Open Joint Session -- gNSO, ccNSO, GAC, ALAC: Reporting Back
 ICANN Meeting - Cairo
 Thursday, 6 November 2008

 >> I'd like to introduce the moderator for this program, longtime ICANN consultant and participate, Patrick Sharry.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thank you, Nancy.
 We're here today for the reporting back part of the joint meeting of the supporting organization and advisory committee chairs.
 These sorts of conversations are an important part of the multistakeholder model.
 We've known for a long time the enormous value in having bilateral conversations.  So the government people in the GAC talking to the users in the ALAC; the country code people in the CCs talking to the GNSO; the governments talking to the business constituencies, and so forth.
 What we tried to do on Monday was to take that process, hopefully, a big step forward.  Having seen the value of the individual conversations, what we tried to do on Monday was bring everyone together so that we could have all of these groups talking to each other at the same time.
 From an ICANN perspective, that was a bit of an experiment and certainly a learning experience.
 We will continue to do it.  And we know that as we continue to do it, we'll get better at it.  We'll devise better processes, better ways of interacting, better formats.  But we will continue to do it.  Because the feedback we've gotten from the chairs and also the people in the community, is that there's value there.  We just haven't maximized it yet.
 On Monday, what we tried to do was, before we went to our constituencies, before the main meetings within each of our groups started, to give everyone some perspective on what the other participants in this ICANN space were thinking on some really important issues those of you who were in the room on Monday will recall that we spoke about the President's Strategy Committee, new gTLDs, and IDN ccTLDs.  And in some part, the issues that overlap those two last ones.
 In a moment, we'll turn to reports from the SO and AC chairs on exactly those issues.
 What we tried to do on Monday was encourage a free, frank, fearless, but friendly, conversation between these various parts of the ICANN organization about those important issues.  Those people have now gone back to their silos, their individual working streams, to speak with their members about those issues, hopefully, bringing to those meetings the wisdom, the input, the insight from other groups at the beginning of the week.
 Our task now is to hear from each of these people about those issues and perhaps to encourage even a little bit more of that free, frank, fearless, and friendly conversation.
 I'll just warn you that we will finish, at the very latest, at 9:25, because we have a little bit of housekeeping to do here at the front in terms of rearranging chairs and so forth, and we need to be very prompt for our start at 9:30 for the next session.
 We may even finish a little earlier than that, if we can, just to give a little bit more room, a little bit more of a buffer for that.
 So I'd like to start by focusing on the PSC, unless there are some immediate comments from the SOs and ACs, I'd like to start focusing on the PSC.  And I'd ask Janis Karklins, chair of the GAC, to speak to us a little bit about what was done there.
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   One question for clarification.
 You meant what was done on Monday or what was done in the GAC?
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   What was done in the GAC, Janis.
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   In fact, we didn't finish.
 And that's -- that creates a slight difficulty for me to speak on substantive issues.
 I hope that the GAC will be able to present the finalized document in maybe three weeks' time from now.
 And the reasons why GAC didn't finish, I personally think, was the complexity of the issue.  And if we are looking back, what President's Strategy Committee report addresses is the subject matter what governments and other stakeholders were discussing during World Summit on the Information Society.  And yesterday, GAC discussion reminded me in a great deal of the WSIS discussions.
 Internationalization was one of the maybe longest discussed subjects.  There are certainly proposals coming out from the President's Strategy Committee report.  But we wanted to better understand what would be functionality of ICANN working in different jurisdictions, what would the functions of those ICANN units which would work outside the United States, what they would do, what would be the chain of responsibility, what would be means of interaction between different units.  Very complex issue.
 Accountability was another question which was discussed in length during the GAC meeting.  Accountability of constituencies, including the GAC; accountability of the board; cross-accountability, how situations when one constituency is dragging feet and another wants to advance very fast; financial accountability of ICANN as organization.  All these questions we will try to address in our input, in our comments in the -- to the report.
 Patrick.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Janis.  
 If I can just ask one question.  One of the topics that was a bit of a hot issue, I suppose, on Monday, was that of the speed with which the PSC process is moving, and related to that, the involvement of various constituencies of ICANN in that process. 
 Was that part of the GAC conversation over the last few days?
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   That was a part of discussion in the corridors, because we'd never get to the end of the document, and that is the end part of the document.
 But I speaking on very personal note, there's nothing to do with the GAC.  When I was listening to the discussion on Monday, I was a bit surprised the way how colleagues presented the evaluation of the importance of the issue in different organizations.
 For me personally, this is about the future of ICANN.  This is about how ICANN will work in next maybe ten years.  And, by definition, that, in my view, should be important and should be of concern of all of us and that's why I hope that Monday's discussion, joint session, and the one which will follow today, will raise the level of importance in minds of people of this issue.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Janis.  Next I'd like to invite Cheryl Langdon-Orr, the chair of the ALAC, the At-Large Advisory Committee, to speak to us about what happened in their particular area on PSC-related issues.
 >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Thank you, Patrick.  It's actually the most important thing from the community of Internet users, and, specifically, the at large.  That's capital "A," capital "L," at large, represented in this meeting and at other meetings that we work on intersessionally at clusters of five regions.  And, of course, the At-Large Advisory Committee's work on this matter.  It's actually the total exercise of what we're doing here is about as important as the analysis of the document itself, to be seen clearly and quite fearlessly, picking up on all those "Fs," you were mentioning earlier, as an integral part of this aggregated group of constituencies.
 I'd like to have the visible evidence that the views of the at large, lowercase, are important to us, ICANN, and that our voice has a place here, is more than just the outreach at the Geneva meetings and the types of exercises that have gone on around the PSC.
 It's the -- the incredible value we got out of the face-to-face dialogues with the members of the President's Strategy Committee, which, of course, occurred before Monday, but have seeded the ad hoc working group that has since formed, and has actually run out of our formal sessions between then and now.
 It's a work in progress.
 We all have very, very busy agendas.  But what this exercise has done, I think -- and Janis's has hit it right on the head -- is reminded us all that, as component parts of this, we all say "internationalization is important," "accountability and transparency is important."  We have to remember it is relevant to ourselves as individual parts of ICANN, as well as on the whole.
 And certainly, from my personal perspective, we have a reculturing that we have to do in the at-large world to make sure that we think of ourselves as an integral part of the whole stakeholder model and I believe successful experiment that ICANN is and what the President's Strategy Committee is working on as we improve institutional confidence.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thank you, Cheryl.  One of the issues that Janis raised that I think is very pertinent to the President's Strategy Committee work is that of accountability.
 And I know that the GAC has a view on this, and I just wonder if you might like to bring that zoo into the conversation as well.
 Transparency and accountability are more than just mantras to the level of, all uppercase, At-Large world as the user part of the demand and supply equation that doesn't have the focus of it being our core business.  We are not in the business of intellectual property.  We are not in the business of looking at public interest.  We're in the business of ensuring that the Internet users of the world have knowledge of what is going on and what affects them in an interoperable, open Internet in the naming and numbering that we play with here in this world, and also to feed back into the processes that are going on.
 Now, unless we have supreme confidence in what is happening within particular parts of the organization is absolutely transparent and known accountability measures, we have no driver to stay.  This is a trust-building exercise.  And accountability and transparency are integral to that.  Certainly, I would think, almost as important as the conversation.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   One more question, if I might, Cheryl.  You mentioned on the way through that you're forming an ad hoc committee to work on the PSC material.  Would you like to talk to the group about how that will play out over the next few weeks or months.
 >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Certainly.  The model we use in the at-large community is one of not the 15 people who happened to form the At-Large Advisory Committee doing the work, but going out and ensuring we do outreach and have a dialogue and discussion with the communities we represent.
 Clearly, when we're all corralled here in Cairo, we've been able to talk to each other, and we've delegated the authority to go through, to analyze, and to bring back to us some draft issues or concerns for us to take then back to our communities at the regional level, most particularly at the edges, at the at-large structures.  
 Many of these at-large structures have enormous reaches.  One of the two Taiwanese at-large structures can get a return of in excess of 2,000 on a survey that they put out.  These are enormously powerful outreach exercises.  We get real data in, and multiple that by 110 accredited and another few in the pipeline.  It takes time.  It doesn't happen in this space of the week.  But the preparatory material that the ad hoc working group is doing on it, and, indeed, the ongoing support and commitment from those members of the President's Strategy Committee that have said they would be happy to meet with us again in teleconference and help nurture us through it, answer any questions, is very vital.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   That's great.  Would you be publishing an ALAC position on this in the coming months?
 >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Absolutely.
 One of the things that I think we haven't done well enough is an at-large part of ICANN -- as an at-large part of ICANN is sell ourselves in the work we've done quite as effectively.  I'm not sure how I get -- perhaps in terms of resourcing a need a PR person dedicated to ensuring that the rest of the community knowns what the work our part of the community does do.  But a little later in my reporting today, there will be a URL up there.  And if we've done it, it's on the front page, or there's a drill-down to it.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Looking forward to the material coming out.
 Next I'd like to ask Avri Doria, chair of the GNSO, to give us the perspective on the issues related to the PSC that the GNSO has talked about.  And in the tradition that Janis has started here, either formally in the council room, or in the corridors.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Okay.  Thank you.
 I guess I'm going to make comments on two different sides of this.  One is, I think, in terms of what I -- what we talked about in the first day, that what the GNSO and the GNSO Council are more involved in is something that is sort of derivative of what's in the PSC, that we're working more at the -- we're going through a restructuring, we're going through a set of changes that have been optimistically named "improvements" -- and, of course, that's hopefully named "improvements."  One never knows until one's done them -- that include the elements of more accountability, more transparency, more -- a wider community participation in the work we're doing.
 So there was a lot of focus this week on that.  Some of it in the council meeting that was held yesterday morning, and some of it in the constituency meetings.  I happened to stop into a couple.  And there were certainly a lot of conversations about the hows and wherefores and whys of particular changes that we're making.  So I really do believe that that is derivative work, that, yes, it's derivative of the reviews that we've done.  But one could also say that what the PSC is pointing to, it's not that because of the PSC we are for the first time thinking about accountability, transparency, and all those things.
 These are ongoing efforts.  The PSC puts a particular focus on them to a particular purpose.
 The other part of my comment sort of relates to -- it's almost a how we do these things.
 For example, I don't really know what the constituencies talked about in each of the six parallel all-day meetings, and if any of them did have conversations specifically about PSC.
 We have --  Because we haven't had any unscripted meetings between now and then.  There was a constituency day on Tuesday.  All those groups meet, you know, in parallel.
 We have a sort of public agenda-driven meeting, where the agenda's been in place for a week and it's going through the various projects and stuff.  So, certainly, when we get to new gTLDs, we did talk about those.  We did talk about our improvements and our restructuring process.
 But it's this afternoon that we actually come together and sort of do our own wrap-up of the meeting, what did we do, what did we hear from other people, you know, how are we moving forward meeting.
 And, if anything, the -- our particular feedback on what happened within that will happen in that meeting.  I'm not saying it's necessarily going to happen.  But if it were to happen, that's where.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Right.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   So when we think about this in the next time and certainly I also have to feed back that this is a good thing to do, hearing the other viewpoints is a good thing to do, even if they're only at the back of your mind, and not, "We are specifically going to talk about now what ALAC said about this," that it's good.  But in terms of structuring, so that there is something to feed back, you know, at this point, we're still sort of in the middle.  So that's pretty much it.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   That's good, Avri.  And I think that you're absolutely right, as I said at the beginning, that this was an experiment.  I think we've done some things well and there are some things we can certainly do better.
 And I think the timing and scheduling piece is one of those.  Because it is important, now that we're generating the -- we have had the chance of generating the shared wisdom across these groups that we utilize our timetable to make the most use of that.
 Will the GNSO be putting out a report on the meeting this afternoon so that other SOs and ACs will have some access to those particular insights?
 >>AVRI DORIA:   The meeting will be recorded.  Whether we actually put out a report, I don't know.
 We generally don't.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   That's fine.  But at the very least, people who are interested from other SOs and ACs --
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Excuse me?
 It's an open meeting.  It's an open meeting, and there's a public -- there's a public recording of it that anyone can listen to anytime -- although, I must talk about the closed doors.  I've truly appreciated your open doors and being able to come in and sit at the back and sort of -- at one point, I actually felt like I was in church.
 [ Laughter ]
 >>AVRI DORIA:   In terms of, it was quiet, there was very deliberate discussion going on.  And it was a very peaceful place to come and sit.
 [ Laughter ]
 >>AVRI DORIA:   And maybe I was there at the wrong time.  But it was really quite wonderful.  And I definitely appreciated being able to walk in and listen during one of my empty spots.
 In terms of the scheduling, one of the things I think is that as the person who was doing a lot of scheduling of the GNSO Council's work, I don't even think that I had a prior knowledge.  I knew we were going to do this, and I kind of knew what we meant to do.  But I didn't know before we had done it what kind of to put a slot in the agenda to actually bring out these things.
 And it never occurred to me until we had done that.  But by this point, the agenda had sort of been in place, it never occurred to me that, really, it might be a good idea to slot something specific for doing that.
 As you said, it needs more thought.  It needs more understanding.  The experiment's good.  But it needs -- we need to do a fair amount of work in between on how to actually make it work.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   And I think now that we've seen the possibility and the value, people will be a little more willing to put some time in up-front, perhaps in advance of Mexico, to make the most use of that.
 >> Patrick, if you would let me interrupt you for a moment, our special guest has arrived in the room.
 We'd like to welcome Secretary-General, the International Telecommunications Union, Hamadoun Touré please welcome him to our audience.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   I'd just like to pick up on one of the points that Avri raised before, because I think it's an important one for the conversation we're having as a community to do with the work of the President's Strategy Committee.
 And that is to remind ourselves, as Avri did just a moment ago, that this is a multilayer piece of work, that there is work going on at the very high level in the President's Strategy Committee that has a fundamental -- is of fundamental importance for the ongoing accountability of the organization.
 Avri's reminded us that are there are other things happening within each of the SOs and ACs that link in in ways that might be -- not be immediately obvious to that idea of accountability.  And I know in the ALAC, you've been working on that as well.  And I wonder, Cheryl, if you might just like to make a quick comment about things that have happened recently in that regard.
 >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Certainly.  Thank you for the question, Patrick, particularly as the At-Large Advisory Committee is one of the constituent parts of this multidisciplinary, multistakeholder annual we call ICANN.
 Is under review at the moment, as is very important for us to all undergo sequential reviews.  In preparation and during that review, we have spent within our space within ICANN, a good deal of energy looking at our internal accountability frameworks, the measurables, the KPIs that we set on our volunteers.  
 And more importantly, not just looking at what has happened, but focusing, in this meeting, how we can set meaningful requirements and effective measures so that we're attracting the right sort of volunteer in.
 We have an enormous representation.
 We actually have to satisfy the billions of Internet users that we are acting in their best interests.
 It's a little bit like the responsibility in a memorandum, perhaps, with a ccTLD multiplied across every single country.
 It's an enormous responsibility.
 So we have to set up something that, from an external view, people can be comforted with, can become engaged with.  I tend to refer to it a little bit as living in a fish bowl, that we need to have a 360 degree transparency.
 But that has to occur at the regional level, and also at the at-large structural level.  Many of these at-large structures have been involved for quite some time and they have a particular mechanism of working.
 We all now need to establish agreed mechanisms and make those absolutely public, both to the ICANN entity and to the world at large.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Cheryl.
 Our final chair to speak this morning is Chris Disspain who is the chair of the ccNSO.
 Chris, what has the ccNSO been talking about.
 >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Patrick, you will remember that I started off on Monday talking about the PSC by saying that -- That's too loud.
 Thank you.
 By saying that it wasn't particularly high on our agenda, and I didn't have very much to say about it because we hadn't discussed it.
 Things have changed.
 It is now a little higher on our agenda, but I still don't have very much to say about it because we still haven't discussed it.
 And so what I would like to do is to briefly just use that as an illustration of the timing challenges that we have.
 There is a lot going on a lot of the time.  And it's hard sometimes to find the time to actually do the stuff that needs to be done.
 And one of the things that I think that we need to work on is, certainly from the ccNSO's point of view, is to try to put some structures in place that lead to a more efficient use of intersessional work.
 It's not actually strictly necessary for us to meet in person about everything.  It's very, very useful to meet in person about everything, and it's useful to meet sort of relatively often.
 But I think that this is an example of the fact that a multistakeholder model actually involves time, and it takes a little at a time for these things to work.
 And especially if you are going to try and get information from other parts of that model.
 But other than that, I have nothing to say.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   And Chris, are you of the view that this sort of process might be one way of making a little better use of the time by sharing things once rather than doing a whole lot of bilateral meetings?
 >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Yes.
 After a while, one goes to so many meetings and provides the same input or report to a different group of people, you start to wonder whether you are living in a dream world.
 It's actually great to be able to just have the constituencies together or the S.O.s and A.C.s together, rather, and deliver the message once.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Good.  Thank you.
 We will close off the discussion of the PSC there and move to discussion of the other two issues, which, in some sense, are interrelated.  That is, new gTLDs and IDN ccTLDs.  And I might, while Chris is refreshing himself with a glass of water there, go back to him to start, and focus on the new gTLD, IDN ccTLD process, perhaps with starting with anything on new gTLDs, and get some feedback from the ccNSO on that.
 >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   We were involved -- It's a function of the way that this works, of course, that gTLD policy is created in the GNSO and mechanisms are in place to ensure that we have input into that and the ALAC has input into that and so on.
 But obviously, the new gTLD policy and the new gTLD implementation process are peripheral, to a degree.
 However, what we did do at this meeting is to run a session on what we thought the impact of the introduction of new gTLDs might actually be.
 You know, ranging from incredible amounts of innovation and wonderfulness in the universe to total confusion and chaos at the other end of the scale.
 And that was actually a very interesting exercise that I think made a number of ccTLDs who hadn't really thought about it too much aware that, actually, there will be impacts from the introduction of new gTLDs.
 We are not suggesting anything should happen because of that.  We are simply saying that that's something which is out there, and something which, perhaps, it might be worth everyone considering within their own environments, what is the impact going to be of this on at-large, what is the impact going to be on -- well, in fact, on everyone.
 We also discussed the problematic issue of our country and territory names.  And our view on that is unchanged from our view on Monday, which is that we think that whilst we are running our IDN ccTLD policy development process, there should be a moratorium on the issue of those names in gTLDs.
 And that's it on the gTLD process.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Terrific.  Thanks, Chris.
 Janis, if I can just come to you specifically on that issue of country and territory names.  I know that's an issue that's been important in the GAC.
 While that's on the table, would you like to give a limit of an update on the GAC conversation about that?
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   I think that the country -- protection of country names, country and geographic names, is one of the declared principles in the set of GAC principles on new gTLDs.
 The issue is very complex.  And the issue for many governments is very important because the current practice is such that country names on secondary level and existing TLDs, in some cases, have not been used properly.  And this is just one example.
 What I mean by that, the country names in different languages tend to change the spelling.  For instance, if we take Norway, I know that original name of Norway is Norge, and for Latvia, the name is changing in different languages.  Latvia in English, Lettonie in French,  Lettonia in Spanish, Lettland in German or other Germanic languages.
 So when you go and look at what is on these sites, they are not always very decent.  
 Therefore, the protection of geographic names and use of them, that is what we really need to reflect further.
 Also, what we heard on Monday's session on the blurring, separation between CC space and G space is something that we need to reflect on from a policy point of view.
 And that is not a one-day question.
 So that is a very serious question moving forward.
 And country names in this respect, that's an important part of the discussion when it comes to country names.
 So we went back and forth on this, and certainly we reaffirmed our principles, declared principles, or formulated principles, rather.  But equally, many GAC members thought that further reflection needs to be done to see whether all possible aspects are taken into account in these GAC principles on new gTLDs and whether there shouldn't be any kind of amendments, which may be done based on this further analysis.
 But again, this is work in progress, and GAC doors are open.  And everybody can come in and listen, the way how we're reflecting on those issues.
 And hopefully we will come up with more clarity in Mexico.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Janis.
 One of the great strengths, of course, and the very nature of the ICANN model is we bring together governments, people who run country code TLDs, users, and business constituency, registries, registrars, and so forth in the GNSO.  And these issues are ones that don't sit neatly in any one of those silos.  And the discussion that we're having today , I think, is a good example of this ability of the ICANN model to foster that sort of conversation.
 And in that regard, I would like to go next to Avri and ask for a little bit of a GNSO update.
 And you might, if it's appropriate, speak particularly to that issue of names, when you are ready, that these people have raised.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Certainly.  Well, as one might expect the whole new gTLDs is very central to our agenda at the moment.
 We are still very much in the middle of going through the proposed or the draft implementation plan.
 We are about halfway through it on almost a line-by-line basis.  Not quite, but almost.  And we're going to have a fair number of phone calls over the next week.  
 On the openness side the phone calls are recorded.  But on these, we actually have transcripts of the discussion.  So people don't even have to listen to a phone call.  It's actually transcripted.
 So we are still very much in the middle of looking at these, of trying to understand the reasons and implications of the variances that we see sometimes between the policy that -- policy recommendations that we made and which were approved, and the implementation.  And recognizing, often, that those variances are due to the fact that there are other pushes and pulls on the organization that they are trying to find.
 At the same time, and almost to say the same thing that Janis said, while it's not that our principles still stand, our recommendations still stand.
 But we are looking at them.  We are still in the process of saying, well, how do we respond to these?  And what measure of response?
 So I don't know yet where the responses will be because, as I say, we're still in the middle.
 But the response may be no, the recommendation said X and we think it needs to be X.
 The response may be -- and as again, we are not there yet -- the recommendation said X, but, yeah, we understand why.
 And so maybe halfway between here and there there's something that can be spoken about.
 And that had a whole a lot of maybe's and possibly's and I don't know's in it.
 So we are really not there yet.
 In terms of the geographic names, I think that the discussion that we had certainly helped make more of us more aware, and this is not something that came out in any of the meetings that I know of specifically, but in the hallway conversation, sort of an understanding of the some of the other perspectives.  And certainly as we get to that and talk through things like, you know, the geographic names, which is still one of the big, you know, issues that we have to deal with in terms of how do we respond to the implementation plan.
 And I expect we will be responding to the implementation plan on that.
 I think we'll be able to take that more into account.  But we're definitely not there yet.
 I think having the content, having the discussions, having the hallway discussions that came out of, almost as much as, you know, people hearing me talk about where the GNSO council position recommendations were, and having lots of people from ccTLDs and from governments come and give me perspectives that I may or may not have had before, but certainly didn't have in their words.
 So again, that's there, but it's still very much -- I certainly can't raise a flag and say, "Ah, yes, we have decided that."
 We are certainly not there.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thank you.  And I think that's a really nice example of the value of the process we have embarked on here, in a sense, for the first time of get being the input of all the S.O.s and A.C.s at the beginning of the week to stimulate the conversation in each of the individual working areas so that we get a richer conversation at the end.
 Thank you.
 Cheryl, would you like to talk to us about the ALAC conversation around new gTLDs?
 >>CHERYL LANGDON ORR:   I would like to talk to you in two ways about the ALAC -- the at-large conversations about new gTLDs specifically, because it does come to two rather separate points.
 There is the specific body of work in response to the documentation for the RFPs, which I would like to address, but there is also the higher level stuff, which is absolutely vital to our community.
 As the demand side of this equation, what happens with the opening of this marketplace to our choices, to the trust we have within those choices, to our ability to not just be involved in the implementation process of the processes that will result in new gTLDs but to be able to advise, inform, and upscale our edge communities, the government areas we work in, the local regional areas we work in, and even the municipal areas we work in, let alone the cultural sections within that, are absolutely vital.
 We are working very much at two levels.  This is the 50,000-foot view.  This is not quite the minutia, but the drill-down view.
 And it's coming back to the 50,000-foot view I want to dwell on for one moment.  It would be very easy to see ourselves as just passive recipients of wider choice.  It's a little bit like putting up a large mall, and depending upon the attractiveness of the shop front, we were going to go filing in or running away.
 It's far, far more than that.
 When we come to some of the particulars, the community interest or communities of interest that will be coming out of this offering of new gTLDs, obviously in the G space, the IDN TLDs, this is an enabling mechanism for millions of more Internet users to have a user experience that is meaningful to them in a script that is meaningful to them.
 One cannot begin in a tiny part, like we have today, to say how incredibly important, what a watershed moment this is.
 Coming back from that, of course, we also need to be confident that this plethora of choice is not confusing to us.
 But we do have, coming back to what we were saying earlier, accountability, transparency, mechanisms where questions and complaints can come in in the vast flowchart.  And that then brings me very nicely to what we have done with the document.
 First of all, we have divvied it up totally to yet another ad hoc working group.  So everyone has a section, and we are now at the point of not doing a line-by-line analysis as a whole but a subsected group analysis.
 And in our November meeting, as the At-Large Advisory Committee meets monthly as do each of the regional at-large organizations meet monthly, it's now main point on their agenda.
 So by December, we should be having meaningful responses that have actually gone out to community consultation and coming back in.
 But having that document in our hands, albeit one that is going to be subject to some tweaks and some change, also means that we can start the necessary education and outreach process in our local communities.
 We can say, "Look, here is the draft RFP.  It may change a little.  We are working on it.  Don't just tell us what your opinion is that you would like to feedback in, but perhaps your community of interest applications.  Perhaps look at your funding models and what type of back-end for the registry you might like to run."
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   That's great.  I find it quite inspiring that with this new gTLD process, we're reaching out, as Cheryl just described, to users at the very edge of the Internet, from a user perspective we are involving the governments in the discussion, the ccTLD operators, businesses around the world through the various constituencies that are part of the ccNSO as a way of truly bringing together a global view on this issue.
 I think that's great, Cheryl.  I think the work you are doing there is fantastic.
 Conscious of time, in the best ICANN traditions, we are running out of it.
 I would like Chris to give us a quick update on the IDN ccTLD area.
 >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Thanks, Patrick.
 We spent the time -- the time we spent on IDN ccTLDs we spent in practical mode.
 The implementation plan as it currently exists is obviously open for comment and will continue to be commented upon.  But we thought it might be useful to actually test the plan itself and see if it works.
 So with the kind cooperation of our friends from the -- from Russia, we took their proposed application for an IDN ccTLD, which would be dot RF in Cyrillic, and put that through the implementation plan process as far as we could.
 And so far it seems to be, with a couple of minor issues and one major one, it seems to be standing up pretty well to the -- to what it is going to need to do.
 So that was sort of like an intensely practical hour.
 We also spent a little time getting clear on the schedule for the actual policy development process itself, the full-blown policy development process as opposed to the fast track.  And we think that current indications are that we should have a final report -- a final recommendation report to the board by -- and this is only indicative -- by the third quarter of 2010.  Which sounds like an awful long way away, but actually isn't really that far at all.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Chris.
 Would any of the other chairs like to make a comment on the IDN ccTLD process?  Has it been part of the conversation anywhere else?  I know the main focus is in Chris's area.
 Cheryl.
 Avri first.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   I have one quick comment is we got to the point of realizing we still had to work on it.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Terrific.  Thank you.  Cheryl.
 >>CHERYL LANGDON ORR:   Certainly.  The result of these meetings is certainly no reduction or shortage of our workload.  It's a massive increase.
 It's not a comment specifically on IDN ccTLDs in the mechanisms of the drafts that are out and the comments.  It's rather more an observation and a very important one, I believe, when we are looking at ICANN in the multistakeholder model that it is, it's the very inclusion that we had as our part of this community in the development of the fast-track process in that ccTLD work that we have all gone through that I think has allowed this sort of exercise to work so well.
 It was the exercise itself that was as important as the outcome.  And I think that probably needs to be recognized.
 This is an enormously rare and unusual thing to have happened in any policy development-based organization.
 I work as a lead advocate for consumers in the telecommunications industry in my own country, and it's extraordinary what has happened, and specifically using the fast-track IDN ccTLDs as an example.
 I think we all just need to recognize that and give it a pretty darn large tick.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thanks, Cheryl.  And I might quickly close by going across the table, just 20 seconds each on whether you think this is a useful exercise and worth repeating perhaps in a better format in Mexico.
 Janis, what's your thoughts?
 >>JANIS KARKLINS:   I think this is worth continuing, maybe rethinking a little bit the form.
 I think there are a couple of things that need to be changed.  The discussion throughout head table always sort of naturally brings -- contains discussion among the people at the head table.  So the idea was to let constituencies engage with each other.  And we need to think how we can achieve that.
 Another thing, but again, this is very personal, I would love to see a reaction in the room to what speakers are saying, whether the room agrees or disagrees.  And I think after the Monday meeting, I told you, Patrick, that maybe it makes sense to try to introduce the colored cards:  green, red, and maybe yellow.  And then if somebody speaks, that the public, if they wish so, they can react by raising green if they agree, raising yellow if they are indifferent, or raising red if they disagree.
 So that would maybe make meetings livelier than they are now.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Chris.
 >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   I would like to support Janis's suggestion but I think we need to have a point of impact discussion on the colors.
 [ Laughter ]
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Very quick comments?  Cheryl?
 >>CHERYL LANGDON ORR:   From our perspective, any conversation that we're having as free and as open and as transparent as this one is is worthwhile making work best.
 Interestingly enough, I have colored cards in a virtual world.  Anyone who is operating on behalf of the at-large has to have this little Skype chat, IRC channel open, and believe me, I don't get colors.  I get frowns, I get comments, I get feed-in from our part of the constituency very well.
 But to engage more, that's what I am feeling is missing, to feel that there is a dynamic between the head table and the audience.  And I think, going forward, a continuing dynamic between the leads of these A.C.s and S.O.s is well worthwhile pursuing.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Thank you, Cheryl.
 Very quickly, Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   What they said.
 >>PATRICK SHARRY:   Terrific.  Secretary-General, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time this morning.
 What we have witnessed I think is the beginning of something that should become an even more integral part of the ICANN process and a very, very useful dialogue between our Supporting Organization and Advisory Committee chairs and the community in general.
 Thank you very much.
 [ Applause ]