ICANN|ARCHIVES

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Nominating Committee Workshop
Thursday 29 June 2006
ICANN - Marrakech

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

And thank you very much for coming to this session, which I call NomCom 101,
or everything you wanted to know about the NomCom but were afraid to ask.

My name is George Sadowsky, and I am the interim chair of the ICANN
nominating committee for this year.

This is the first time we have had such a session, a session run by the
nominating committee, at an ICANN event.

And it's quite experimental.

We'd like to give you a lot of information about the NomCom, and we'd like to
hear anything you have to say about it, including what the purpose of such a
session might be and how we might add value to it in the future.

There'll be a number of presentations.

I'll provide an introduction.

My associate chair, Adam Peake, will then add more factual information to the
discussion.

And then I have on the podium with me the other members of the nominating
committee who are here in Marrakech, and they will provide their
observations, who they represent, how they feel about the NomCom and anything
else that they wish -- that they believe that you should know.

We expect that this session will last one hour at most.

Now, Steve Conte tells me that we have video.

In fact, we may have the best video camera in Marrakech.

That was procured on short notice, after the second one burned up yesterday.

We also have an IRC channel set up for remote comments.

And the problem is that we don't have our IRC volunteer who can tell those of
you who are listening and watching remotely how to get on.

I'm assuming that she's going to show up sometime early in the process, and
we will then ask her to give you the IRC coordinates that will allow you to
participate interactively.

The nominating committee, as it is currently constituted, is the result of
the reform process that occurred in the early part of this decade for what I
call ICANN 3.0, the third manifestation of a new ICANN structure.

The composition and purpose of the nominating committee is defined in the
bylaws, and in a minute, I'm going to read some relevant sections from that
composition and purpose.

There are 23 members, 17 of whom vote.

So it's a large organization, slightly unwieldy, but we have the ability to
-- using that size, to have all of the constituencies represented in the
committee.

This year, there are only 22 members at the moment, because the original
chair, appointed in December in Vancouver, Eugenio Triana, had an inescapable
conflict between his professional and work activities, and his chairmanship.

So we were sorry that he chose to resign at the end of May.

And Vint has asked me to take over.

I'm currently interim chair.

Our purpose is to appoint members to the board, the GNSO, the ccNSO, and the
interim ALAC.

And, in fact, the term "nominating committee" is not the right term.

We ought to be called the selection committee.

Because when we nominate, the nominations are permanent.

There is no challenge to the choice.

The NomCom members, I'm going to read a list of them.

There's Adam Peake, who is to my right.

Bill St. Arnaud, who is unable to be here, Catharine Gabay, to my left.

Donna Austin is a staff member, who is in the audience, who serves the NomCom
quite ably.

We also have Elliot Noss, Frannie Wellings, Jayantha Fernando, John Klensin,
Jose Salgueiro, Ken Stubbs, Lars-Johan Liman, Lucy Nichols, who's to my far
left, Madan Rao, Michael Froomkin, Mike Silber, who is to my far right,
Mohamed El Fatih El Tigani Ali, Rodney Joffe, Sanford George, Thomas
Roessler, Tony Harris, and Wolfgang Kleinwaechter.

And Wolfgang should have been on the podium with us, except Sunday night, he
had an unfortunate accident going down a set of uneven steps, fell, broke his
leg, and was carted away by ambulance and plane to Germany on Monday.

So let me -- Oh, my God, I left Ken Fockler out.

I'm sorry.

Oh, yes, and I know why.

And we had a -- I'll explain that to justify my dereliction.

Marilyn Cade was a member of the nominating committee from the business
constituency, and she resigned for other reasons at the beginning of May.

And the business constituency replaced her recently with Ken Fockler.

Ken, by the way, is a former member of the board, the board of ICANN 1.0, I
think.

Isn't that right?

Yes.

Well, here is what the bylaws say about the core objectives of the NomCom.

One, identify, recruit, and nominate the highest-quality nominees for the
positions NomCom is charged to fill.

Two, advance the core mission and values of ICANN.

Three, trust and respect all members of the NomCom.

Four, pursue diversity in geography, culture, skills, experience, and
perspectives, from across the global Internet community.

Five, earn the trust and respect of the Internet community by acting with
fairness and integrity and by providing transparency of objectives, criteria,
procedures, and mechanisms for receiving input, while respecting candidates'
privacy and maintaining the confidentiality that is necessary to assure open
and frank communication within the NomCom.

The bylaws have the following to say about NomCom's role.

NomCom is responsible for the selection of portions of the members of the
ICANN board of directors, GNSO Council, interim ALAC, and ccNSO Council,
filling these leadership positions in a way that complements the selections
made for such positions by the supporting organizations and the interim ALAC.

The central rationale for using a nominating committee to select portion of
ICANN leadership bodies is to balance those who can represent particular
areas of knowledge and interests with those who place the broad public
interest of the global Internet community ahead of any particular interests.

NomCom's role is to select individuals of the highest integrity and
capability who place the broad public interest of the global Internet
community ahead of any particular interests, and who are nevertheless
knowledgeable about ICANN's mission and environment.

To achieve this broad public interest orientation, members of the NomCom are
drawn from across the ICANN and global Internet communities.

They act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community,
within the scope of the ICANN mission and the responsibilities assigned to
NomCom.

They act as individuals and are not beholden to their appointing
constituencies, as they work by consensus to derive the NomCom slates of
selected nominees for these leadership bodies.

There's a little bit more.

The NomCom functions independently from the ICANN board, supporting
organizations, and advisory committees.

The NomCom selections are final.

No further approval or ratification is needed.

Together, the NomCom and supporting organization selection pathways ensure
that ICANN benefits from functional, cultural, geographic diversity in its
policy development and decision-making as the Internet evolves.

That's all I'd like to say by way of introduction.

I'd now like Adam Peake to provide some more specifics regarding the process
by which we operate.

>>ADAM PEAKE: Thanks, George.

I hope I won't repeat too much of what you said.

But probably will do a little bit.

So I'm the associate chair, which I think means sort of George, junior, in
this case, and do what he asks.

So I think the idea of what our purpose is is to select a slate of
accomplished persons or accomplished candidates to -- actually --

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Avri --

>>ADAM PEAKE: Avri -- oh, sorry, you're --

We need you.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Avri Doria, our volunteer, has just arrived.

And we'd like to get the information regarding the back channel from those of
you who are remote and are watching and listening.

So she's going to -- she's now going to her station, and she's going to
provide that information for you.

It may take a few minutes.

So why don't you do that after Adam's presentation and be ready to do that.

Thank you.

>>ADAM PEAKE: Thanks, Avri.

So our purpose is to select a slate of accomplished candidates to serve in
ICANN leadership positions.

And I want to emphasize the concept of a slate.

It's not really selecting individuals to fill these vacancies.

We view them as a batch of vacancies that appear each year.

And as George has said, these are candidates who will pursue the broad public
interest of the global Internet community ahead of any other interest.

And this is reflected itself in the NomCom, which is designed to function
independently of the board, of the supporting organizations, and councils
that place delegates on the committee.

And our task is to act on behalf of the global Internet community as well.

So who are we?

Again, this is repeating something George has said.

But we're 17 voting and six, currently five, nonvoting members.

It's a committee with very diverse backgrounds, experiences, geography, and
so on, delegates from all of the ICANN constituencies.

And I think this is important in a process that is somewhat -- well, it is
confidential and very much behind closed doors, that you can have confidence
that this diversity of membership protects against capture and misconduct.

There are so many people from so many different constituencies in there, if
something bad was happening, you would be sure to hear of it.

I think the diversity and size of the committee is one of its protections.

So who we are.

Again, we see there are five members from the ALAC.

And they provide very strong geographic diversity from all of the five ICANN
regions.

The GNSO is strongly represented, with seven members from all of the GNSO
constituencies.

There's one member each from the ccNSO, ASO, a group of academic and research
organizations which traditionally has come from the sort of (inaudible), the
background-providing research networks who have formed much of the Internet.

And then the IETF and the technical communities.

We also have nonvoting liaisons from the root server advisory committee,
security committee, and, of course, the GAC.

Donna is our excellent staff person.

And we also use consultants when -- if and when we need.

And that's another issue we'll come to in a second.

And this is important.

We sign rather strict ethics and confidentiality agreements.

You'll find all of these documents on our Web page, which is under the usual
ICANN committees section of the ICANN Web site.

We try to document, as broadly as possible, everything that we do.

And all committee members agree to this code of ethics, which requires us to
commit to identifying, recruiting, and nominating the highest-quality
candidates, and also, following very strict procedures about confidentiality
and security of the data that we handle.

And we have a commitment to -- at the moment, to only transmit information
using strong encryption-protected methods.

Staff and consultants are also bound by these confidentiality agreements.

The time line we have for our work this year, we began in January of 2006,
and we're just about fully populated by the middle of that month.

We've worked with about seven teleconferences so far, two face-to-face
meetings will be held, plus some of us are here in Marrakech.

So the first face-to-face meeting was at the Wellington ICANN meeting, where
most of the committee were able to get together and really plan our work for
the year.

And then the key part of our work is to launch our candidate recruitment.

And the recruitment period is 18th of April to July 16th.

We are going to consider extending that for two weeks to, I think, August the
1st.

Is that correct, George?

We're a little bit behind on recruitment.

We need more SOIs.

And that's one reason we're holding this meeting today, is we need your help
in reaching out to your friends, colleagues, and anybody you would like to
see serving on these positions.

A point about candidate recruitment.

What we use are things called a statement of interest, which is really an
application form.

It's a very detailed form.

We do not take lobbying, and we're not interested in receiving letters of
support for particular candidates.

Candidates -- being a candidate should be confidential.

And we work solely from the information that's provided in the statement of
interest, and also in three or four -- we ask for three or four references
that are provided by individuals known to the candidate.

Of course, with a committee of 23 or so people, many of the candidates are
known to one or more of us.

And we can also reach out to third parties in a confidential way if we wish.

But it's important that this is the information that we base our decisions
on.

So if you're going to be a candidate or if you know somebody who wishes to be
a candidate, you must put a lot of effort and thought into these statements
of interest, because these -- this is our primary source of information.

And that's the process we're going through now, of collecting these
statements of interest.

After July or after August the 1st, if that's the case, then we start to
evaluate the statements of interest and collect the references and generally
start wondering about who the good candidates are.

We usually expect between 70 -- 50, 70, 80 statements of interest, and with
three or four references per person, that's quite a large amount of
information that's coming in.

It may be 200, 250 individual files that we're trying to handle, read,
evaluate, and think very closely about.

And so over the process of the summer, we split into subgroups and have far
too many teleconferences, I think.

But we're trying to do our best job in learning about who the candidates in
our pool are.

Then by 15th, 17th of September, we're going to hold a face-to-face selection
meeting.

The whole committee will meet in Frankfurt for two, two and a half days, I
think it is, and we will work through this selection process.

And that's where our decision is made.

From mid-September into October, there's a due diligence process.

Of course, people who are going to be put onto something like the ICANN
board, they have a responsibility to the organization, and there's a
confidential process to check that they really are who they say they are and
we don't have too many people who -- I don't think there's ever been anybody
who's had a problem with, you know, lying about degrees or anything like
that.

But those are the things we wish to avoid.

And then we will make our announcement of our selections by -- before October
the 31st.

And these people will then take their positions at the end of the annual
general meeting in Sao Paulo.

So that's the timeline.

And we're in the sort of middle of it now, reaching a sort of panic stage of
needing more candidates.

Outreach and recruitment.

And we do need your help.

One of the things is, there's 23 of us, but we exhaust our friends and
contacts, and our friends stop contacting us, actually, because it's a little
bit of a hassle being demanded to become a candidate all the time.

So what we're trying to select for is three members of the ICANN board, one
member of the GNSO, one for the ccNSO, and two of the At-Large Advisory
Committee.

And as I said, these are considered, in a way, building slates.

So what I hope you can see reasonably clearly up there is, one is a blank
slate of what we have to fill in.

We have to fill in the boxes ICANN board, three; interim ALAC, two, GNSO,
one; ccNSO Council, one.

And the reason you have EU and NAM in there, EU is the European region and
NAM is North America.

We have a requirement that the nominating committee must ensure that there's
at least one representative from all regions on the board.

And because of the vacancies that occur this year, we are going to have to
ensure that there's at least one person from the European region placed on
the ICANN board.

Also, the ALAC vacancies are actually regional.

And the vacancies this year are for citizens of Europe and North America.

This is based on citizenship, not on residence.

And you can see the slate from last year and how it works out below.

That's 2005.

And you see Njeri and Susan from the board and so on.

So you can get an idea that we're not really selecting individuals, per se.
It's how the individual works as a collective of all those vacancies.

And that can affect how we go about our work, because it means that very good
individuals may sometimes be unfortunate that they don't really fit the end
slate.

We can't have eight positions from one country and one region.

We have to think about geographic diversity. We think very hard about gender
diversity. And also other skills.

So sometimes, very good candidates will unfortunately not be selected, and
it's very often because of the considerations of how the whole slate will
look.

In recruitment, we're trying some new things this year. What's on the screen
is advert that appeared in "The Economist" I think it was about two weeks
ago. It was a quarter page advertisement and we are fortunately receiving a
few statements of interest, or at least receiving some interest as a result
of this.

And we are also going to place an advertisement in the "International Herald
Tribune" probably next week.

These things have to be tried. We are looking at ways to reach out beyond
the ICANN community, and hopefully we are learning from new ways to do
outreach and recruitment.

Last point is about getting in touch.

These are the URLs for our Web site. You find it very easily from the
pull-down menus in the ICANN.org web.

Where to send statement of interests to, if we hope you will become a
candidate is nomcom.submissions@icann.org.

How to contact us generally is NomCom-comments@icann.org. And again, we need
your help.

Thank you very much.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Adam, thank you for a very helpful summary. This is very
useful information and I'm glad you were able to get it to you in this way.

Avri, are you now able to say something now to people who can see us and hear
us but are not very close to us?

>>AVRI DORIA: Basically I am sitting on IRC. The way to connect to it is
connect to irc.freenode.net.

And the room is #icannnomcom.

So that's three N's. So it's the hash mark icannnomcom, with 3 N's in the
middle.

If there's a question, I will come up here and read it out.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you very much.

And Avri, you will report to us as things come in on the channel.

Now I would like to have other members on the NomCom who are here on the
podium here with me introduce themselves, tell you who they represent or who
nominated them to the committee, and provide perhaps some reflections,
discuss some issues that they feel are important within the context of what
we do.

And I would like to start with the two members of the NomCom who were also on
last year's Nominating Committee.

The bylaws allow for a committee member to be on the committee for two years
in a voting capacity. So the first person I'd like to have speak is Michael
Silber.

>>MICHAEL SILBER: Thank you, George. My name is Mike Silber. I sit on the
NomCom as a representative of the ccNSO.

I also happen to be an African and very focused on trying to get good African
candidates in some of these positions.

One thing that I thought worthwhile sharing is a question that we keep
getting asked, and that is whether somebody who has been through another
process within ICANN for selection to an NSO committee or to the board who
then wants to look at the Nominating Committee process would be excluded by
virtue of the fact of having used a different process in the past.

And I think the key element, and Adam and George both brought this out, is we
are trying to build a slate over here. And particularly with a board, there
is no intention to exclude anyone. There is no process in which candidates
only from a specific geographical region will be considered.

In terms of the ALAC, for example, and Adam has indicated there, there the
bylaws specifically indicate that candidates are required from certain
regions.

But on the whole, we try and balance diversity across either the S.O.
council or the board itself generally. But we are also looking for the best
candidates for the job and that's a balancing process that we try to embark
on.

So it's not a situation that there are too many North Americans on the board
so if you are from the North American region, don't bother applying.
Similarly, because there is only one member on the board from the African
region it means all three positions are going to be filled by Africans.

We are trying to build diversity, we are trying to build a balanced slate,
and that's the purpose of the nomcom. But we are also looking for the best
candidates for those positions. And that, at the end of the day, is the key
criteria for everything we do.

>>CATHERINE GABAY: Hello, Catherine Gabay. I am appointed by the business
constituency to represent large companies. There are two representatives,
basically one for large and one for small companies. I work for MEDEF, which
is a French business confederation so representing all kinds of businesses,
large and small. So I am quite used to representing interests of companies
who use Internet.

I have been on the Nominating Committee last year, and what I think is quite
interesting this year is I try to get candidates from Europe and from France,
that we have some opportunities on the board, at least, to have a good
candidate from Europe.

So I am trying through my work in MEDEF on e-business to send this
information and to reach to candidates who are aware of ICANN or candidates
who are very well-known in the Internet community so that we get good -- the
best people possible on the board, because I think it's very important that
we -- all the different nations are represented or the different regions are
represented on the board.

And on the GNSO, and ccNSO.

I just want to make a comment. In France, there has been for five years now,
and president of French ISOC is there, a big conference on European level on
Internet governance to raise awareness. It's called EGENI. It was last
week, and Marrakech was the first time in the African region, last Saturday.
It means that there is already a big way to make people aware, and I hope
this will also raise candidates for the ICANN SOs and the board.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: I would just like to interject that the conference in
Paris I think is very much due to the efforts of Sebastien Bachollet who is
here in the audience and deserves a lot of thanks for his initiative and that
of his colleagues.

>>KEN FOCKLER: My name is Ken Fockler. I am from Canada, and as George said,
I'm replacing Marilyn Cade, who resigned not long ago. So I have been
selected from the business constituency to represent small business.

It's fun for me to be on the stage again at an ICANN meeting. It's been
almost five years.

My last board meeting was September 10th, 2001, in Montevideo, Uruguay and I
spent the rest of the week trapped in Buenos Aires, which wasn't all that
bad, trying to wait and get home. A lot of people had those experiences.

I actually got on the board through the ASO organization because I had been
involved in ARIN kind of from a general management standpoint. I'm not a
detail technical person. And I also participated in the first WIPO study on
domain names.

I see the Nominating Committee as a very important function and provides a
very important role. I also see it like all aspects of ICANN, that it's an
evolving, always ongoing structural improvements and change.

So I'm interested in hearing and getting my own experience and hearing from
anybody else about specifically the task we have at hand, which is the
primary one, getting the candidates in.

But also, comments about any evolutionary structures or thoughts on the whole
process.

I think -- I don't have a lot -- I could go into a little bit. I'm a bit of
a guy who likes to do a little research into things, so when I got the task I
started looking at all the various documents, and they are there for anybody
to look at. You can see the board composition quite clearly, and whose term
ends when and kind of figure out where they are from.

The ALAC page shows that fairly well, as does the GNSO. I keep beating up
the ccNSO guys. It's not at all easy to see actually who is on their council
and which ones were put on by the NomCom and which one is coming up. But
with a little digging and asking questions, you can figure that out.

I think that's pretty well -- I haven't signed the code of ethics yet, so you
have about an hour to get me, but the only problem is I don't know anything,
so it won't do you any good.

>>LUCY NICHOLS: Good afternoon, I am Lucy Nichols, and I am from North
America.

I have been appointed to this committee by the intellectual property
constituency.

As most of you know, the intellectual property constituency is comprised of a
good number of lawyers. So I was very happy to hear that I didn't have to
focus my attention on recruiting from the intellectual property constituency.
Lawyers normally don't need encouragement to volunteer for leadership
positions. So while I have not been hiding the fact that these vacancies are
open to other lawyers, I have been focusing my attention on geographic
regions that I think may be actually underrepresented in leadership
positions. And in particular, China. And while I say that, I certainly
don't want to discourage people from any geographic region from applying.

And that brings up another point I wanted to make, which is some of you may
be here because you are thinking about nominating somebody. But I want to
encourage you that if you are willing to take a leadership position, and you
have the time and the energy, then please do so and don't be embarrassed to
volunteer yourself or to nominate yourself.

I have to say, after having worked on the GNSO council now for a few years,
these candidates that come from this committee are some of the smartest and
the most normal people that we have on the council. And the most talented,
as you can see by Avri. She can do just about anything.

And I usually sit next to her for that reason.

But they do have a more balanced view, I think, generally speaking, because
they don't have to represent a particular point of view or a particular
constituency.

And I know that having -- again, as I mentioned earlier -- sat on the council
and representing the IPC, there have been times, very recently, that I wished
that I could perhaps represent a position that I personally believed in.
And, you know, I think that if you are nominated from this committee, then
you will have that opportunity.

So I would again encourage you to either make the application yourself on
behalf of yourself, or think of somebody that really needs to be in a
position of leadership and that would contribute to the Internet community
and encourage them to do the same.

Thank you.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you, Lucy.

I'd just like to raise a couple of other things before we open the floor for
comments.

First of all, I'd like to pick up on Adam's point about the building of
slates and the fact that sometimes people who are very, very good, indeed,
simply do not fit on slates.

We had, last year, 2005, when I was chair of the committee, we had 73
statements of interest received by the committee. Of those, eight people
were chosen. So that leaves 65 discouraged candidates. And in that number
of 65 discouraged candidates, there were some very good people. And it's
very difficult to know how to deal with that in order to protect the
anonymity of the process by which we chose the candidates we did. But if you
have been a candidate before and you were rejected, that is not a reason to
assume that you are in any sense a loser in this process, but it may be that
the balancing simply didn't work. Unfortunately, we can't say much more
about that.

Second, the NomCom, with respect to the Board of Directors, appoints over a
three-year cycle eight directors.

Now, there are 15 directors in total. Two come from each of three Supporting
Organizations. That's six.

Then there are -- the CEO is a member of the board, that's seven. So the
Nominating Committee, in fact, over a three-year period elects, selects, the
majority of the Board of Directors.

That has been cited, I believe, in one legal proceeding to show that ICANN is
not an industry organization, but, rather, because of the independence of the
Nominating Committee and its ability to select the majority of the board, it
enjoys a broader, not-for-profit status.

Finally, when you leave, and don't leave yet because we have an open mike
period coming, you will see a pile of fliers, one page, nice, brightly
colored fliers giving the fundamental information that we have been talking
about here, which you are encouraged to take a pile of them and distribute
them to anyone you think might be appropriate for any of these leadership
positions.

Now, may I ask, before going to the floor, may I ask Avri, who is one of
these super intelligent normal people with a balanced perspective, who was
appointed by the NomCom to the GNSO last year, whether there are any queries
that have come in over the IRC channel.

>>AVRI DORIA: No, there haven't been. But if there had been, there might
have been some dispute about normalcy, super intelligence and all that stuff.

[ Laughter ]
>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Okay. Well, you have the rest of your term to prove me
right or wrong.

All right. Who would like to comment or question? The floor is open. All
subjects, September the details of what we do in private and in secrecy are
open for discussion.

Yes, sir. Could you identify yourself for the scribe also, please.

>>STEPHEN LAU: Stephen Lau from Hong Kong. Hi, George.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Hi.

>>STEPHEN LAU: I have just a few points, mainly for clarification.

My first question is, does the same person be allowed to apply for more than
one position? That's the first question.

Secondly, given the balance of gender and diversity and all that, maybe a
very good candidate, he applies to a position, but could not be considered
and rejected, but on the other hand would the committee be prepared or have
the mechanism to switch him to another, maybe more appropriate position?
Whether, in fact, there is such a mechanism or consideration.

My third point is, if I look at the current vacancies and using the board as
an example, there are three positions. One of them is already designated for
EU, for European.

So please confirm, then the other two would then be open for all comers, for
whatever diversity, whatever region, whatever.

Please confirm that.

My fourth question is related to the third. You have already mentioned that
you have to balance between regional or geographical or gender diversity.

Now, using the board as an example, there's already a composition of existing
board members which will come from a certain region or come from a certain
gender in terms of diversity.

So already, there's some space being taken over. And in balancing it, you
have to look at the current composition of the board for the remaining two
positions.

And it could mean that, already, certain conditions are imposed on the
candidates coming through for the remaining two positions on the board.

And how does one find out that, before they even apply, you know you are
excluded because of that balancing?

Thank you.

>>ADAM PEAKE: I'll start with the easy ones. That was questions one and two.
And those are related.

In the statement of interest form, we ask people to prioritize which
positions they would like. So they can rank it one, two, three, four, one
being high. So if you wish to apply for the board as a one, you put one.
GNSO, two. ALAC, three. And so on.

Of course, you're not required to apply for all of them, and many people will
only apply for one position. But we do have that option, is the
prioritizing.

As a result, we don't feel there is the need to reassign people if they have
said they only want the ccNSO, but we feel they have skills that would fit in
ALAC. We don't necessarily feel that's necessary because they have had the
opportunity to prioritize.

Although previous nominating committees have taken that option, and they have
written to people and said, "Would you consider other positions?" But we
don't single people -- in that case, they weren't singled out much it was a
request to every candidate for them to reconsider if they would like to be
eligible for other positions.

But right now, it's a prioritizing thing, one, two, three, four.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: I think my aging brain cells have forgotten question
three, but let me address four.

And I think there's an overlap.

The primary objective of the NomCom is to select skilled and qualified
candidates for these organizations.

In some cases, we do have geographic constraints.

In the case of the ALAC, we do.

In the case of the board, we also do.

There must be at least one European on the board.

But there also can be, at most, five from any other ICANN region.

At the moment, I believe there are four north Americans.

So the remaining two positions could not go to north Americans.

But the issue with regard to the balance is the following: We need to have
the best people we can in these positions for the success of ICANN.

And this may be more of a personal view than a committee view.

I would say we pick those people subject to wanting to produce, if at all
possible, reasonable distributions with respect to the other dimensions that
were mentioned.

The bylaws do not require parity or specific distributions in the other
dimensions, but they ask the nominating committee to do the best -- a good
job in balancing over those factors.

So if, for example, there are no men who apply at all, we're going to select
all women.

And the reverse.

And so on.

And it's true that the existing distribution of these characteristics on the
board does affect, to a certain extent, what we choose.

But I think that if we have really good people that violate those
distributions and we really want them on -- in leadership positions, for
whatever reason, we're going to appoint them.

Again, that may be a little bit more of a personal view.

Other people on the committee may disagree somewhat with that.

Now, have I answered your question three?

Thank you.

Other questions, comments?

Oh, Ken.

Thank you.

>>KEN FOCKLER: I don't know if it would be helpful to you, but I, as a new
person, did a little sort of demographic look at the board situation myself.

And I'm going to say pretty well what he was saying, only try to summarize
it, and hope I haven't made a mistake.

But as he said, the board currently now consists of 15 people.

That includes the president.

There's 12 male, three female.

There are four north Americans, two of whom female.

There's three south Americans, one female.

One Latin American, two Europeans, one African.

Three from the Asia-Pacific region.

And I'm not sure what the appropriate terminology is, but one is from New
Zealand and the other two are Asians, China and Japan.

Although I don't -- I'm sure it doesn't come in to the discussion, there are
also the six liaison nonvoting people.

But it's kind of fun to look at that, too.

And there are six of those, five male, one female.

Three from the U.S., two from Europe, and one from Asia, being the GAC chair.

So that's kind of the mix.

Then, as was pointed out, three people leaving and two of them are those
Europeans.

So that says, as has been said, we need to find European.

You could put a North American in there and then you would be at the upper
boundary of five.

So you could kind of work with that and see where the desires would be,
anyway.

If that's helpful.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Anybody else from the NomCom want to weigh in on that
subject?

All right.

Any other questions or comments from the floor or from the IRC channel?

Avri, nothing coming in?

Okay.

One of the problems with webcasting is that you're not able to count the
number of people -- or the number of screens, I should say, that are on in
various parts of the world.

So we don't know whether we have an audience of thousands or an audience of
one.

Any other comments?

Well, then if -- oh, Sebastien.

>>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Hello.

First I wanted to thank you, George, for the kind word you said about some
work we are trying to do.

But I am not the only one.

I am working with a team.

And this team must be recognized also.

I wanted just to ask one question about the topic of this meeting.

It's that is it possible to have the name and the position of the people who
will leave their position, when it will be at the end of this, the annual
meeting, when it will be done?

Just because it's -- we have an idea of -- we know where there are the
different seats.

But to know who will leave, it could be also good information.

And I don't find it very easily on the Web site.

Maybe it's because I have not the right way to go to there.

But maybe it's easier if you can give us this information.

Thank you.

>>ADAM PEAKE: Okay.

I'll try and remember them.

And I apologize for mispronunciations.

The GNSO seat that's becoming vacant is currently occupied by Maureen
Cubberley.

The ccNSO seat is currently occupied by Eva Froelich.

The ALAC positions are occupied by Vittorio Bertola and Jean Polly.

That's Europe and North America respectively.

The board seats are Hagen Hultzsch, Veni Markovski, and Hualin Qian.

And I think I've pronounced -- Qian.

I apologize for that.

So that's the two European and one Asia-Pacific seat.

So those seats become vacant.

And all of those people are -- they don't have any face -- any term limits.

So they are eligible to apply if they wish.

I want to just follow up on something that was said earlier.

Nobody is going to be excluded.

Nobody's wasting their time by applying to this process.

There's no secret rules or hidden rules that we're going to -- you know, that
bind you from consideration.

So all candidates are going to be considered equally.

We do have some -- we do have these constraints we've talked about about
regional diversity and so on.

But it's -- every candidate is going to get fair consideration.

Thanks.

>>KEN FOCKLER: George, I don't know if it would be interesting to comment,
and I think you were the one that brought it to my attention, that whoever is
seated at the end of this annual meeting then makes the ICANN board and the
other boards for the next year, obviously.

And they're the ones that are gaining experience and the knowledge so that,
looking ahead one year as to who is leaving the board, is also an interesting
exercise and may play in the minds of people and priorities of skills and
talents.

Because I believe, and Adam and others can correct me if I'm wrong, that you
will see some leadership names, such as Vint Cerf and Alejandro, Alejandro, I
think his term actually ends halfway through next year, and Vint at the end
of 2007.

And I could look up the other.

But -- so that, to me, throws some new dynamics, in a way, into the situation
and puts quite a bit of importance on the work we do this year.

Thank you.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you, Ken.

That's an excellent comment.

Anyone else on the panel?

On IRC?

In the audience?

Well, then I want to thank you very much for attending this session.

Don't forget to pick up the fliers on the way out.

Don't forget that we need your help.

The quality of our outputs is determined, in large measure, by the quality of
our inputs.

And they are the responsibility of the NomCom, but also the responsibility of
the larger ICANN and the Internet community.

And that means you.

Thanks for coming.

[ Applause ]