Egypt. I will actually be in Egypt for that. How many others will be in Egypt for that? There's about five of us at least. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Six. >>CHUCK GOMES: Six. Thanks, Bill. So, now, I'm not traveling on the 19th so I could feasibly do a meeting. But if there's five of us, that might not be very ideal. The 26th of November is a -- is Thanksgiving in the U.S., which is a major holiday. That's another factor. What's the feeling in terms of those three dates? Is there a preference? Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I will make a different suggestion, what about Tuesday, the 24th? I know that gets us out of the Thursdays, but I can tell you right now that Thanksgiving is a no-go for me, period. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I think the 19th and enough people are traveling, that it's not going to work. The 12th, I don't know whether we will have actually gotten enough work done from here for there to be a point in having a meeting. It seems to me that the 24th might be a good compromise. >>CHUCK GOMES: Good thoughts. Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think Kristina probably just answered my question. I do feel like we want to keep it sooner rather than later. We are obviously under a tight time crunch with the STI, for example, and, again, lots of work on our table. I understand the IGF meeting, I guess, is the whole week of the 16th? >>WILLIAM DRAKE: And people travel. >>OLGA CAVALLI: I have two days to travel. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Kristina is probably right, that's basically the soonest day we could do it, really, is the 24th. >>CHUCK GOMES: Glen, in terms of conflicts with other meetings within ICANN and the GNSO and so forth, are you aware of anywhere other conflicts? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: The IRTP meeting that day and we probably got post-expiry domain name recovery. >>CHUCK GOMES: So we would need to -- >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Wednesday might not be too bad. >>CHUCK GOMES: Wednesday's probably a bad day just before Thanksgiving, I would -- in the U.S., for those that are there. Is Tuesday worth shooting for, the 24th? >>JAIME WAGNER: For me it is bad. >>MARY WONG: I teach all day. >>CHUCK GOMES: Let's see. You are in the eastern time zone. So we just need to have you -- have the meeting at 4:00 in the morning for you? Just kidding. >>MARY WONG: And some other people around the table. >>CHUCK GOMES: So Tuesday is bad for you. Jaime? >>JAIME WAGNER: ICANN is preparing an event in Sao Paulo, and I will be involved -- >>CHUCK GOMES: That's on the 24th. >>JAIME WAGNER: The 24th. >>CHUCK GOMES: So that's an all-day thing. We have at least two conflicts on Tuesday, the 24th. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: What about the Monday? >>CHUCK GOMES: What about Monday, the 23rd? I was going to look at my calendar. I think I'm okay. >>JAIME WAGNER: Which would be the time for this? >>CHUCK GOMES: We don't know that. We're going to have to -- hopefully if we leave this meeting at least we'll all have a lot of sympathy for the people trying to schedule. We'll be understanding as much as we can be. Is Monday better than the Tuesday, understanding the time's a factor, too? Any opposed to shooting for Monday, the 23rd? Is that right? Yes. Okay. Now, the -- go ahead. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: I just wanted to say one thing that was coming back to Jaime's earlier point because it was something I didn't know before just being on the council. You mentioned that preparation was a key, and I think it is an important thing that you said. Chuck has asked us, Olga and myself, to participate in preparation meetings before each meeting, which is something that I understand, Chuck, you did with Avri beforehand and I did not know that. So, you know, just to let you know that there will be preparation work going on with the chair, the vice chairs and the staff before each meeting so that we can try and get things done as efficiently as possible. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now, could I -- since the four people that volunteered are going to be working on the time of the meeting, could we include in that task looking at times for that Monday meeting on the 23rd? Is that okay? Since you're going to be grappling with that. Jaime? >>JAIME WAGNER: I would suggest that since we are all together now to decide this right now. >>CHUCK GOMES: Decide it right now? Well, which ones -- which one of those options do we want to go with? Without having them all right in front of us, it is a little bit hard to do right now. I appreciate the fact that we're all here. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Can I make a suggestion? The chart, Glen, that you circulated that had the time difference, can you just plot along on the top what the different options are and fill it in and then we can put it up and kind of see what works? >>CHUCK GOMES: Would that be okay? We could continue that later so that that could be done. Is that possible, Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Okay. So we'll come back to that part of this. Now, let's quickly -- and we need to move on because there is a couple other -- several other important things we want to try and cover today. What about the development of that 12-month calendar. Now, the time exercise will help us in doing that, but we're going to have to talk about whether we have a regular day. For right now we are going with every three weeks, we know that. That may have to be adjusted for holidays in different parts of the world and so forth. So we want to talk a little bit about a process for finalizing a 12- month calendar, understanding we have to get that done in 29 days now. Any thoughts on that in terms of process? Is that another area where we maybe get a -- maybe some separate people, once they have the time recommendations to work on that. What's the thinking? Any ideas, thoughts? We're going to have -- basically, we're probably going to have to finalize our 12-month calendar on the 23rd. So we need to have some work done before then to be able to do that. Now, one thing we could do -- we could ask staff to map out -- well, let me back up a second. Is Monday a day that would work consistently? No. It's not. I'm hearing some no's, some yes'. That's going to happen just about every time, okay, as many people as we have here. Liz? >>LIZ GASSTER: Yeah, Monday mornings Pacific time are really bad for policy staff as a rule. We can do it as an exception for the Thanksgiving. >>CHUCK GOMES: We had mixed feelings whether we want to keep it same day of the week. Let me just take a quick show of hands, again. How many would prefer it to be the same day every week excluding where we have special circumstances? Quite a few. How many don't care? A few don't care. So it would be better if we could pick now. So if we pick a day -- excepting the fact it looks like a majority would prefer the same day every week and we are excluding Fridays. It sounds like we are excluding Mondays. So we have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We've been doing Thursdays. It seems to be working pretty well. But is there a preference for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? And before you respond to that, Glen, are there days that are particularly bad from other things going on in the GNSO? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Tuesday. >>CHUCK GOMES: Two working groups on Tuesday, so Tuesdays aren't very good. So if we limit it down to -- is there -- we've kind of eliminated Mondays anyway because sometimes we're going to have to have morning meetings for the people in the West Coast of the U.S. So I think we're down to Wednesday or Thursday. Is there any objection to continuing the Thursday meetings? The only one problem that we run into once in a while on that is we have a conflict with board meetings. But should we just shoot for Thursdays? Okay. And we're doing every three weeks with exceptions when we run into holidays or something like that. So am I correct in concluding then if we get a -- a time recommendation that we can support, including rotations -- some rotations -- and I assume you guys will come back with a recommendation for that as well -- then, I think, we have the basics that we'll need for that 12-month schedule. Did I miss anything? Okay. Good. We actually made more progress than I thought we might. So that's very good. Any more questions or comments on schedule? All right. This next item, I think, is relatively brief and it was my memory late last night that failed me. That's why I said a "staff item." So Liz took advantage of that and staff was going to come up with a whole bunch of that, but she really only has one. >>LIZ GASSTER: Thanks, Chuck. And this is pretty short. You know, we have lots of policy staff now. We're sort of growing and staff in general at ICANN. So one of the things that would be helpful to us, typically in the past questions would get addressed on the list to various staff people outside of the policy group, often to the general counsel's office directly. And what we'd like to do is just filter all the questions to other staff that are -- you know, council- related questions, particularly those that might get addressed to the general counsel's office through me. That way we can be sure they get answered and that other folks in ICANN have them on their agendas and we can just kind of manage the responses. It's not intended to be a filter in any way but just to help coordinate and make sure you do get timely responses. And, also, we're trying to, where possible, minimize unnecessary questions being addressed to the general counsel's office, particularly with both Margie and I available on the policy staff to provide guidance on things like bylaws and operating procedures and those kinds of things. So we would appreciate it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Any questions or comments? Thanks, Liz. Okay. Let's go to a tough exercise that we're not going to get done today. We'll barely get started today. It is also one, I think, that we want to make happen fairly quickly because it affects our whole year. And the sooner we can do it, the better. Prioritization of our work. We've talked about this a lot, and it is a hard -- it is a hard task. We can accept that as a given. Let's start off by just looking at some workload information, and we'll use our action-item list that Marika will put up to do that. And I hope you can read that. You can also -- now, is that -- the latest one is not online yet, is it? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: No. >>CHUCK GOMES: No. Okay. Otherwise I would let you look there. Hopefully you can see what we have. And we've got the reserved names. We can talk about that later. I'm just going to scroll down these. We don't need to look at status. We've got IRTP Part A PDP. That's really just implementation, so that's probably not part of anything we have to prioritize. We have the WHOIS studies. Again, that's -- those are things that are going to come up as tasks get done. It's not as if there's some action items waiting for us right now. But once we get information back from staff, we're going to have to make some decisions. And priorities not only have to do with us, but they have to do with staff, too, and being able to fulfill these things. We need to kind that in mind. GNSO improvements, let me make a comment on that one and see if there's disagreement in my view there. It seems to me that we have pretty good momentum there, probably in all five work teams. And it would be really a shame if we lost that momentum when we do our prioritization exercise. But I just throw that out as an opinion of Chuck, okay? Because -- and some of them are actually coming to a head pretty well, so that might be okay. But I just throw that out to keep in mind. And that will hopefully -- those things will hopefully benefit us and make us more efficient in what we do. So it complements the prioritization that we're doing, but that's my own opinion. New TLDs is going to continue to be a lot of work for us. The Fast Flux PDP, the PDP is actually done. They made some recommendations. There's some things to do. We will have to fit those action items, whatever we decide to do, into our priority scheme. Yes, Marika? >>MARIKA KONINGS: For that one, the council agreed to form a drafting team, and that's one of the items that's still on the dock to initiate. >>CHUCK GOMES: And my suggestion in that regard is to do that once we work out our priorities. Does anybody object to that? Okay. So that's okay. And then the IDN fast-track implementation plan. Edmon, do you want to comment on that one? >>EDMON CHUNG: Sure. A couple of meetings ago I asked for it to be put aside for a while until the JIG is formally formed and to give a chance to have a chance of have a last kick at it. I wouldn't want it dropped; and I think with some of the discussions that happened this week, we should continue to work on it and I have - - I've had prepared -- you know, set aside time after this meeting to, you know, bring it back up to speed. Thank you. And lot of you were in the new gTLD session this morning -- new gTLD? -- public forum this morning where most of it was spent on new gTLDs. Sorry about that. So you know -- there were actually quite a few comments about timing and fast track, not just for IDNs but other things, so there were a lot of comments there. And, again, this isn't the time to do the prioritization. The travel policy, the geo regions working group, which is an ICANN- wide working group, the PEDNR. It is really hard to read when it is moving. I do thank you for raising it, but I'm stretching to read it as it is. So when it was moving, I wasn't able to. The registration abuse policy working group, the joint IDN -- the JIG that Edmon referred to. The GNSO improvements work. And this breaks it down by the different working teams and there are five of those so we can just scroll past those. And the IRTP B, that one is ongoing, the PDP B for the transfer policy. The WHOIS system requirements, and that's part of this new joint SSAC and -- no, it's not. Okay. What does that say then? >>LIZ GASSTER: This is the motion that was approved by the council in May asking for the compilation of service requirements from WHOIS, looking at current requirements plus the previously discussed policy issues. So this is different from the SSAC-GNSO working group which is specifically focused on the internationalized registration data. >>CHUCK GOMES: You know, when I listened -- were you in the session that Dave was in? >>LIZ GASSTER: Mm-hmm. >>CHUCK GOMES: He was sure saying some things that sound an awful lot like this and he just didn't restrict his discussion to IDNs. >>LIZ GASSTER: That is true. There is overlap because so much of the -- it depends on which presentation because he actually gave two presentations. >>CHUCK GOMES: I only saw one of them. >>LIZ GASSTER: You only saw the one, okay? Because he did the internationalized registration data workshop yesterday where he really got -- >>CHUCK GOMES: I think that's the one I was in. >>LIZ GASSTER: Okay. That has to do with the research that he did on internationalized registration data separate from the WHOIS service requirements leading into the SSAC-GNSO working group. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. So then what you're saying then is we need to add to this table the joint SSAC -- >>LIZ GASSTER: You know what? We got mixed up with our drafts -- our -- which version we had. I think it was on the most recent and got dropped off. So I'll pick it up again. You're right so we do have a new SSAC-GNSO internationalized registration data working group. I think that's not on this list. >>CHUCK GOMES: And that's the one that people were asked yesterday to, you know, identify any members of your groups that would like to participate in that. I know that Edmon has joined in. We, VeriSign, had provided someone for that as well. So please do that. The RAA group -- now what -- is there an action for the GNSO on registry-registrar separation? Oh, the issues -- that's the issues report. >>MARGIE MILAM: Yeah, it's the issues report. >>CHUCK GOMES: It's not a council action yet but once the issues report comes, there will be. Or may be. >>MARGIE MILAM: Right. >>CHUCK GOMES: So now, the main reason for doing that is to give us a scope of the things that we need to prioritize. Now, the -- how do we do that, okay? I think that there are some tools that may help us. I happened to, in a totally separate issue -- I went through an exercise where we were prioritizing things. Not things like we have here in the council, but it was a simple 2-by-2 matrix, where up one axis you had level of difficulty or cost or whatever you want to -- whatever term you can use. It could be either or both. And then the other axis, you had the gain. And so you had things that would be down in the lower left that would be relatively easy, not a huge benefit but they may be low- hanging fruit. You get up to the upper right and it's a lot of effort but a lot of value. Tools like that -- I'm not saying that's the best one for us to use, but if we were to use some tools, and I betcha most people in this room probably have some tools that -- some exercises we could go through to do that, that would help us in terms of doing this exercise. And I just throw that out as a general idea. If we identify some things like that, and we identify all of our tasks, we can place them in something like that, and then help us begin to work through that. Adrian and then Olga. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah, Chuck. I think that's a great idea, and in software development we use it a lot. And, you know, to plan a release and goes into release and things like that. So the exact same graph and -- it's late in the week, but, yes, to have some idea to be able to scope it and you could actually do difficulty of tasks in there as well, with the size of what it is. So you'll have some of the smaller tasks that are done easy and some that are big tasks and you can actually map that on there so it provides another dimension. But I could easily provide with you some examples of that, if that helps. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Olga. >>OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks, Chuck. I agree with Adrian, using those tools is useful. One thing that I would suggest, going through the list, that we could perhaps make a first division in between some things that are done by some drafting teams and working teams that we usually report in every GNSO meeting, and not necessarily is an issue of discussion and takes time from the council. Just the reporting. Like, for example, geo regions working team, the report from the ccNSO liaison, and the travel drafting team. I don't think that that should be high priority, but should be on our minds and our revision every meeting. But perhaps we can divide the long list and it should be shorter. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Now, I hate to talk about creating too many drafting teams, and maybe that's not the best idea, but we need to -- I would like to see us move forward on this very quickly. Would there be some volunteers that would, you know, like to work together -- two or three people, or four people -- that would come up with some possible tools that we could use and a rough approach to how we would tackle this problem? >>OLGA CAVALLI: I will. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. I see Olga volunteering. Anybody like to work with Olga on that? Jaime? >>JAIME WAGNER: I can help, Olga, but under her leadership. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. If Olga takes the lead? Olga, to the extent that I can, I'll certainly contribute. And Adrian already said he would feed some information into that, and it's not as if the -- the two or three of us are going to finalize this, but just to -- in the next couple weeks -- come up with a plan and some possible tools we could use, so that we can actually begin to do that exercise and hopefully get that done relatively quickly. Any questions or comments on that, or disagreement with the approach? Liz? >>LIZ GASSTER: First of all, staff will be glad to help any way we can, so -- you know, in terms of resourcing that group. The second thing I wanted to mention is that we've been doing some work looking at things like staff hours and staff time associated with typical working groups. It's got a little ways to go, so it's not ready for prime time, but we're also planning to do some analysis on what it means for the community in terms of hours and, you know, human resource obligations that get tied up, just to help quantify where to draw the line. >>CHUCK GOMES: In fact, Denise sent some documents to the council list -- it was to the council list, was it not? -- today that you may want to look at. Now, one of them, I thought, was really beneficial for the working group model team -- work team that's doing -- because it really looked at participation levels within working groups and constituencies, and then from the data that was in there, it seemed like there's some good conclusions. Like one of them that popped out at me is that if a constituency or stakeholder group had two participants in a working group, that they tended to have more consistent participation. Thank you, Kristina. Okay? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Bye, everyone. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. All right. So it would be -- and I lost my train of thought, so Liz, go ahead. >>LIZ GASSTER: I'm sorry. I do have some slides I can put up that are sort of the short version, and I just want to acknowledge Ken's work on the package that you have. He really did all the number- crunching and analysis, so in terms of the detailed analysis we can draw on him for explanation, too, if -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Is Ken here? >>LIZ GASSTER: Yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: Oh, there he is way down there, oh, yeah. I thought I had seen you but I was having trouble finding you again, so -- thanks, Ken. Appreciate that. You have slides you could put up right now? And does Marika have them? Oh, look at this. They're way ahead of me. I appreciate that. Go ahead. >>LIZ GASSTER: Okay. So, you know, essentially we did this because, you know, clearly there was a growing community sense that meeting attendance and participation was languishing, and that teams were kind of struggling to complete tasks, that we've had some conference calls that have been cancelled due to lack of participation. So the purpose of the work that we did was really, you know, to examine the attendance records and really it's just an inquiry into what the numbers say, to encourage this kind of dialogue among this group, not to try to, you know, predetermine what an outcome should be or assess any viewpoint on the part of the staff. It's not intended to be a rigorous scientific or statistical analysis. You'll see in the package that you have some backup spreadsheets that show how we got to the numbers that we did, but, you know, it's just supposed to give you really a flavor for the situation. These are the -- sorry, I'm going to try to follow along here. These are the groups that we analyzed. The first five were work -- are working groups distinct from -- and we call that group A -- as distinct from the GNSO improvement work teams, group B, and we have some statistics on the next slide for each. So this is Group A. That question should be, "What are Group A's percentage attendance at conference calls?" And you'll see that, you know, broken down by -- oh, and I should mention this "others" category. So we've tried to break down these results by constituency and we do have kind of a large "others" category that includes participants from at-large, NomCom appointees, participants from the GAC, and unaffiliated individuals, of whom we have a number of participating in working groups. And you'll just see that, you know, certain constituencies have very high participation overall and you'll see at the bottom sort of average attendance for each of these working groups, and then other constituencies that have clearly struggled in terms of participation in working groups, and in particular here you'll see the ISPs and the NCUC with lower participation overall. Okay. Here's the results for group B. Again, these are the work teams related to GNSO improvements, and the breadth of participation there, with average attendance at the bottom. I do want to point out that the way this was done was looking at participation where at least one person attended each meeting or conference call from each constituency. So as long as any participant from that constituency was present at a session, we did not count an absence. On the other hand, if no one from that constituency was present, then we -- an absence was recorded. So here are some final thoughts just on this abbreviated data. You'll see the full package, again, sent to you separately. You know, this report looks at these 11 groups, but anecdotal experiences voiced by various, you know, working group chairs, participants, and staff appear to corroborate the actual attendance figures. There is clear evidence of sporadic attendance and in some cases quite low participation by some constituencies and inconsistent participation by other. And we just want to reinforce that, you know, the study was undertaken just to try to determine if the anecdotal concerns voiced by some were supported by the facts and now that the situation is essentially confirmed, we thought it would be useful to offer some follow-up questions that might precipitate some useful community dialogue, particularly how the work might be prioritized, whether there is, in fact, too much GNSO work, and what we might do to assess the community's total capacity, whether constituencies are providing enough resources to support the groups that are being formed, and really, you know, what level of group participation should be expected or should be the target. Maybe our expectations are too high. So we invite you to have a dialogue. We're happy to answer questions about, you know, the data that we have put together, encourage you to look at the bigger package that we sent around, and happy to help further as we talk more about the issues. >>CHUCK GOMES: Any questions or comments? Yes, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Thanks very much, Liz. You presented that to the registrar stakeholder group the other day, but I just want to reiterate my comments then here. So this is an analysis of participation over selected work groups and work teams, but I think you have done that over the majority of the work teams that the GNSO Council has initiated. That's correct, yeah? I see you shaking your -- nodding your head. >>LIZ GASSTER: I think over the last 11 months or so. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. Great. One suggestion I had was that you might want to correlate that with the -- well, I guess stakeholder groups now. I mean, that document predates the restructure, but the stakeholder groups that had initiated the work or had asked for the work to be initiated. So that we can see -- we can get a clearer picture of how participation correlates with the people that request the work and how they're involved in it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: So I wasn't clear. The Fast Flux working group was going on a lot longer than the last year, as I recall. Adults back to the beginning on that one or just the last 11 months or so? >>LIZ GASSTER: We started in 2008. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: Ken's going to respond to that. >>KEN BOUR: There was some -- there was some data prior to 2008, but we only included the 2008 data in this particular analysis. >>CHUCK GOMES: And, again, they -- in the report, they admit that it's not a scientific study or anything like that, but I think it's useful data, and it's probably not at all surprising what we're seeing there, but it does seem to confirm some of our suspicions in terms of activity. And it's just data. We don't need to look at it as critical or anything else, but hopefully we can learn some things from it and apply them in our -- in our work. Any other -- yes, Jaime and then Wolf. >>JAIME WAGNER: Liz, confirm -- Liz, I understood that you had a study of -- over not only the working groups but also all the issues that are in front of the council and you have weighted them with the time of consumption of staff -- time consumption from staff and you have this and you sent this to the list or you have this? I don't -- I didn't understand. >>LIZ GASSTER: Sorry. We sent the more detailed version of this analysis. >>JAIME WAGNER: Okay. But this -- this is -- >>LIZ GASSTER: To the council already. >>JAIME WAGNER: Yeah. >>LIZ GASSTER: In terms of -- I made another point earlier, where I said that we are looking at -- like the amount -- average number of staff hours per working group, average number of community hours, you know, to try to help you figure out if we add a new working group, this is the number of hours that would be expected of us, likely, to complete that work. We have not completed that work yet, and it will probably be several weeks before we have that available, but that's something that is also underway, so that when you think about what are the consequences of starting a new working group, you would actually have some kind of numerical calculation of human hours that equate to starting or stopping a group. >>JAIME WAGNER: That's one way to weight the work, but another thing you mentioned was some thought given to the impact to the community, and this is available already or not? >>LIZ GASSTER: Actually, I think when you say "impact to the community," do you mean impact of the -- >>JAIME WAGNER: Importance to it. >>LIZ GASSTER: See, I believe that that's something that the council actually needs to consider. We did not try to infer or suggest any value judgment about any one particular area being more or less important than any other area, and I think we wouldn't want to try to do that for the community. I think that's something that it's important for the council to do, and I'm just guessing that, you know, just anecdotally, what we see is that there are issues that are important to some people, there are issues that are more important to other people around this table, that it's unlikely that there would be a -- on some issues, that there's going to be consistent view, and so we think that's the part of the conversation that really needs to be conducted by all of you, rather than staff trying to assess a value judgment on what work is more important than some other work. >>JAIME WAGNER: Excuse me. I had understand that there was some -- something going. >>CHUCK GOMES: Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Yes. Thank you. Well, for me, I think those figures are very clear, giving us very clear signal that we have a problem with the attendance to the working teams. So especially in some constituencies, and my constituency especially here. So by seeing that and being a new councillor and also still relatively new to the constituency, I could lean back and say, "Okay, that was the past, okay, let's start again." But that's not all. We still have these problems and I know that, and maybe in other constituencies also you have those problems to -- just to understand or communicate how this new model shall work in the future, this working team model, really, and that the major importance is put on the working team work top level. So rather than sitting on a council, let me say, and waiting for votings. So we have talked about a lot within our constituencies also here in Seoul, and we are going to prepare something that we can reach a better, let me say, acceptance and a better understanding about that. What I would say, in addition, is there may be, as you already -- there may be some points which are of more interest, well, to one of the constituencies than to the other, so in the past we tried to prioritize as well as possible, as good as possible as we could do. To some extent, maybe due to the fact that there are a lack of people, so we could not participate in some -- to some items, we have to find a model to think about, so -- and it would help us as well in the constituencies if we get some idea, some support, "Well, how could we improve the constituency outreach" in this respect, to be more known to the outside, outside -- to the people outside of the existing constituencies in order to bring more people on board. I don't know whether it's -- this point is a point of separate discussion, but -- so I tried a lot of discussions to people here, being in Seoul, about that, well, to really find people, they would be willing in order to work with you in the future. I do hope that we can improve. Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Wolf. And by the way, the team -- work team that Olga is chairing, one of their tasks is to talk about outreach, and so, Olga, that's a good tie-in there. Bill? >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Well, since Wolf's group and my group are sort of towards the bottom end of the barrel, I guess maybe I should say just something, in terms of the participation numbers. You know, I just want to -- I want people to understand, if they don't appreciate it, that NCUC has been very much preoccupied over the past year with the restructuring stuff. People have wasted -- spent, I should say, not wasted -- an absolutely staggering amount of time on charters, charter revisions, negotiations, whatever, and that has really blocked out the ability to engage on a lot of substantive issues. We are now in a situation where things are settling down and we're expecting that we're going to be able, with the kind of rapid growth in membership and the new appointees that have been blended into the mix and everything else, and the folks that will be coming on, that we'll have a lot more people who can engage going forward. At least that's our hope. But I think it has to be understood, though, that in the noncommercial sector, you're never going to have the same kinds of participation across the board. It's just not that way. I mean, people who work in a privacy organization might want to get involved in a group on WHOIS, but they're not going to get involved on post- expiration domain name recovery, you know. And so on. It's just -- it's inherent in the nature of working with a lot of volunteers from the noncommercial sector that you're going to have up- and-downs, but we're seeing already with STI, and I think there will be a lot of other cases, that there's a lot of people who are interested in stepping up and getting more engaged. So I'm hopeful that those numbers would improve. One thing I would say: I think it would really be helpful if there were Web pages on each of these issue areas that kind of marched people in a little more readily-accessible way from Step A to Step B to Step C in their understanding of what's going o because it's really hard -- you know, our chair sends out messages all the time on our list and says, "Look, people, we need bodies for that work team, that drafting group, et cetera," and I'm sure a lot of the folks that we have, particularly those that are abroad and not native English speakers, they look at the material on the Web and they go, "Gee, I don't know how to get involved in that, I don't know how to get my head around that." And it's the same issue that comes up when I try to talk people I know through the IGF and other environments -- as Zahid and Olga also has the same experience -- into getting engaged in ICANN issues. You know, they look and it just seems utterly impenetrable so we really need to find some way to like frame these issues and point to a trajectory of engagement that people can actually map onto their experiences. Otherwise, we're going to have the same problem recurrently. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now, did anybody have a chance to look at the Web site layout? Glen did. I have. By the way, Bill, what they've got mapped out, if it works, it's exactly what you're saying for each -- each topic. And I'm sure it will have to be improved over time, but it's quite impressive, and so obviously it's going to be a lot of work to keep it up and so forth, but I think that's very good. Liz? >>LIZ GASSTER: I was going to say the same thing and I think, you know, it could only get better from where it is today, so... >>CHUCK GOMES: That's very true. >>LIZ GASSTER: That's the good news. And I do want to just reiterate that, you know, our purpose in providing this data was really not to, you know, highlight or pick on any constituency. It's really just to, you know, begin the dialogue and look at this across the board, because it's clear that the participation isn't optimal in any of the constituencies. So I hope everyone understands the data in that vein. >>JAIME WAGNER: (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHUCK GOMES: And I think it's to be expected that depending on the interest areas, that you're going to have variability in terms of participation for all of us. So -- and, again, we shouldn't look at this as criticizing any one group, but rather, let's see what we can get out of it to make the whole process better. Now, have we covered the data on this? Because I do want to get to Theresa on strategic plan. Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Just a short comment, last comment on that. So for me, I did not feel blamed because, no, really it's good to see it as transparent as possible and that's good to see that. The other thing is, what I would like to point out is, you know, I think we should put more effort, when we start to create a new -- a new working team, just to -- from the outset to set up this team very -- in a -- in that way, that it is -- that people attend from the beginning, really. Because it's even -- it's even harder to step in later on, so maybe when you start with the details so nobody is really able, well, just to take over or to step in, and that's why people -- I got the experience also -- came in later, but they stepped out immediately. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Okay. Terry? >>TERRY DAVIS: Yeah. Chuck, I'm just going to make one more comment. I made it yesterday. I would encourage folks to go over and look at the ARIN policy proposal mailing list. Over the last 24 hours, I have plus 60 e-mails on about four different topics from 20 different individuals. It's tagged, so you can sort it out of your e- mail. People respond with a -- just I would encourage you to go take a look at how they do this, because it seems to work. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Sounds like a suggestion maybe staff can help us follow up on. Maybe we can do some things that way here. I -- let's change directions now, and we're going to skip Item 6 for a moment and go to Item 7 on the agenda, which is the ICANN strategic plan. Theresa, welcome, and it's all yours. >>THERESA SWINEHART: That's great. >>CHUCK GOMES: You need to talk fairly close to the mic. >>THERESA SWINEHART: Okay. I'll hug this thing. There we go. First, my apologies. I completely messed up, I think it was yesterday or whichever day of the week it was, and was supposed to be someplace and I wasn't, so my apologies and thanks for squeezing me in here. It's nice to be back, and Chuck, congratulations. So... good luck with all this. [Laughter] >>THERESA SWINEHART: I'm going to just do a quick overview. We did a session on the public open session Wednesday morning on where we are in the strategic plan. We've given updates over to the ccNSO and others. This is a draft work-in-progress, so I just wanted to give a sense of where we are. And sorry, I just have to see this. I'm going to go over just quickly where the current draft is, and how it was created. You're going to see what we're taking a different kind of approach, a different framework approach but you'll see many words and things that are the same from the prior document. The attempt of this framework is to create a one-pager or a one-page approach, following which there will be the document or the traditional kind of document that expands things in detail. And I'd like to get your feedback and thoughts, not just now but also over the course of, you know, the coming weeks, and we will be putting a version of this out for public comment as soon as we have received some feedback in, and then it will go out for public comment. Sorry. Thanks. The elements that have been considered in this framework are, first of all, the -- some insights from the Affirmation of Commitment requirements. You'll see some language in there. The current ICANN strategic plan, input from the board at a recent retreat that they had, and some initial input from members of the community. And what we're trying to do is create a simple framework. This is just an attempt of identifying what ICANN actually stands for. Again, this is very much in draft form and again will be put out for feedback and input. I don't think I want to go through and read it out right now, but I'll look forward to people's comments. So this is the framework. We're identifying sort of a high-level responsibility area, which is up at the top, that what ICANN manages is the coordination of the domain name system and Internet addressing for the benefit of Internet users around the globe. We're trying to put some of this into plainer English, as opposed to ICANN jargon. Hopefully that will also encourage participation from other parts of the world, because they'll actually understand what we do. We're trying to take an approach of looking at sort of four buckets. If you can put it that way. Four very high-level sort of buckets of framework that ICANN has work in. And these have been identified up above: Preserving the DNS stability and security; promoting competition, trust and consumer choice; excelling in IANA and other core operations; and maintaining ICANN's long-term role in the Internet ecosystem. Again, these are draft terms. The other thing that we're -- and under these, we are -- in the following slides, you'll see three categories of work areas, which I'll get to in a second. And those are the more detailed work areas of the organization. What we also had done in reviewing last year's operational and strategic plan is that a lot of the work that the organization does, a lot of the values, are things that cut across all of the four kind of high-level strategic directions. And those include: Maintaining a vibrant multistakeholder community model, regardless of the area of work; a partnership approach with different stakeholders in organization; maintaining an international perspective and strengthening that; and, of course, the accountability and transparency regardless of the area of work. In looking at the four sort of bucket categories, if I can put it in that term, the four categories at the top, we're then looking at outlining and highlighting community work. And lot of this will be familiar maybe to some of the GNSO initiatives. And we, clearly, haven't captured everything there. A strategic project -- and under "strategic projects," those will really be what's new and what's actually happening in the coming year. And then ongoing work which includes obviously board support or financial operations or the compliance work. And trying to frame the strategic planning discussion in these categories and use just high-level terminology -- again, this is followed by a document afterwards. So if I could just take a quick pause and maybe get a sort of reaction from people on what they think of this kind of approach? Or would you like me to go to the next slide and include the strategic projects? >>CHUCK GOMES: Let's take a minute and see if there is a reaction. Mine, and having been involved in the strategic plan for quite a while, it looks pretty positive to me. Rosemary? >>ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Mine, as a very new councillor and participant in ICANN, is that this is -- and I don't mean to offend anyone, but this is one of the major pieces of clarity that I have seen during the week that starts to explain to me, you know, where I should put my effort as a member of this community. >>CHUCK GOMES: Jaime? And Terry, you're next. >>JAIME WAGNER: I think this is what should be north for our prioritizing work. >>CHUCK GOMES: Good. Terry? >>TERRY DAVIS: Well, I'm going to mention a couple things that I don't see on there. Under IANA, specifically, we are still yet to get any significant penetration of IPv6 out there. It is not even going into the greenfields and startups. There is something wrong here. So that's a problem, and it seems like IANA probably owns the top of that. The other thing that is not on there, there is regulation going on of some of the routing on the Internet now. ICAO, for instance, has promised ARIN that we will use our air-to-ground links to isolate the Internet from any routing changes. And that is specifically because of the techniques that connection by Boeing used with the BGP. But that's something else -- those are two items that I don't see up there but, yet, they're in the background here. >>CHUCK GOMES: Does the latter one fit under stability and security? >>TERRY DAVIS: Potentially, but it's -- it's an issue with BGP basically being outdated. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks. Anybody else? Okay, Theresa, go ahead. >>THERESA SWINEHART: If you don't mind, the next slide. I think the point that you made on -- I'm not so familiar with the BGP and I would be interested in it more so we can capture that. On the IP addressing, I very much understand what you are saying. I wonder whether that might not be captured under strategic project areas which was where the big question marks came of how to work together with the regional internet registries and others, and we can outline that in the document. The strategic area projects are things that are of the higher focus area, or new or specific projects for the coming year or the course of the year or the two years. And we've put those -- the reason we've suggested breaking these apart is that the community work is really reflective of all the work in the supporting organizations and the collaborative community work that exists. Strategic projects are things that have been identified as important and actually project areas on implementation or new initiatives. And looking at ongoing work, obviously we have to continue to do ongoing policy activity and that's an important part we staff out, IANA board support, et cetera. And the strategic projects are just ones that we've tried to capture at least some initial thinking. Again, these will be fleshed out in a document that will accompany what we're trying to do as a one-page framework to simplify an understanding of what the organization does and, frankly, provide some clarity for all of us. So if somebody comes up to me and says, "I want to start making purple M&Ms with ICANN logos," it doesn't fit into the framework. You get my point. We really need to stay within our mission and responsibilities. That tries to capture some strategic project areas. I would venture to guess we haven't captured everything and would certainly welcome any input either now or in the course of the coming weeks also when we put it out for public comment of any input. >>CHUCK GOMES: Andrei? >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: Thank you. For many of the local governments in the world, ICANN's becoming "the" place where not only addressing issues are being discussed, resolved or helped. So it is stated for many years that ICANN is a place which focuses primarily on domain name addressing, IP addressing. But there will be no surprise, considering the growing power of the GAC in ICANN, there will be more and more question regarding other issues, not necessarily related to the addressing, like security. And it is stated that DNS CERT, scaling of the root, technical issues, I'm afraid there will be increase of the political pressure to the ICANN from the different local governments. >>CHUCK GOMES: Anyone else? Well, thank you very much, Theresa. Oh, there's -- >>THERESA SWINEHART: Not yet. >>CHUCK GOMES: You're not done yet. Okay. >>THERESA SWINEHART: Next slide. This is actually I think an important slide. It is what we are going to refer to as the enablers. But in some of the comments, including from the ccNSO, I heard some reference that these are actually values of the organization and fundamental principles of the organization. And I think that's a very good way to phrase it. They are cross-cutting across any issue that the organization is responsible for. And under those, there's also projects and initiatives that are occurring. And examples of some of these initiatives are listed here, including some of the requirements for community work across the organization on the implementation of the Affirmation of Commitments. You'll see the implementing impact reporting for key decisions and some of the other initiatives. So, again, we've divided this into community work, strategic project areas and then ongoing work. And these -- based on comments, we're happy to shift around a little bit. Some had also pointed out to us that we're missing some things, so I will look forward to hearing of anything that we're missing in these contexts as well. We had done -- the board had come up with, in some of their own discussions, 18 different issue areas. So we ran just for a trial during the public session that we had on Wednesday, which we obviously know not everybody could participate in, a quick survey using Survey Monkey or something like that. Anyway, we got some interesting feedback. We will be revising this and then putting it online to run again a survey sort of on a community level. Again, this is not a survey that's defining in any way. It's more of one form of input into the process, certainly not the only form of input into the process. So that's that slide. That was the link to the slide. Anyway, next. So let me give you the timeline and next steps. We've -- we're obviously doing the consultations this week. I will be working next week with Patrick Sharry, as many of you know, to prepare the draft document that comes behind it, also revise the one-page slide based on some initial feedback we've gotten. We'll get that draft to the board for consideration and then put that out for public comment, and we are looking to lengthen the public comment period as much as possible. So, hopefully, we'll be able to get that out by -- after the board meeting in early December. And based on community feedback, then we will look at making the revisions, getting it to the board for approval at their February meeting. We are trying to get the draft document, though, to the board as soon as possible so that we can try to extend the time frame of the public comment time frame. And that was it. And I'm not Rod Beckstrom. I'm actually Theresa. >>CHUCK GOMES: Theresa, a quick question. Is the comment period open now? Has it been posted for comment now? Or is that coming shortly? >>THERESA SWINEHART: That will be coming shortly, yeah. >>CHUCK GOMES: So those of you who commented here, I strongly encourage you to submit those comments in writing to that -- to the strategic, too. It really helps them, I think, if they see that, just like with new TLDs like we said on Sunday when we were going through that session. So encourage you. Thank you very much. Wolf? Keep these brief, please, because we have a couple other things to cover and our meeting is almost over. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Sorry, sorry. It would help just because I don't have a feeling of prioritization, but there used to be also strategic plans in formal years about strategic plans for this three- year period, in the former years. And then the question is only, was there a shift between last year's strategic plan and this year's strategic plan and why? You know, in terms of priorities. >>THERESA SWINEHART: Yes -- >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Just trying to understand because, you know, you can list up for me, but I don't get right feeling what is really priority. >>THERESA SWINEHART: I understand. There have been strategic plans over the past years. This approach is actually trying to take a different framework and provide some -- past strategic plans have listed nine items. And the nine items have included things like TLD implementation, IDNs, multistakeholder approach, things like that. This approach is seeking solely to take a framework and actually identify what are three or five or four absolute strategic facets of the organization. So the bigger picture objectives. And within that framework what are key areas of work from the community standpoint obviously, key areas of strategic projects and key areas of overall ongoing work. Part of this is to help prioritize what needs to be done and what doesn't need to be done. As one formulates the budget and the operating plan, what should remain, what should stay, what should go, and I think in that context, the focus of the discussion will probably be more on the strategic projects -- I mean, ongoing work obviously if one decides one shouldn't be doing things in the organization, then those would go, or in the community work. But I think it provides a better sense of what is going on and then the strategic projects what should be a priority and what shouldn't be a priority and help make an assessment of what should remain or what should go or if it should all stay. >>CHUCK GOMES: Is it still a three-year look, though? >>THERESA SWINEHART: Absolutely. It is absolutely still a three- year look and it is just to context it in a different way. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks. Terry, you had raised your hand? >>TERRY DAVIS: Oh, no. >>CHUCK GOMES: You're okay. Oh, Alan. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I'll second the comment that this presentation is more clarity than one is used to. Is the presentation available? >>THERESA SWINEHART: Yes, absolutely. I will get that circulated. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Thank you. >>THERESA SWINEHART: Please circulate it but also know that it's a draft. It's already being adjusted even based on the comments here to provide some clarity in that, and I will be working with Patrick next week. Go ahead and send it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Just note that it's a draft. >>THERESA SWINEHART: Note that it's a draft. The survey is no longer there. It was a test we used at the public session, things like that. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Will it be posted anywhere, Theresa? >>THERESA SWINEHART: Well, now, that's a good question. We've been revising this this week based on the input and the informal consultations we'd had. So I think what I would like to do is get that fully revised and then get that circulated and posted. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Zahid? >>ZAHID JAMIL: I'm just thinking the strategic plan and I'm trying to sort of put it in the context of the AoC. And I see some language in the AoC that says "the Internet is transformative technology that will continue to empower people around the globe, spur innovation, facilitate trade and commerce, enable the free and unfettered flow of information." So when I look at that in my developing country, I would say -- you know, think about projects that would talk about freedom of flow of information and things of that nature. Would that form part of some of your projects in your strategic plan or would that just be too broad? >>THERESA SWINEHART: I think it would depend if the community felt that that was within the scope of ICANN's mission or whether that was an observation about the Internet overall. We had a very passionate discussion in the public session about there had been in one of the -- board discussion, some members had also identified digital divide and what that means. Some of ICANN's work is helping to contribute to bridging it, but there was a long discussion about that and whether it is within ICANN's mission or not. So those kinds of things are... >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you very much, Theresa. Okay. We just got, like, five minutes now. So, Liz, is it something that's critical and kind of brief? >>LIZ GASSTER: Just short. Just to say thank you to Theresa and make the additional point that her presentation, I think, is particularly relevant to this group because the GNSO improvements specifically looks for revision to the PDP process that is directly linked to the strategic plan and the operational plan. So there's a real action item here for the council in the future in terms of linking our work more directly to the two plans she covered. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you very much. Okay. What I'm going to do in our last five minutes is jam through some things really fast, just at least get them on the record. Going back to Item 6, which is usually what we spend quite a bit of time in this follow-up meeting and we did not have time today, but I would like to just give two minutes, opportunity for people in five or six words to say what you thought -- it is up to you whether you participate, what you thought we did right at this meeting, what you thought we could improve on. We won't talk about what you think it was right or wrong or make suggestions now but just very quickly do a very quick survey so that we think true these things and hopefully that will help us moving forward. If you would like to share -- and you can share both at the same time, very few words, just what you think went well, what you think we can improve on. Who would like to start? Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I like the way we handled observers in public comments in our meetings this week. >>CHUCK GOMES: Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: I found very good our informal get-together, you know, on Sunday night. I think it was Sunday night or so. Saturday night or so. And that's what I would like on that. This is going to happen, let me say, regularly. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Stéphane? >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: I second that. The Saturday dinner, I thought was very good. I was disappointed with the breakfast the next day. I didn't think that was very useful, certainly not as useful as I expected it to be. I wonder if we should continue to do that or maybe do it differently. >>CHUCK GOMES: Edmon? >>EDMON CHUNG: The premeeting part tends to grow pretty big for the new gTLD sessions, so in terms of the room and the time allocated, I think it would be useful for longer time and bigger room. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I know we had a council election coming up so maybe there was a reason why people skipped out on the Saturday night dinner. It would be really good if we could get full participation in that. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Going on then -- sorry we didn't have more time for that. Feel free to put comments on the list if you'd like. Going to -- we are going to skip Number 8. We spent some time talking about that. We can do that in the future. On 9, any other business, I put the board presentation. If anybody wants to see that, I have it on my machine. I am going to give it to Glen to send for the session tomorrow in a few minutes. But if you would like to see that and even comment on it, I'll be here and you can see that. I next want to turn it over to Glen. She has something to share about Nairobi. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Thank you, Chuck. Yes, for Nairobi, we have got 23 rooms booked for the council, but they will have to have names on them by the 15th of December. And as you know, we have council support. We have ICANN support for the 23 travel slots as well. And these travel slots are left up to each constituency or each group to work out who they are going to send and if you could let me have these names by the 15th of December, please. And then we won't have any problems getting people a room or a travel slot. By the way, the visas also are needed for Kenya for lots of people. So please look into that yourselves. >>CHUCK GOMES: Glen, you'll send this message out to the list as well, right? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Yes, I'll do that Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you. Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I hope that the -- I did say this. I hope the dial-in facilities -- at least I will be able to come to the council and let them know because I won't be in Nairobi. It won't matter what time the meetings are because I will have a newborn child, all things going well and I will be up all night anyway. [Applause] Let's hope. Fingers crossed. Safe trip everybody. >>CHUCK GOMES: I saw a hand over here. Alan? >>ALAN GREENBERG: For those who may not have travel support -- Glen -- it would be useful to know which hotel the council is booked in so other people can also book there, if they choose. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Alan, that is totally impossible because there are about five or six or seven hotels that are being used and they have no idea where they are going to put anybody. And probably that will depend on the names we give them. So by the 15th of December, if we've got them the names, we'll get into a hotel. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I misunderstood, when you said there were 23 rooms booked -- >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Yeah, 23 rooms will be put aside in a hotel. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Okay. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: So that will mean the council will be together, and that's as far as -- unfortunately we can say anything. >>CHUCK GOMES: Is the venue at one of those hotels? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: No. >>CHUCK GOMES: It is totally separate commerce center. Okay. Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Glen, how do we know from the 23 slots you are speaking, how do we know how many are for the stakeholder groups or for the different stakeholder groups or constituencies allocated? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: As it is worked out now, it is one per council member. And if you want to put two other people from your constituency into those two slots, that's up to you. >>CHUCK GOMES: In other words, it doesn't have to be the councillors that fill those slots. Okay? Anything else? >>ALAN GREENBERG: I do note that there are only 21 councillors so there are two slots that need to be determined somehow. >>CHUCK GOMES: All right. Anything -- anything else? All right. We came pretty close. Thanks a lot, everybody. I hope you have a safe trip home. Thanks for your hard work and lots of meetings this week and for the cooperative and constructive attitude that everybody had. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Good luck, Chuck. [Applause]