GNSO Improvements Briefing 
 Cairo, Egypt
 03 November 2008
 >>DENISE MICHEL: We'll go ahead and get started.
 I know there was a room change, and some people may be a bit lost, but we're somewhat pressed for time this morning.  We have scribes who are scribing this, and this will be posted up on the Internet.  I just want to remind you to state your name, if you have a question, so the scribes can capture that as well, and speak slowly.
 There's handouts outside the door, the second door over there, so if you came in the first one, you might want to check over there and get some paper.
 I'm Denise Michel, the vice president of policy, and --
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  I'm Liz Gasster, senior policy counselor.
 >>ROB HOGGARTH:  Rob Hoggarth, senior policy director for ICANN.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  And this was intended to be an informative and informal Q&A and discussion.  The room doesn't quite lend itself to that type of forum, but please feel free to stop us at any time to ask questions or have a discussion.  We're here to provide you with information and answer any questions that we can.
 I have a set of slides that provide an overview.  We want to make sure that those who are -- have not been following the whole GNSO improvements process have an opportunity to get up to speed on the background and current activities in this area.
 Again, if you have any questions about this material, please just stop me at any time and ask.
 We've got a little less than an hour to run through these, and staff, of course, will be available all week.  We have handouts that provide more information.  There's a Web page.  I'll put up the URL at the end.
 All of these documents, of course, are online, and we'd be happy to answer any questions and provide you with more information after this is over as well.
 So this effort is a culmination of a -- about a two-year -- two-year project on the part of the board and the community.  It started really with an independent review of the GNSO, which is part of ICANN's commitment for continual improvement and transformation.  All of the ICANN structures are to be reviewed about every three years, and the GNSO was the first one.
 The review was done in 2006, although there was an initial self-review that the GNSO Council itself did in 2004.
 The independent review was completed, opened for public comment.  The board created a working group to consider the number of recommendations that the independent evaluator proposed, have a dialogue with the community, solicit input, and develop a series of draft recommendations and then ultimately final recommendations for the board to discuss with the community, consider, and act upon.
 So the Board Governance Committee developed several key objectives in their work, in considering how to improve the GNSO.  Some of their key objectives included maximizing stakeholder participation, ensuring recommendations can be developed on gTLD consensus policies for board review, making sure those policies are clearly defined.  Ensure that the policy development is based on thoroughly researched, well-scoped objectives and operated in a predictable manner, to ensure effective implementation.  
 And improving overall the communication and administrative support for the GNSO and all of its constituencies.
 The Board Governance Committee provided their comprehensive set of recommendations on GNSO improvements to the board, and in New Delhi in February of this year, the board accepted the improvements report, asked the GNSO to begin work on implementation of the noncontroversial elements of the report, and encouraged further public input on other elements that were contentious, particularly the restructuring of the GNSO Council.
 The GNSO created an implementation planning team to consider how to go about the extensive task of implementing these recommendations.
 In May, they created a proposed structure to handle the various elements of the GNSO improvements.  In June -- and I'll just run through a quick calendar for you so you can get a sense of how this work progressed.  In June of this year, the board approved the comprehensive set of GNSO improvement recommendations from the Board Governance Committee, except for the council structure.  And on that element, they asked the GNSO to create a working group called "The Working Group on GNSO Council Restructure" and to back to the board in 30 days with a proposed consensus approach for structuring the council.
 There was quite a bit of disagreement and opposition, particularly on the part of the business constituency, intellectual property constituency, and ISP constituency, to the proposed structure that came out of the Board Governance Committee.  They proposed four stakeholder groups would comprise the GNSO Council.  Each would have an equal number of seats:  Registrars, registries, commercial and noncommercial.
 The GNSO working group came back to the board in 30 days, in July, with a new plan for structuring -- restructuring the council.
 And August and September, through the course of two board meetings, the board adopted almost all of the recommendations from that working group in structuring the council.
 And in September, the GNSO Council approved the implementation plan which provides a structure for working on all of the implementation elements.
 And the two primary committees in that plan are the policy process steering committee, which will oversee work on the policy development process and the working group model, which I'll speak more about in a few minutes.  The other committee is the Operations Steering Committee, which will oversee the work of essentially all the other work that is contained in the GNSO recommendations.  Constituency support, communications, and other elements.  And I see several people in this room that were -- helped drive the creation of this plan and are leading some of these groups, and for them and latecomers, please feel free to stand up and add to any of the explanations that we're providing in this broad overview.
 This is intended to be an informal discussion and Q&A session, although the room isn't really set up very well for it, but please feel free to interrupt us at any time.
 So that's the calendar this year that brought us to the point we're at.
 So the -- when the board adopted most of the GNSO working group's recommendations, the two major outstanding issues that remain unresolved and for which the board is still seeking community input.  One is the election of the two members of the board from the GNSO, how that process would occur.  The board is seeking more feedback from the GNSO community, in particular, on the proposal contained in the GNSO working group.
 And the second issue is the role of users in the -- individual users in the GNSO.  The board is seeking more community dialogue and input on that as well.  The Board Governance Committee and its set of recommendations suggested that registrants be included in the noncommercial stakeholder group.  The GNSO's working group report recommended that it not be limited to registrants.  There is, of course, the At-Large Advisory Committee and the supporting at large community structure which involves individual users broadly in ICANN activities, and of course there's the noncommercial -- existing noncommercial user constituency, which involves noncommercial entities, organizations, in GNSO.  And the discussion continues on whether and how to involve individual users in the GNSO.
 So the board is actively soliciting input.  We've asked all of the constituencies and members and the at-large advisory committee and the other liaisons to provide any additional input they may have on both of these issues, and in particular we've opened a public comment forum to make sure people can provide comments online on the issue of individual user involvement in the GNSO.
 So that's the calendar and sort of outline of events that brought us to today.
 Overall, the five main areas of improvement that the Board Governance Committee recommendations focused on, and now our implementation efforts will focus on, include:  Adopting a working group model; making a working group model the focus or foundation of policy development work within the GNSO; revising the policy development process.  The policy development process is currently contained in the bylaws, has very strict time lines and processes that, in many ways, don't bear much resemblance to the reality of actually developing policy in the GNSO, and I think everyone is looking forward to revising the -- what we call the "PDP."
 Enhancing the constituencies.  Over the years, we've heard many recommendations and received many requests from constituencies on how ICANN can provide more support and facilitate their work in policy development, so there's a number of initiatives that fall under enhancing and supporting constituencies.
 Then improving communications.  It's not only communications with ICANN structures, how we can encourage and support interaction and communication among the various supporting organizations and advisory committees and with the board, but also with the public and -- so in this communication box, it includes not only interaction within the ICANN community, but also online collaboration tools, translations, and other things to improve communications, interaction, and transparency.
 And then finally, of course, the GNSO Council structure, which we've touched on:  Transitioning the existing structure to the new structure proposed by the GNSO's working group and adopted by the board.
 So the -- I'll just quickly summarize the key points in the recommendations for adopting a working group model.
 The impetus is to provide a model for policy development that is open, broad, balanced, and knowledgeable.  Transitioning from what historically has been task forces in the past that have, in many ways, just mirrored the constituencies and in some cases the individuals on the GNSO Council were looking to support the GNSO in transitioning to a working group model that will -- with the intention of being more broad based and more inclusive and giving more stakeholder groups an opportunity to participate in policy development.
 Providing a strong, neutral, and experienced and respected chair.  Providing support for that.
 The goal, of course, is to have an open, honest, respectful consensus-driven process.
 Ensure we have a process for providing statement of interest disclosures, making sure there's appropriate staff support, infrastructure and funding to support this model in their work.
 The GNSO has -- I think is expected to create a work team to help create the rules and procedures and structure for these working group models, and I'm sure that will occur with a lot of public discussion and community input.  And the working group model will ultimately be approved by the board and then implemented.
 Was there a question?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I just wanted to add a quick comment.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Hi, Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA: Hi. 
 >>DENISE MICHEL: And we're being scribed, so this is Avri Doria.
 >>AVRI DORIA: I just wanted to add a comment that those working teams to talk about how to build the open working groups will themselves be open.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Yes.  Thank you.  That's a great point.  Would you like to come join us and --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Huh-uh.
 [Laughter]
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I've never seen your slides.  I want to see your slides.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Neither have I.
 [Laughter]
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  So the --
 [Laughter]
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Okay.  I don't know what's coming next.
 [Laughter]
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  So, yeah, I actually have a slide here that has the new implementation structure that the GNSO has created to work on all of this implementation, and I think it will be a very useful structure that provides a clear sort of path to which groups will be handling implementation of the various elements, and will be encouraging a much broader cross-section of the community to get involved in various teams, depending on their interest.
 On the policy development process improvements, some of the key points here is want to make sure that they align with the contractual requirements in the requirements and bylaws; that we build in periodic self-review, assessment, and metrics.  I think there's broad agreement that one of the problems with the existing policy development process is it's -- it's in the bylaws static, and is difficult to change to, to bring it in line with the needs of the GNSO and the community.
 Aligning the policy development process and the GNSO's policy activities with ICANN's strategic operational objectives.
 The intention here is for the GNSO Council to transition to be a manager of the policy development process rather than a legislative body conducting the policy -- the policy process and making the decision -- the policy decisions.
 Ensuring that there is a strong and well-supported preparation at the front end of a policy development process with careful scoping, a lot of community discussion, research and scheduling of the PDP.
 And as Avri has mentioned, we expect -- the GNSO expects to create a very open work team to develop the policy development process.  They'll be establishing a model charter, rules and procedures for this work team.
 So as I mentioned, the board has accepted the GNSO's working -- GNSO working group's recommendations on how to structure the GNSO Council, and again, for the council, the focus is managing and monitoring and guiding the working groups that will be conducting the policy development.
 As part of this transition, the Board Governance Committee also adopted a recommendation that was approved by the council a year and a half ago?  I think about perhaps about a year ago, somewhere around there.  So the council voted to initiate term limits for council members.  That's currently open for public comment, right?  The proposed bylaw change --
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  Right.  Till November 3rd.
 >>DENISE MICHEL: -- for that?  
 And then they'll be benchmarking the policy development process, analyzing trends in the gTLD arena, reorganizing overall the council to be representative, agile, collegial -- that's interesting -- and organization.
 So the organization that was adopted by the board, as proposed by the GNSO, has four broad stakeholder groups:  The registrar stakeholder group, registry stakeholder group, commercial stakeholder group, and noncommercial stakeholder group.
 Statements of declaration of interest is another element that we'll be working with the community to implement as part of the council restructuring.
 Enhancing constituencies.  Part of the key here, as I mentioned, is to support the constituencies, provide more ICANN resources and staff support, and help the constituencies operate in an open and transparent manner.  Where appropriate, help them standardize processes, ensure that they're accessible and democratic.  Support broad global participation and in multiple languages.
 The Board Governance Committee recommendations also include a centralized directory.  Again, to help with transparency and accessibility.
 Provide more staff support, a toolkit to ensure that the constituencies have the support they need for things like outreach services, administration, and others.
 And the work team here that the GNSO anticipates forming is constituency operations team and again, we'll be supporting the development of standards, rules and procedures to guide this work.
 Under coordinating with ICANN structures, this really has already started.  There has, over the last several years, been ongoing interactions with other supporting organizations and advisory committees.  Of course we'll continue to support that, and I think for the first time there's a joint session with the other supporting organizations and advisory committees today, actually, to address key issues of interest broadly in the ICANN community.
 So those types of activities will -- we expect to further enhance and support.
 We'll be looking at ways of improving communication with the other advisory committees on an ongoing basis, improving board member awareness of GNSO issues and activities, coordinating policy activities generally across the ICANN bodies, supporting things like conference calls with chairs and board and CEO.
 And GNSO anticipates creating a work team to focus on these and other issues that fall within coordination and communication.
 And this slide shows you, in a visual way, the recommendations that came out of the GNSO that were adopted by the board.  It's a bicameral voting structure based on two houses, contracted party house and a non-contracted party house, with one council-level nonvoting, nominating committee appointee.  That's what "NCA" stands for.
 And one voting noncom appointee would be assigned to each of these two houses.
 The GNSO Council chair would be elected by 60% of both houses.  There's a number of voting thresholds that are included in the recommendations that were approved by the board.
 The working group also suggested that each voting house elect a board seat.  This is an issue that's still outstanding, was not approved by the board, and discussion continues on that.  And the stakeholder groups are intended to be quite broadly representative.
 And again, there's much more detail on this in the handouts that are outside the door, and of course also on the Web site.  So this is what the new council structure will look like, and the board at its last meeting also approved a phased transition plan that anticipates having the stakeholder groups finalized and the new council seated in June of 2009, and this is what it will look like.
 The GNSO Council will have 20 voting members and one nonvoting member appointed by the nominating committee.  With, as I mentioned, a contracted party house and a non-contracted party house.
 The contracted party house side, there will be three seats each for registry stakeholder group and registrar stakeholder group.  On the non-contracted party house side, there will be a commercial stakeholder group that will have six seats on the council and a noncommercial stakeholder group with six seats on the council.
 Again, both of these groups are intended to be quite diverse and broad based.
 At this point, the council also has liaisons -- continues to have liaisons from both the GAC and the ALAC.
 That latter liaison could change depending on how the board resolves the issue of individual user participation in the GNSO.
 This is a rundown of the voting thresholds that were agreed to by the GNSO's working group and adopted by the board.  Again, all this is online and also in your handouts.
 So as Avri had mentioned, this is the structure for implementation that the GNSO adopted last month, with the policy process steering committee that met for the first time here in Cairo, and information on this steering committee is online and I'll be giving you a URL and it can also be found in -- Chuck?  I think -- do we need a mic?  This is Chuck Gomes.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Thanks, Denise.  Just a couple comments here.  First of all, this organization here is designed to come up with an implementation plan -- implementation plans for all of the GNSO improvements, but not the bicameral structure implementation.  That's going to be handled through some separate work with us, but the main point I wanted to make, you can see here what's envisioned.  And this isn't finalized yet.  But there are at least five different work teams that are envisioned to be formed, and this is never going to work if we have the same people on multiple teams, so it's going to be really critical that there be broader participation in the work teams from constituencies, from users -- and you don't have to be associated with a constituency, as Avri said -- in contrast to times past when we had a lot of people duplicating on teams.  It just won't work.
 One reason is scheduling, because we have a very short window in a given day of time -- just a few hours -- when we can really accommodate people in all time zones without making an extremely bad time for some of them.  And even then, some of us have really early times in the day or really late.
 So it's going to be really important to get different people on all of these work teams, and not have duplication there, so I guess I'm making a pitch right now to get as many people involved from constituencies and those not associated with constituencies.  I know within the registry constituency, we will be trying to get as many new people involved in these different work teams as we can.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you, Chuck.  That's very helpful.
 Any other questions or comments?  On this slide?
 So I'll highlight some of the recent actions that relate to GNSO improvements and some of the things we can expect in the next month or two.
 So on the policy development process and working group model, staff is conducting research to support these efforts within GNSO.  Draft charters are being developed for the GNSO groups, and the final constructs, as I noted, that comes out of the GNSO in their proposed new policy development process and working group model will be approved by both the council and the board.
 On the GNSO Council structure, the -- as Chuck noted, the implementation plan team structure has been approved.  The council term limits are out for public comment.  We're also soliciting comment, as I noted on the individual Internet users' involvement.
 Council will restructure Phase 1 implementation.  The first plan is due to the board in December to outline the details of how this transition will occur for the new council and stakeholder groups.
 Existing constituencies have also been asked by the board to renew or submit confirmations to the board by February 2009.
 Stakeholder groups petitioner charters are due to the board by April 2009.  Each new stakeholder group needs to have a plan approved by the board before it seats members of the council.  And as I noted, the new council is expected to be seated in June 2009.
 On enhancing constituencies, the ICANN bylaws have always provided for -- a clause for allowing any interested stakeholder group to apply, to be a new constituency.  There's never been any mechanisms or tools or additional information to help groups do that, or indicate how that process would actually occur, so staff has recently created a notice of intent to form a new constituency and a template charter.  Those are posted on the Web site.  And they're now available to any entities that are interested in creating constituencies.  And any -- so the idea here is to -- is for the first step for any group that's interested in forming a new constituency to fill out this notice of intent and that will be posted publicly, so that the GNSO community and the broader community are aware that there's a group interested in forming a new constituency.  And then the second step is for them to complete a petition to the board and a proposed charter.
 That template document had also been acknowledged by the board and has been posted publicly.  We've also recently issued a constituency survey to all the GNSO constituencies.  It is out for -- we've asked all the constituency leaders to distribute it to all their members and the survey period is from November 3rd to December 2nd.  The survey data will be aggregated and published in early January and provided to the community broadly.
 The idea here is to just take this initial step to gather information on what constituency members feel needs to be done, what type of support they would like from ICANN.  And if this survey vehicle is found to be a useful mechanism, we also wanted to make it broadly available to the GNSO community to conduct additional surveys and gather more information that's related to GNSO improvements and other items.
 This input also -- the results of the survey will also be provided to the GNSO's constituency operations work team to factor into the work that they do.
 On GNSO communications, we're developing some draft guidelines for translation and interpretation involving GNSO work for consideration by the work team.
 We're providing a dedicated staff person to support all the efforts related to communications within the GNSO.  We're currently working with ICANN senior architect on requirements for a new GNSO Web site.  Those plans are ongoing and will be developing just an initial beta site for focus-group testing in December to give the community something to look at, react to and build upon as we work towards a new GNSO Web site that supports the community's efforts.
 And for those of you who haven't seen the survey, I encourage you to check with your constituency and get the log-in.  We assigned a pin for each constituency so we can also aggregate data on a constituency-by-constituency basis.  The purpose again is to collect some initial information on how we can better support the constituencies.  These are some of the survey topics that are included.
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  I would like to make an extra comment about the survey because we've gotten several questions and concerns from the community.  It is not our intent to use the survey results in any kind of statistical way to conclude that some majority might want one thing versus another.  It's intended really as a broad-based request for information so that as we examine the kinds of tools and resources that might be useful for the further community, that we have a real sense of what the interest and concerns and needs of each of the constituencies are.  So I just want to allay concerns that this is not going to be tabulated in any kind of statistical way.  We know that the results aren't statistically significant and, yet, you have different sizes of constituencies so there may be different numbers of peoples submitting responses for each.
 >>DENISE MICHEL: That's an excellent point.  Just to reinforce that, think of the survey really has an initial step and it will be providing the survey results to the community to think about, factor in.  And we are hoping some of the questions on the survey actually prompt additional discussion about constituency support and how we can help enhance constituency service.  It is very much the beginning of a community dialogue and not at all the end result.
 And the URL at the bottom of the slide is the web page that -- on which we're parking all of this background information and current information related to GNSO, so it is easily found in one place.  Yes?  Milton?
 >>MILTON MUELLER:  Thanks, Denise.  Thank you all for this very interesting restructuring process.  It is going to be a long-term process.  I wanted to pick up on your comments about individuals.  I just want to both inform you about what's happening on the noncommercial user side with respect to that and also raise some important distinctions.
 We created a provisional individual membership category after the Paris meeting and invited individuals to join the noncommercial users constituency as a way of preparing for this change and I'm happy to report that's been sort of unusually successful.  We just in the last three days, I think, with the publicity surrounding ICANN we've gotten, like, six or seven individual applications.  These are all new people.  They're not people crossing over from ALAC.  They're people -- a lot of them are academics who could not go to the trouble to get their University to join as an organization but are interested in what ICANN does.
 So -- now the important thing to understand, however, about individuals joining the noncommercial users constituency is that there's no limitation -- you shouldn't think of individuals as something that belongs in a noncommercial user category per se.  Individuals could also be in a commercial user category.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Right.
 >>MILTON MUELLER:  And the point is they need to decide whether they are participating in the ICANN process as somebody who's looking out for sort of the public interest policy perspective or as somebody who is looking out for their own interest as a commercial player.  So, for example, if they are a domainer or a commercial consultant in the domain name industry, they should be encouraged to join the commercial users.  And we wouldn't want to create a category that says all individuals as individuals belong in the noncommercial category.  That's my main point.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you.
 Do you have other comments or questions?  Bruce.  Bruce Tonkin.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:  I guess my comment would be wanted to commend the staff for this presentation because I think it is very -- a clear representation of something that's becoming increasingly complex, I guess, and it reflects obviously the stakeholders trying to come to a model that they think works for them.
 The only concern I would have, I notice there are surveys about -- to the GNSO constituencies and I probably need to look at the survey to understand it fully.  But I guess the impression it is mostly focused on how to improve structure and organization in ICANN and what people's satisfaction of that in the GNSO and their level of satisfaction of that.
 One thing I think that is missing a little bit in the GNSO itself is, does it really survey on a regular basis the external parties that use domain names in some way and find out does is it really meeting the needs?
 What I see is kind of two alternative realities, if you'd like.  When we are in a meeting like this and I participated in the GNSO committee meetings on Saturday and Sunday, there are -- it is a room full of experts and they're focusing on quite specific nuances.  It is like a single sentence in page 20 of document 10 that relates to a new gTLD.  So that's the room full of experts.
 But if you go outside of the group and people looking at much bigger macro issues and at a high level those issues are -- there is a general dissatisfaction that, I think, ICANN is seen to be a place where domain names, policy development should be happening.  And then some of those stakeholders are saying they want to see is ICANN really making an impact on perhaps misuse of domain names or privacy or -- there is probably three or four main topics which I think would be -- privacy on the Internet, misuse of domain names are probably the two big topics.  And then obviously there is people very interested in the new gTLD process.
 I wonder whether GNSO doesn't lose track of the fact that it needs to be serving that external community and not getting so focused on internal stuff that you have a whole bureaucracy, if you like, that's busy working at making the bureaucracy being more effective of being a bureaucracy instead of saying, have we solved any of those big issues.  And I think in the external environment the answer to that is no, it has not.
 And I think perhaps one of the biggest advances in the GNSO has been the new gTLD.  That's been a big step forward and that's taken years to develop, and it still has got further work.  There is still a degree of selling that needs to happen, because I think there are people externally that think that's still a bad thing.  I am not sure how well the GNSO community is really going out and sort of -- the people that created it, if you like, each of the constituencies more or less signed off on the new gTLD policy.  But if I talk to their external environment, they're going, "No, we don't like this" even though they supposedly had representatives in the GNSO process.
 I just think there needs to be some element that is in this GNSO improvements that you are surveying that external community and measuring whether the GNSO is really making headway on the top two or three issues that most people externally think ICANN should be dealing with.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you.  That's a very helpful suggestion.  And this initial survey is focused at the GNSO improvements recommendation for improving ICANN support for constituencies.  We decided to use that specific element to test this survey tool and see if it is effective and that's an excellent suggestion for a follow-up survey that focuses more broadly and, of course, would also be responsive to the GNSO recommendations that charge us with significantly increasing our outreach and support for recruiting new interest groups and entities to be involved in GNSO activities.
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  It might be helpful to just make a minute to outline the three general areas of focus that the survey address because these were relatively specific in terms of the overall recommendations of the board.  The board made a set of recommendations having to do with training and education, skills training and expertise training both in terms of understanding how ICANN operates, perhaps the bylaws, perhaps information about the -- if you are a newcomer to a working group or a newcomer to the council, what do the ICANN structures mean?  There is a set of questions that deal with what kinds of educational or training or, say, a guidebook to ICANN's processes that might be useful to the community and asks input from the constituencies about that.
 The second whole area has to do with the potential to create a tool kit of services for constituencies that would potentially include anything from administrative services to help the constituencies, for example, helping you set up conference calls, helping you set up a Web site, helping you set up meetings and do coordination of that nature.  But also at a more professional level, the potential that ICANN staff might be made available to help you in, say, the scribing or development of public policy positions within your constituency.  So there is a set of questions that deal with resources that might be useful for constituencies and trying to get feedback on which the panoply of resources one might conceive of being useful might actually be useful in your judgment for each constituency.
 And then there is a third set of questions that go to really trying to look at the recommendation that deals with wanting there to be some consistency in the policies and practices of each constituency, for example, to ensure principles like making your membership available, having your membership open or what your charters are or what your processes are for developing public policy and getting some consistency across the constituency.
 So in a sense, the survey is somewhat narrow.  Those are three broad categories in and off themselves but it is not attempting to survey on all of the improvements but really on those specific areas.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you.  Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Yeah.  Thanks, Liz.  Denise, you showed the slide on the constituency operations work team, one of the work teams that was in the diagram.  It seems to me that this survey will provide some data that could be very useful to that team, so I personally am very happy that data will be available.  We don't know the results yet.  But, still, I suspect that it will be quite helpful to that working team in that regard.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Good, I hope so.
 Other comments or questions?  Milton?
 >>MILTON MUELLER:  Sorry you have to hear from the same people all again.  But another issue is constituencies and what they are.  We've had an exchange about this and I think it is important to bring that issue out and perhaps elaborate on it a bit.
 We have a contradiction here in that under the new stakeholder structures, constituencies are subunits of stakeholder groups.  Now, if we're not careful, we've introduced yet another layer of bureaucracy for people coming into ICANN who are already overwhelmed with the complexity.  Just try explaining to an ordinary person on the street the difference between ALAC and the NCUC or even the ALAC and the GNSO and their eyes will glaze over immediately.
 So now you're talking about, okay, I figured out the difference between ALAC and the GNSO and I want to join the noncommercial stakeholders group.  But wait a minute, there's 16 different constituencies here that I might be interested in.
 And, indeed, the constituencies as it now stands are hard-wired into the bylaws, right?  And so what you're doing now -- I understand why you want to encourage new constituencies to form.  That's a good thing if it gets new people involved.
 However, under the current framework, you're inviting the board to possibly be revising the bylaws to create six or seven new entities and you're creating a very heavy process.
 Now, the way we're approaching this in noncommercial is to hope that the board doesn't go that route.  We're saying we are going to create a new stakeholder group structure that's very integrated and simple and you join that.  You should know whether you are a noncommercial or a commercial user.
 And then once you're in that structure, you can assemble into little grouplets of any interest, right?  Maybe you're interested in child protection.  Maybe you're interested in freedom of expression.  Maybe you're interested in privacy.  Maybe you're interested in any number of things but basically those are very lightweight, easy-to-form things and we don't want to have to go to the board every time there is six people that want to form a special interest group to focus on a particular aspect of policy.
 So that's a big concern that we have.  And most of all, we don't want those little grouplets to have some kind of a claim on council seats because then you're making the whole process of constituency formation into a power struggle in which one group is essentially competing with other groups for a fixed number of seats on the council.  That's a disaster waiting to happen in a structure that's already too bureaucratized and almost too remote as Bruce was indicating from the concerns of ordinary people.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you, Milton.  Others should feel free to jump in on this discussion.  The Board Governance Committee working group that developed these recommendations actually discussed this point a fair amount in their report that's posted on the Web site, and it will be linked from this page that's noted here.
 The intention of the stakeholder groups is to serve as sort of broad and umbrellas that allow for the allocation and seating of council members and provide a structure that's more fluid and accepting of new constituencies.  But it is the clear intention of the board and the board working group that developed these recommendations to encourage and foster new constituencies and interest groups within the GNSO.
 So I take your point about -- I think, about grouplets, but the perspective of the board is to make sure that the GNSO has a structure that can grow with the Internet and is welcoming of new interests as they emerge and want to be part of the GNSO.
 And, of course, the bylaws have always allowed for new constituencies to petition the board to be formed so this is not a change.  And the Board Governance Committee recommendations asked staff to make it clear and little more accessible to people who might be interested in using those, blah, provisions to actually petition for a new constituency.
 But how we -- how the stakeholder groups are formed, what they look like, how they interact the constituencies, all of that -- those are all open issues.  And this transition period will be a time to discuss these details and provide plans for community dialogue and ultimately for board approval.
 Marilyn?  Marilyn Cade.
 >>MARILYN CADE:  Thanks, Denise.  I want to pick up on this, what I consider sort of tension that I think it's similar maybe to what Milton has identified.  And that is the importance of awareness and participation broadly in ICANN and then the channeling of interest as it emerges into involvement in policy development activities.
 I, as many people know, was involved with the group of commercial and noncommercial and government entities that helped to battle through and think about what the green paper and the white paper and other -- and then we thought about structure a lot.
 And I am really struggling with the implications of how the board has -- the committee has somewhat, I think, created an artificial hope.  And I'm just going to articulate it very clearly.  My background and involvement for a major corporation is in policy development.  And, secondly, I have a second related career in awareness outreach, capacity-building, those are very related things.  But people who want to delve into policy development and take the responsibility of analyzing, researching and thinking through the consequences of governing policy are very often focused on a very critical and very important set of activities.  But they may not be the best people to undertake the broad awareness, the outreach, the encouragement of people to come into the organization and then to have a well-defined set of paths to self-select themselves with encouragement with materials, maybe even with mentors into a deeper form of participation.
 What I'm very hopeful of is that we will not -- in the past two days, three days I have been struck by a language change and much of my academic work was focused on the use of words.
 So I look and I read the bylaws and I note that we have a GNSO policy council.  The purpose of that policy council is to develop policy.  The purpose of that policy council is not to govern the SO.
 Governing the SO, the administrative and management activities and the outreach and participation and understanding the general kinds of materials and support that can be used to reach a wide variety of people and particularly if translated reach a very diverse, distributed set of people, I think is an initial step.  And both of those functions -- both of those areas of activities need support, but I'm also very concerned by a language change that I have seen, a choice of words.  I have seen people saying that they are using a phrase that equates the policy council with the GNSO.  To me those are not the same thing.  And I really urge those of us that are involved in the restructuring activity and all of you who are interested to think through what that implication means.
 If, in fact, we're going to put people who are elected to make policy -- to do policy analysis and make policy decisions and to look on page 22, line 17, word 32, and think about the implications of that word on the contracts, that's a little different than trying to be able to meet with business people from Egypt or business people from Mexico or business people from Syracuse and encourage them or NGOs or academics, encourage them to understand why ICANN is important and then how they can get involved.
 So I'm urging those people who have been taking their role as a policy councillor and switching their terminology from "GNSO policy councillor" to "GNSO" to think about the consequences of that because they, basically, are elevating themselves to try to take on both those sets of work.
 The policy work is incredibly important.  And you have to become expert at it.  I do not see anywhere in the rest of the world where those two broad sets of functions come together in a single individual or single group.  So it's something that I'm really thinking about because if I'm broadly recruiting people to be interested in ICANN, I need a broad set of materials and I need to be able to bring them in and let them then become educated on a wide set of issues, not just about GNSO policy.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Sure.
 >>MARILYN CADE:  But broadly about the organization.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  Thank you, Marilyn.  Other comments?  Questions?
 Are there any other comments or questions that people have?  I know you're all eager to go to the welcoming ceremony.  So we'll wrap up now.  Thank you all for coming.  Again, this information is all online at the URL provided here and will be linked from the GNSO and the ICANN home page and there is additional handouts outside the middle door there.  Thank you all for coming.