*** Disclosure: The following is the output resulting from transcribing an audio file into a word/text document. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages and grammatical corrections. It is posted as an aid to the original audio file, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.*** Public Forum Thursday, 23 June 2011 ICANN Meeting - Singapore >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We're ready to begin the Singapore public forum. For those of you that are new to ICANN, this is one of the most exciting parts of the ICANN week. This is when the members of the community come forward and explain to their colleagues and the community, and particularly to the board, what they are thinking on various topics. We hear on this occasion from different constituencies, different support organizations and occasionally from different advisory committees what they're working on, what they would like the board to do, and what they're up to with various things. Can I just have an indication, please, could you stand if this is the first time you will have attended an ICANN public forum? This is not intended to embarrass you at all. I just -- what I'd quite like to do is if -- [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Is, first of all, welcome you. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: If you're wearing the green sticker, that means that I might be able to give you some priority at the microphone. We have some people who have been to several of these forums and it might be quite nice to hear from some new speakers on some of these topics. Something for all people, whether they've been here to many public forums or this is their first, is to understand what the, quote, rules of engagement, unquote are. We have rules for the improvement of this process, and if I can just put the staff -- get the staff to put them up, they're about expected standards of behavior. And just if you can just have a quick look at those, they're all relatively obvious for facilitating civilized discourse. So we can -- we act within the spirit and the mission of our values. We adhere to the conflict of interest policy. We treat all members of the community equally. We act in a reasonable and informed manner. We listen to others. We work to build consensus. We protect the organization's assets, and that includes our goodwill. And our reputation. And we act fairly and in good faith. So just a reminder, not just because there's any -- there's any anticipation of breaches but just to set the right tone. So let's begin. The agenda for today, if we could put that on the screen, these are the topics that have been solicited from the community leadership as to what seems to be the exciting topics for the week. We're in the middle of the chair's introduction. We will then follow with a brief set of thank yous for a set of community leaders. We then move on to a report from the nominating committee chair, and then there's 30 minutes available to the community to discuss the operating plan and the budget. I'll be watching that. If it looks like there's no interest in that topic, we'll move on to the next. And equally, if it looks like a lot of people are wanting to ask questions and make comment about the budget, we can extend it slightly. We then move on to discussion about the IANA contract and the same thing, again. The times are guidelines. And then the new gTLD applicant support program and then we'll take a break, come back and hear from our hosts for the next ICANN meeting which will be in Dakar, in Senegal, and then the Accountability and Transparency Review Team's recommendations, noticing -- those of you who haven't -- that's on the agenda for the board for tomorrow. And then some community health and welfare -- there's a considerable concern about the prospect of volunteer burnout in our volunteer community, so we'd like to hear from you on that. And then a discussion that a number of people have suggested might be helpful, which is there's various obligations on ICANN to act in the public interest, so let's try and ascertain what that might mean. And then we have to bid farewell in public -- in this forum to Rita Rodin Johnston, who will be stepping down from the board tomorrow afternoon. If there's any other time, any other business. So that's the process. If the -- if there's a hot topic that you want to discuss and it's not on the agenda, we'll try and fit it in at the end. So let's scroll back to the top. And let's begin, if we can, with a special thank you to the leadership of our Security and Stability Advisory Committee. And I call on Rod Beckstrom to speak first on that. Rod. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Certainly. Just want to recognize and thank Dr. Steve Crocker, as the founder. Are you down there, Steve? Okay. As the founding chairman of SSAC and for his, I think, near 10 years of leadership of that group until he handed over to Patrik Fältström, so Steve is not only one of the founding pioneers of the Internet but certainly the founding father of SSAC at ICANN, and we're enormously appreciative for that. And we're also appreciative for the years of excellent service of our other board member, Ray Plzak, on SSAC, and both of them are stepping down, so we will be having a ceremony to recognize them. Thank you. And I'll hand it over to you, Patrick. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Rod. Other members -- other leadership from the community want to be associated with this particular motion, and the first is Chris Disspain, the former chair of the ccNSO. Chris. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words at this ceremony about Steve and Ray. The two of them have made a tremendous subscription to the SSAC, to ICANN, and to the security and stability of the Internet overall, so it's an honor to be able to express the gratitude of the ccTLD community for Steve and Ray's hard work and many achievements. I'm not going to embark on an unnecessary history lesson into the very early days of the Internet, but it bears mentioning that the DNS was always designed and built to be decentralized and massively scalable in nature, and we all know that's something it does extremely well, facilitating access to billions of users across the globe. It's also these qualities of decentralization and scalability that have helped facilitate the establishment and continued operations of the ccTLD opportunity, for the DNS was never meant to be an inherently secure system and it's been through the vision and dedication of people such as Steve and Ray that we've been able to maintain the levels of reliability and resilience we have today. Security and stability are absolutely critical issues for the over 240 members of the ccTLD community. Our experience and resources differ vastly. We operate under a wide range of policy frameworks, structures, and business models, but we all want to make sure our systems remain protected and run in accordance with best practices and security. And that's why our needs and goals have often intersected with the work led by Steve and Ray at the SSAC, and why their contribution and collaboration has been so vital to us over the years. We've greatly valued the expert advice of the SSAC on a range of matters, be they operational, administrative, or registration-related. Steve and Ray's ongoing work in assessing threats and risks to the Internet's naming and numbering systems, identifying where the threats are, and advising all of the ICANN community about them has been absolutely invaluable. Their projects include long-running and ongoing work on DNSSEC deployment and communicating developments to the community, their root zone scaling analysis work that was vital to so many ICANN initiatives but most pertinently to the introduction of IDN ccTLDs through the fast track process, their analysis of issues such as Fast Flux hosting and domain frontrunning, their investigation of and recommendations regarding the DNS denial of service attacks back in 2006, and many, many more. For all this work, for their tremendous expertise, and for their untiring dedication to keeping the Internet stable and secure, I'd like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Steve and Ray on behalf of the whole of the ccTLD community. Thanks, guys. [ Applause ] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'm going to pass the microphone now to Cheryl, who will talk on behalf of the ALAC, I suspect. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Correctly identified. Thank you, Chris. And most importantly, thank you to Steve and Ray. I'm going to approach this in a twofold way, which is kind of normal for me, I suppose. First of all, on behalf of the community, when I took the role as ALAC chair, and it was as ALAC chair that I was asked whether I'd say a few words at this particular ceremony, my response was one word to the e- mail I'd be -- well, no, it's -- "delighted to." Two words. Can't count either. Why I was able to say that was because you have, in fact, had an incredible impact on our community and I suspect you may not realize how much. So in a couple of moments, I'd like to just highlight a couple of issues along those lines. The hard part then came to the: What do I say? Do I think about those moments in the Egypt meeting which we -- we had your group first come and engage with our community in a face-to-face environment? I'm not going to go through those details, and we all understand how important security, stability, and resiliency is, and we all know, as end users, that that is what we want. But when we started engaging certainly on my watch, it was a matter of: What is this SSAC thing that we send a liaison to? And it's under your mutual watch that we now have a situation when a community immediately says, "What's the SSAC view on this issue? And in fact, if they haven't got a view, can we talk to them and staff and see what might happen?" And that is a huge shift, and that's under your watch, and community wants to thank you deeply for that. Thank you so much. On a personal note, it's been a joy, gentlemen. It's had its moments. We've had our challenges. But it's always been a joy. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: And I now pass the baton across to Ram Mohan. >>RAM MOHAN: Thank you. I'm Ram Mohan and I'm the SSAC's liaison to the ICANN board. And I'd like to just say a few words. You know, SSAC itself got started in the events right after the aftermath of September 11, and the idea was to bring experts from around the world. Steve was the founding chair of SSAC, and Ray the founding vice chair of SSAC, and in the 10 years that I've worked with both of them on the committee, one of the things that has been very clear is that they embody the face and soul of what it means to be a responsible community member, what it means to actually be an advisory committee that focuses on facts, focuses on the spirit of scientific inquiry, and ensures that recommendations and results that come back into the community are based on facts, are not based on politics or based on other things but are as objective as they can be. And that would not have happened without the leadership that Steve, you provided, and that Ray, you ably supported. One of the things that is most striking for me as a founding member -- charter member of SSAC, but more importantly as somebody who has been part of the process here, was the number of members who would come up and say, "I want to be in SSAC because Steve's the chair of SSAC. I want to be in SSAC because Ray is in the spot that he is in." And that speaks tremendously to the integrity, to the character that you have lent to this organization and that you've actually, you know, helped it grow in a way that I can't imagine would have grown any other way. So 48 reports. A complete review process that under both of your watches SSAC completed. 10 years. Countless hours. Working on matters both mundane -- you know, these two guys were responsible for changing the name of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which was originally called SECSAC to SSAC, to weighty issues like what happened with SiteFinder or what happened with root scaling. So on behalf of SSAC, on behalf of the community, thank you for helping create an organization whose advice is heard and whose recommendations are acted upon. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>RAM MOHAN: I'd like to give the mic over to Jim Galvin, the vice chairman of SSAC. >>JIM GALVIN: Thank you, Ron and thank you to the board and to the community for this opportunity to acknowledge and recognize the untiring dedication of two of our most significant volunteers in this community. I've had the privilege of knowing Steve for more than two decades. I started my career working directly for Steve, for more than five years. And after that time, I had many opportunities to work with him and I always accepted them with enthusiasm. Thus, when Steve approached me six months after SSAC was formally created to join him by supporting the community, I agreed without hesitation. Being part of the SSAC exec team, which at that time in the early days was three people -- Steve and Ray and myself -- I was able to participate firsthand with the evolution of SSAC from its fledgling beginnings to the mature, credible, and successful organization that it is. As others have noted and I will affirm as a firsthand participant, that success is due in large part to Steve's vision, his commitment to execute on that vision, and his technical and diplomatic acumen when working both with the SSAC volunteers and more broadly with the community at large. Steve and Ray will leave behind gigantic shoes to fill, and as the incoming vice chair, I want to thank Steve and Ray for establishing a thorough and rigorous foundation of principles upon which to continue to evolve one of the most successful ICANN advisory committees. To borrow a turn of phrase, the change of leadership we're seeing today is the end of a beginning. As the new vice chair, with Patrik as the new chair, our goal is to build on Steve's vision and contribute to an ever more secure and stable Internet. Steve, it has been and continues to be an honor and a privilege to work with you and to know you. Thank you. Ray, thank you. [ Applause ] >>JIM GALVIN: And I now pass the mic to Patrik Fältström, the new chair of the SSAC. >>PATRIK FÄLTSTRÖM: Thank you very much. Steve, Ray, can you please come forward. As people have mentioned, SSAC was formed almost 10 years ago. It was actually on the 15th of November in 2001. And both of you have been working with SSAC, as we heard, since then. And it's up to Jim and me, which have now taken over the flag, to ensure that we are continuing our -- your great work and also trying to -- of course trying to improve what you've done and be even better advisors not only to the ICANN board but also to the ICANN -- the whole ICANN community and beyond. We really hope that we will be able to do our best and also hope for the community's support. As you all have heard, Jim and I would really like to have increased cooperation, increased communication with all of you. And with that, thank you very much. >>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Standing Ovation ] >>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you. Thank you very much. You're very kind. I appreciate this, and I know Ray appreciates this as well, but the -- there's really an enormously important team of people. All of the volunteers of SSAC have worked very hard over a long period of time, so I wanted to say just a couple of things. SSAC was formed in the wake of 9/11. There was a meeting held to say -- to ask, "What should ICANN do about security matters?" A very good meeting. And then volunteers were recruited. And then I got a call from my longtime friend, Vint Cerf, who was chairing the board, saying that they needed somebody to chair this new committee and just take a -- maybe six months, get it organized, and it would be all under control. And I'd known Vint a long time and I knew how to adjust for that kind of invitation and I figured it would take maybe two years. I underestimated a little bit. One of the most striking things is that I was in the unusual position -- the committee had basically all been recruited, so the question is, how do you lead a group like that. So I made a point of talking to each person individually, and a theme emerged, somewhat to my surprise. Many of the people said, in one way or another, "We think security's really important. We want to help. We also -- this relatively new organization, ICANN, feels awfully political. We don't know how tightly we want to get involved with that. So we want to know that our advice is going to be founded in good solid technical basis, and we don't want to get wrapped up too much with this political stuff." And that set a tone and a theme for the way we had to be organized that I think has played very well. Another element of the way we set about our business is that security is not an isolated matter. It's not something that you can put off in a separate corner and deal with. You have to be engaged with every other part of the system. And so we made a point of interacting -- interacting with ALAC, as Cheryl described, with ccNSO. In the early days we had a kind of traveling roadshow, we'd come to ICANN meetings and we'd have a little entourage that would go and visit all the other meetings and I think that was very helpful. Over time, we developed some internal processes. We got -- as Jim said, I called him up and said, "We need some help here, to get things organized," and over a period of time we developed an absolutely first-class team, first with Jim, Julie Hedlund, Dave Piscitello, now Steve Sheng, a really all-star cast that keep things going. When the board was reorganized so that a liaison position was created in addition to chair, I stepped in to try to do that for a while, and then a couple of years ago Ram took that over, and it's been a really excellent team. Ray stepped in as vice chair. We've just had a really first-class operation. I tried to step down a couple of years ago, and Peter asked me to stay on because of this review process that was going to take place, and he said, "Well, you know, we don't know what the outcome of that is going to be, how do I turn it over to somebody else," and I said, "Oh, right, so I got to stay on for a while." That review process completed. I think we were the first over the finish line of these -- is that -- you're in charge of all that. >>JIM GALVIN: Right. >>STEVE CROCKER: So besides whatever technical work we did, we have accomplished an amazing bureaucratic success, and only those of you who have been involved in these review processes have any idea what that really means, but that may -- that may be our shining accomplishment. We also tried to document our processes, and so when I stepped down in December and we selected Patrik and Jim as the new leadership, I thought, "Well, you know, I'll be around, I'm happy to help out." It took about five minutes. They had it under control and I was outta there, and they didn't need me anymore at all. So I have to congratulate you guys and I'll try not to bug you very much. So thank you very much. You guys are doing an amazing job. Did I leave anything for you to say? [ Laughter ] >>RAY PLZAK: Well, hi. [ Laughter ] >>STEVE CROCKER: You're one to talk about -- never mind. [ Laughter ] >>RAY PLZAK: Okay. Peter is actually sitting back here twiddling his thumbs because he wants to leave. [ Laughter ] >>RAY PLZAK: The -- Steve covered almost everything there is to say. My role was primarily to support Steve and to basically take care of the bureaucracy for him, and I hope over time that that did work, and I would say that our ability to get a nicely function go bureaucracy, if you will, enabled Steve to basically get out of real quickly. So Steve, I want to say thank you for allowing me to work with you and I thought we had a very, very good time at it. >>STEVE CROCKER: Absolutely. >>RAY PLZAK: And so with that, I will give the microphone back to Patrik so that Peter can get on with it. >>PATRIK FÄLTSTRÖM: Thank you very much and thank you, Peter, for the time. [ Applause ] >> I would like the next three people whose names I'm going to call to come forward to the stage and stand by the steps, please. Dr. Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Professor Hong Xue, and Andres Piazza up to the stage, please, by the steps. If you could come to the steps over on this side, please. Thank you very much. The ICANN board wishes to recognize and thank Andres Piazza for her dedication and lasting contribution to ICANN and the Internet community through her service as chairman of the LACRALO. [ Applause ] >> My apologies. The ICANN wishes to recognize and thank Professor Hong Xue for her dedication and lasting contribution to ICANN and the Internet community through her service as the chair of the APRALO program. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. As they say at the Oscars, Olivier couldn't be here tonight but we'll be arranging for him to get the certificate. Thank you. I'd like now to call upon the chair of the nominating committee, Adam Peake, to give us a brief report on the activities of that very important group. Adam. >>ADAM PEAKE: Good afternoon, everybody. That was a little bit loud. Thank you very much. So a quick update from the nominating committee. We're in the middle of our 2011 process and I'd like to give you some background on what we've done so far. So statements of interest received. That means the number of candidates we're receiving is 88. 19 of these were from Africa, 24 from the Asia-Pacific, 14 from Europe, 15 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 16 from North America. Very, very pleased to say that 23 of the candidates are women, and that is a record number for any nominating committee, so thank you very much to the community for your response to that. [ Applause ] >>ADAM PEAKE: Very, very strong pool. The committee's going to have a hard time selecting from them. I can also say that every member of the -- all of the candidates have an acute sense of hearing and extremely high IQ, which is very pleasing. [ Laughter ] >>ADAM PEAKE: Our process -- and I don't think the slides are up there, but it doesn't matter too much. The process that we go through is that we recruit from December to April, and from April onwards into the period now, we're into what we call deep diving which is really investigating the candidates, learning about them, and assessing them. And then at the end of this meeting, we begin a selection process. So from Friday afternoon, tomorrow afternoon, we will all disappear for two or three days and make our selections. Those people -- our outcomes will announced in September, and those people will take their seats at the end of the AGM. Looking on to the next slide is a request -- and this goes to the supporting organizations and the advisory councils for the 2012 delegates. In the next month or so, we will be writing a letter asking you to send us new delegates for the 2012 committee, and I would ask for you to consider regional diversity. For example, the 2010 committee has one member from Africa and one member from Asia. It's very difficult for us to do outreach if we do not have representation from the regions. There were only two people from Latin America and Caribbean. So please, send us people who have a strong address book. They should have contacts at director level. If you want high-level people, we have to be able to outreach to those. And more women NomCom members. We only have three at the moment, and one of them was my appointee, the associate chair. And that really is the message that we have from the nominating committee. I also have another announcement to make, which is quite important, you'll hear. Marc Rotenberg, who was the 2010 NomCom appointee to the ALAC from the North America region has resigned his position and the 2011 NomCom has been tasked with finding a he are placement. We propose to open a short application process during the month of July and a call for statements of interest from eligible North American citizens for this position will be made. It will be a short period, perhaps three weeks, so people will have to get their -- get their statements in, and we will select and announce when we make our other appointees known in September, early September. However, that person will take their position immediately and begin their service to the ALAC as soon as the announcement is made, not from the AGM, which is the case with the other appointees. So we're making an announcement as soon as we can, and we'll be working with the ALAC and North American RALO to do this and take it forward. So please, we need your help in that. Anyone from North America who wishes to serve on the ALAC, we would like to hear from you. So one last point and I'll try and hurry. Excuse me while I do -- I do need a piece of paper for this and Peter this is for you. As we said, we will be disappearing before all the much deserved applause happens tomorrow so let me just say -- NomCom actually allowed me to say this so from myself, from (saying name), from Wolfgang, from (saying name), from Vanda, from (saying name), from (saying name), from Eduardo, from Maria, from Rob, from Tony, from (saying name), from Chris, from Michael, from Mark, from Mike, from Jose, from Giovanni, Hank, Vivek, and Wilfried, thank you very much. It's been a pressure working for you. Look forward to seeing you again. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much for the report, Adam, and hopefully the work of the NomCom will continue to improve, as it has been. Please convey my thanks and forgive me for not individually naming in my thanks each of the members, but that was a nice touch. I much appreciate it. We then come to the topic of the FY12 operating plan and budget. We have senior staff headed up by Akram, the chief operating officer, if there are any detailed questions to be asked and answered. And we also have available for comment the chair of the Board Finance Committee, whose committee provides the oversight for the preparation of this particularly important document. I see somebody at the microphone. Yes, sir. Just, again, a reminder of the rules. If you could just state your name and affiliation so that we know who you are. Thank you. >> CHRIS CHAPLOW: Thank you, Peter. My name is Chris Chaplow. I'm vice chair for finance and operations from the business constituency. I just want to make it clear -- I have got three points to make, but I don't want this to seem more -- to be a whine from the BC. It's really in the wider community. I'm saying these things so that -- for the benefit of the wider community rather than just something that the BC wants. One item is the budget time scales. I think we said before, this needs a look at. At the moment, the hard stop publishing of the draft plan was 45 days that's in the bylaws. I think it needs to be a little bit earlier than that, so that we've got time to address it properly before the public meeting that we're at. The other is the lack of detail. Again, it has been said many times over many years but we do need more details so we can comment and help ICANN with these. It doesn't even go at the moment down to project level. So I think my real comment to the board is to urge them to give priority to the implementation of resources and software, I think, so that next year in the FY13 it can be a much more meaningful process. And, lastly, for the budget cycle improvements, there were cycle improvements proposed last year and they were fundamentally two things -- three but fundamentally two. One was the early AC/SO comment. And I'm going to say "comment" opportunities. And the other was the SO/AC support requests. And I think it was a fundamentally sound idea, and I applaud that, but it was the implementation that didn't go very well and the whole thing really degenerated into, a new phrase that I've learned this week actually, "pork barreling" which means sort of individuals scrabbling around to get a bit of pork, I suppose, for their constituencies. And that isn't right. And the focus should really have been on the other one, which is the SO/AC early comments so we could comment into the framework budget. So my message is that was a great improvement idea. Let's give it another chance next year. Thanks very much. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Chris. Is there any comment from the board, from the staff? Any further comment from the other microphone? Thank you. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Hi, thank you. Lesley Cowley, Nominet CEO, dot uk, and ccNSO chair. I have some questions and comments from the ccNSO, so I'm speaking very clearly in that capacity. We've had a number of discussions within the ccNSO with staff and board members about the budget this week and -- as I know you are aware. The ccNSO has a longstanding interest in the strategic plan, the operating plan and the budget. And I have some questions for the Finance Committee board members. So during and prior to this week, the ccNSO has raised a number of concerns on high employee costs, on a 15% increase in professional services cost which takes that to a quarter of the ICANN budget, a 21% increase in IDN ccTLD costs, a 30% increase in ccTLD costs in the published draft budget, although thankfully there was a 2 million misallocation found this week which has reduced that percentage, and, finally, a concern about the overall increase in expenditure of 13% compared with a 6.5% increase in income, a significant difference. So our questions are: What level of scrutiny has the Finance Committee been able to give to the budget so far so you are able to give reassurance to the community and so that we can have trust and confidence in the budget? And when will ICANN's income and expenditure be rather more balanced? And what measures will be taken in order to ensure that costs are under control? Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Lesley. I'm not sure about the last part. We'll ask Ramaraj to talk about whether costs are out of control. But those first two questions there, can we ask you to have -- can you answer those, please, Ramaraj? >>RAMARAJ: I'll start with the last one. The manner in which this year's -- or the FY12 budget was planned was an earlier cycle, the strategic plan six months and then we looked at getting input over six months before putting it out for public comment and discussion earlier. The budget requests that came in were significantly higher than what you see today, and this is based on the strategic plan and what the community saw as priorities for FY12. From there, staff and Finance Committee together then worked on what could be priorities. Knowing that the revenue increase is going to be about 6, 6 1/2% or lower. The core budget that has been happening year after year, that part of it has grown in line with the revenue, about 6%. What is actually a significant increase are expenses related to the AoC or the ATRT and related review implementation. That's about 3.6, maybe $4 million, which is about 15% increase or so in the overall costs. That is really the significant difference that you are seeing in terms of costs. Line item-wise, there is a new program that got approved on Monday, the new gTLD program. There has been a lot of preparatory work towards that. Contractual compliance had to be increased. That's a 25% increase in contractual compliance. So there is staffing that is going on towards meeting the new gTLD launch and contractual compliance. That's where you are seeing some of the increased compensation costs coming up, budgeted. Broadly, the committee has worked very closely with senior staff in keeping core operating costs as close to possible as FY11. And new initiatives that community required is what the increased costs are. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you. So are the ATRT costs permanent additions or just one-offs? >>RAMARAJ: Actually, most of it is recurring. Of the 4 million or so, about half a million is one time. The rest of it is annual. >>LESLEY COWLEY: I'm happy to work with you on long-term forecasting, but that might indicate an ongoing problem then. >>RAMARAJ: Sure. Based on the inputs that people like you have given us, we are trying to now see is there a way we can work out a broad three-year budget forecast in terms of -- especially around the core. On new initiatives, we put a broad budget. that's one initiative that during FY12 we would like to see implemented, a three-year forward look. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thanks, Ramaraj. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Mike, you were going to respond? >>MIKE SILBER: Thanks, Peter. Peter, I'm just looking at the transcript of the Brussels meeting last year. And I indicated at that stage that a recordal had been put into the item on the agenda indicating that there has been a slight confusion or lack of foresight in terms of the planning, that the resolution was passed when the public comment on the 2010-2011 budget cycle only closed on the day of the board meeting last year. And I also indicated that some of the comments received offered detail which allowed people to comment on items that were not clear to them. And I indicated that there was a process improvement required that will allow significant or sufficient time for comments to be made and that we don't have to deal with ad hoc alterations after the fact when you have already adopted something. It is now a year later, and we managed to improve our process by all of a week where public comment closed Friday last week. There are issues about the Board Finance Committee having met on the Saturday as to whether comments could have been -- in fact, usefully been integrated by staff, presented to the Board Finance Committee. There's something serious wrong with our process here, that comments are literally -- or we're behaving in a manner where comments are perceived to have no use if the adoption by the Board Finance Committee is happening that the day comments close or a few hours after comments close and that the board is being asked to adopt a week later when there have been significant errors discovered and where there have been issues raised. I think this is a very significant problem, and I must be honest seeing as July next year will be the last -- my last meeting in my current term, if this situation were to repeat itself, I would not vote in favor of the adoption of the budget which has not been prepared with sufficient time for community consultation. The second problem that I would like to raise is the fact that the ICANN financial system has still not been implemented. And I'm aware of promises made to the community for at least two years of a new finance system that will solve everything, as was described the other day, that will slice and dice. Well, I'm not aware of any progress having been made, notwithstanding that this being the third year that that finance system has been discussed. And if we're embarking on additional expenses around the AoC but also a financially incredibly expensive program in terms of the new gTLD project, which also hopefully will be remuneratively rewarding, and we don't have a system in place that can actually manage that, then we are in serious trouble. And if priority is not given to that, then there is a problem here. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Mike. [ Applause ] I think the point about public comment is -- I think the point about public comment is a very good one. If we're not taking enough time to allow processing, let's hear from the Finance Committee again. Ramaraj, a response? >>RAMARAJ: The response, the public comment closed on 17th. Finance Committee had its first meeting on the 18th, early morning. So what we did look at were all comments that were received up till that time. And we found that all comments that had an impact on the budget numbers were taken into consideration on the 18th meeting. What we did keep for discussion later on were process improvements that came -- that were comments that were made by ccNSO and a couple of others, ALAC, on a few areas. But what had budget impact, number impact were all taken into consideration at the meeting on the 18th. Since then, we've had a couple of online resolutions and discussions for enhancement. Of course, if we had more time, that would have been better. But as you know, the budget gets posted for public comment on the 17th of May and we've given sufficient time for community to respond, 30 days. And whatever had financial impact got handled. On the system itself, there is a lot of detail in the operating plan and budget document. Part of the problem is that it's an operating plan and budget. And, therefore, when you look at a summary sheet and you want more detail, there is a lot of narrative explaining some of these numbers before you get to the actual budget detail. Therefore, it is a question of better presentation of a budget and that is something that staff and committee are working together to work on the FY12 itself and seeing how better this could be presented during the year. But the details are available if you look for it. Could we make it more convenient? Of course, we could. Is the accounting system good enough, safe enough, capturing? The auditors said at the end of their audit, they gave a clean slate as was reported to the community that the accounting system was fine and there was a clean slate. However, with the increased activity, it was felt that we needed to change the accounting system, both audit and Finance Committees have been working with staff seeing that there is an increase on a better software that could give even more information that would be useful to the community, cost neutral, budget -- greater details, capturing it at a spend level so that without time sheets better allocation could take place. That's really what this new software is about. There is no system challenge that this is going to overcome. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks. Lesley, you have had a question. Do you want another one? >>LESLEY COWLEY: Sorry, just a brief follow-up in response to Mike's comment if you don't mind. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you. Just to note that the plan states about vigorously pursuing ccTLD contributions. And linked to Mike's point, we'd also be grateful if you could vigorously pursue some financial information to the ccTLDs which we've been waiting for since Nairobi, March 2010. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay, thank you. Rita? >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON: Thank you, Peter. Ramaraj alluded to this a bit. As chair of the Audit Committee, Ram and I have been working quite closely with staff, as Ram said, to upgrade the financial software. Many of the accounting and systems at ICANN were somewhat manual. This organization has grown exponentially. And I'm happy to report that we are hoping that the rollout of this new system, which is ongoing now, the first phase of it will be live shortly -- so you can speak to Akram about that if you would like more detail. But this has been something, I think, that has been a little bit difficult in terms of generating this detail that Ramaraj is talking about in the budget. And we are very hopefully that this updated software plan will help. I also just wanted to note that Ramaraj rattled off all of those statistics. And you may not have bean able to see from the audience out there, but they are all from memory. He has been an incredibly active chair of the Finance Committee. The organization has been without a CFO for a few months. And Ram as chair of the Finance and this board has taken active participation and worked with staff. Remember, the board isn't staff. So we have been encouraging our CEO to look for a new CFO and take on this important challenge as we move forward. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Rita. Mike, you wanted to make a clarification? >>MIKE SILBER: Yes. I've been encouraged just to clarify. When I spoke about the new gTLD program being "remuneratively rewarding," the intention was to refer, of course, to turnover rather than profit given it is a cost-based system and the application fee will relate to costs. So, yes, there will be an increase in revenue, but it won't relate to any sort of attempt to generate a profit out of it. I should also possibly clarify that it is almost a year that we've been without a CFO while we are on the point of clarifications. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Question from the floor? >> AXEL PAWLIK; Good afternoon. My name is Axel Pawlik. I'm the managing director of the RIPE NCC which is one of the five regional registries. And as such, I'm also a member of the Number Resource Organizations Executive Council. I would like to clarify the situation about the activity known as RPKI, or resource -- number resource certification and give some background information here. On request of the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC members, we at the RIPE NCC have been planning for resource certification together with the other RIRs, of course. And we have been developing RPKI software systems since 2006. This is an activity that is done in close coordination obviously with other RIRs and community members. Earlier this week you have heard comments and concerns voiced about the preparations by ICANN for the implementation of a resource certification system that could act as a single trust anchor in the global RPKI system. These preparations are, to my knowledge, in response to a letter received by ICANN from the NRO indicating the RIRs would like to enter into discussion with ICANN about the functionality of such system in line that is with an NRO statement made already in 2009 about the principle for single global trust anchor. Please do bear in mind that this letter is a call for discussion only so far at this time and not yet a request for the deployment of such a system. Some background here, during the last RIPE meeting in May, substantial discussions took place about the benefits and especially the potential risks of such a system. This discussion has not yet come to a conclusion. However, the concerns voiced there are grave enough that the RIPE NCC executive board in its meeting in the last week has agreed on resolutions, among others, no only instructs RIPE NCC staff to continue operating and developing the RPKI infrastructure but also to preserving the autonomy of ISPs and setting and implementing the routing policy a priority in all related activities. And the full text of the resolution is available on our Web site, on the board pages. This resolution in my eyes reflects the actual prerogative of the bottom-up process that governs RIPE NCC activities as well as the policy development process within the RIPE region. As of now, we don't know the outcome of this process regarding RPKI. We are, however, working together, of course, with our community, our members, the other RIRs and certainly also the ICANN community as usual to achieve the best possible and consensus-based outcome. By the way, the next RIPE meeting will become a focal point for this ongoing discussion. Important is that the resulting RPKI system and its functionality will have to be consistent with the needs and requests of the Internet operators. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much. More comments on the budget? Yes, sir, next in line. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Peter. Chuck Gomes representing the registry stakeholder group. We submitted our comments in the comment period, but there were a couple of items I wanted to address. In preface to that, I wanted to thank both Ramaraj and Rita for the clarifications of some things that are coming that will hopefully enhance the capability of providing more detail. One of the comments that registries made was that in the last two budget cycles there really hasn't been much improvement in terms of the level of detail. Whereas, previously there were some very significant improvements in detail, and we really appreciated that. To be specific, let me just cite a couple of examples. And I do appreciate, Ramaraj, the explanations -- the detailed explanations in terms of what's behind the numbers. There still isn't enough detail to judge things, like, for example, GNSO improvements which is important to us. And we can't tell whether there is enough money in there for all the things that are being projected and that are part of the board-approved improvements, nor for something as simple as the GNSO studies. There's some pretty specific amounts there. There's not enough detail where we can go in and look and really see, is that covered for next year? So, again, thank you for the explanation and that there will be more detail in the future. We look forward to that. >>RAMARAJ: Chuck actually the easy part is that there are $400,000 for GNSO improvements, and it is in the budget. I saw it a little while ago. I need to find which page and share that with you, but it is there. >>CHUCK GOMES: I didn't see it. >>RAMARAJ: All right. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Let's come to the next in line. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Roelof Meijer. I'm the CEO of SIDN, the company behind the dot NL ccTLD. I'm also the chair of the ccNSO's strategic and operational planning working group. That working group coordinates and facilitates -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, Roelof. Can I just ask you to stop? For those of you that haven't noticed, we try to limit each speaker to two minutes. And that's what that clock is ticking there. You already started in the negative which didn't seem very fair. So let's start again. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Thank you. I won't start again. I will take it that even if I was in the negative that you were still listening. [ Laughter ] Our chair, Lesley Cowley, has put forward most of the comments that the SOP has made in the process so far. There's one that hasn't been mentioned and that I would like to add, and that is that it is the opinion of the SOP that in the operational plan, there is a clear lack of identifiable and measurable goals which will make it very difficult at the end of the fiscal year to determine if the money has been well spent and if ICANN is making the progress it wants and it needs to make. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Roelof. Now, to this microphone. Yes, sir? >>STEVE METALITZ: Thank you, Steve Metalitz, vice president of the intellectual property constituency. I would just like to echo some of the remarks of Mike Silber about the disappointment that the problems with the budget process that were very visibly exposed in Brussels a year ago have not been -- have not been fixed yet. And the comment in terms of -- I think Chuck Gomes was much too charitable. He is a very charitable person. But when he said that we're not getting more detail as we were promised, in fact, we are getting less detail. And I think the IPC submissions on the budget framework and on the budget and operating plan spell that out in some detail. It occurs to me, too, that with all of the problems that we've encountered in the last several budget cycles and really very high level of frustration among our constituency, I think you heard it from the business constituency and from others, about the virtual impossibility of making meaningful input on this budget. I think maybe it is time to consider whether ICANN should, once again, have a budget advisory committee. It used to have a committee drawn from the community that would help advise it on development of a budget fairly early in that process rather than simply reacting to very skeletal and cryptic reports that would come out very late in the process. So obviously there's pros and cons to that, but I would encourage the board to at least consider the idea of a budget advisory committee that would involve the community earlier and hopefully more constructively than the budget process has allowed the last couple of times. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Steve. I actually got Bertrand who was going to make a comment, if it is still alive. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: The comment is alive. (Speaker off microphone.) >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay, Bruce Tonkin. Thank you, Bruce. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Yeah, I just want to comment, Steve, that the same thing has occurred to me this week as well, that we need to have a more structured way of engaging the leadership of the supporting organizations and advisory committees in the development of the budget. I think we need to be careful we don't start getting into what we call micromanagement. In some cases, I see people debating $1,000 items. I know that hasn't been the case with your constituency. But I think the principle is right, that we need to engage the community in a more structured way. It requires a couple of things. One is making sure we are clear on the input and the process for taking into account that input, like how it gets prioritized, we're clear on how we're going to report the budget, and we're clear on how we can take advantage of a budget advisory committee. So I think there is a few steps there that need to be thought through, but I think in principle, your idea is right. And one part of that would be to make use of the March meeting before the June meeting to really engage with that group so by then hopefully there is a properly reported budget with the information that you need and we can engage that group in March noting that would be very much draft form at that stage so that by the time we're here in June, we've got a budget that has board support. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Bruce. Steve, is there a follow-up with that or are you happy with that? Thanks. Let's go to the next microphone. You, sir? >>MICHELE NEYLON: It is Michele Neylon from Blacknight in Ireland. I noticed looking through the figures in the budget, again, that you have various debts there. And I know from personal experience that you now have engaged with a private company to try and collect some of those bad debts, specifically in relation to registrars who didn't pay accreditation fees or transaction fees. But I haven't -- I have yet to see any evidence of how successful those debt recuperation exercises have been, and it would be quite helpful to know whether there has been any success in recuperation of those fees. Because on a kind of back-of-the-envelope calculation at one stage was that registrars who had not paid fees owed in excess of half a million dollars, which would be fees and funds collected that could have been used for other things. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Let me just see if we can get an answer from that from Finance Committee or from staff. And we can take time and come back to it, if you'd like. Let's see if we can get within the next half-hour or so some response to that, Michele. Bertrand, you had another more generic comment. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Actually it was a contribution to the question that both Lesley and Roelof were making regarding the use of professional service and the envelope that is corresponding. The use of an external professional service is to provide you flexibility, but we all know it is costly. The problem is that it is difficult to avoid using external services when the in-house capacity is not there because there's not necessarily the competence or because it is a non- recurrent topic or because it has been requested through the process of developing the policy which was incidentally coming rather frequently during the period we've experienced. The answer or the element I wanted to give is as we are moving into a new phase, there clearly is a very interesting issue which will be the balance between building up external competence when there is sufficiently recurring activities that are allowed to reduce the costs which was not necessarily possible in the past. So this has not been discussed fully yet. But I just wanted to share that because it is an issue that would be very interesting to discuss, what is the right balance between flexibility and cost reduction by incorporating competences. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Bertrand. Let's come this microphone. Yes, sir. >>PAUL FOODY: Ladies and gentlemen, given the confirmation -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry. Could you just name and affiliation for the scribes, please. >>PAUL FOODY: Sorry. Paul Foody, speaking on my own behalf. Given the confirmation in San Francisco that 94% of the ICANN budget comes from domain name registrants and confirmation of your communications policy regarding the new gTLD program, will you now please e-mail existing registrants and let them know about your plans for new gTLDs? Is there an amount in the budget for that? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I don't think there is -- that is forming part of the current communications plan, but I'm sure the communications department will take that on board as an idea and consider it. Anybody else who wants to comment? The -- I'm not sure. When did the public comment period close on the communications plan? It may still -- there may still -- it's still open, I understand, Mr. Foody, so that's the kind of suggestion, please, that can very well also go into the -- >>ROD BECKSTROM: Barbara, do you want to take the mic and clarify please? I see you trying to communicate something. Barbara Clay. >>RAM MOHAN: Peter, just may I respond very briefly to that as well. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We certainly will. Let's hear from Barbara. Barbara's in charge of the communications plan so the very right person to talk to. >>BARBARA CLAY: Thank you. We'd posted the communications plan for comment -- for information, not for comment, although we certainly would welcome any input anyone wishes to deliver. I'll certainly take that idea under advisement. Obviously, in a period of restricted budget, there's only so much we can do, but that's a very interesting idea that I would like to pursue. >>PAUL FOODY: Well, you know, e-mail isn't that expensive. >>BARBARA CLAY: Understood. It's compiling the list and doing the staff work. >>PAUL FOODY: Thank you. >>BARBARA CLAY: Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: There's also anti-spam legislation in many countries that you might have to deal with. Ramaraj -- sorry. Ram Mohan. >>RAM MOHAN: Thanks. Just one thing to remember is that the data that is in the various registries, it's really not owned either by ICANN or by the registries, even. That's often considered data that is owned by the registrars, so it's not as straightforward as it perhaps seems. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Any other comment, questions on the budget? Roelof, a second question. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Can I just react to what Bertrand said on the subject of professional services? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes. Please do. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Okay. It's not only the problem that you indicated, that you have to find the right balance between what do you do yourself, what kind of expertise do you have within your own company, and what do you hire to remain flexible, but it's also the absolute amount that ICANN is spending because it's an awful lot of consultants to manage. 17.3 million is already an awful lot of consultants to manage, but with the gTLD launch, this amount raises -- rises to 50 million, 50% of the ICANN budget, and we are just simply doubting if ICANN is ready for that managerial problem or challenge. That's an awful lot of consultants to manage. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: So it's not the money itself, it's the symbol that it represents in terms of the change -- >>ROELOF MEIJER: I would say both. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Well, let's see if we can -- we've got a relatively full paper available on aspects of that. I might look to Akram to come back on that, but Bertrand? >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Yeah. Actually, I wanted to follow up on what Roelof was saying. This is a slightly -- you're right, it's a slightly different issue. It is a direct consequence of the choice that has been made for the new gTLD program to have independent evaluators. That's an element that is a consequence of a policy choice. Not to belittle the problem of management that it represents. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Yes. Thank you. Indeed, the new gTLD program is based on a considerable amount of outsourced processing of the applications in different steps of the process. Much of that work with the partners has been underway for some time. Kurt or Akram, if you'd like to make a comment on that at a high level, just to explain some of the work that's been underway to make sure that all of that is done in a professional fashion. >>AKRAM ATALLAH: Sure. So the new gTLD program is based on fixed cost and variable cost. The variable cost is actually tied to the number of applications that we will receive. The current plan shows a number of 500 applications, yet the process is the same, so by going up with applications, we don't have to have more panels. It's just the same number of panels that we have to manage and they just have to process more applications. So managing the number of consultants does not grow with the revenue. It doesn't scale up with the revenue. The same management firms, the same panels would be handling those applications. Therefore, working with them right now, we have additional resources that are dedicated to the new gTLD program and that's where -- what they're managing is these external panels. So I hope that answers it. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Akram. We're running out of time on the -- we've had more than our allocated time on the budget so I'm going to close the queue after the second speaker on this side. If there are more questions, we may be able to fit them in in our other business. Yes, sir. >>EDMON CHUNG: Thank you, party. This is Edmon Chung from ISOC Hong Kong and the ALS. Actually I came up to the mic because I heard it was discussed the new gTLD communications plan, and I guess, Peter, I'm -- I was as surprised as you were just now that the communications plan didn't go out for public comments, but I do welcome that there's still a possibility to provide input into that plan, because it -- I think it's a very important undertaking for the new gTLD program, and I guess speaking from ISOC Hong Kong, one of the things about the plan is that it's -- it seems to predicate on having, you know, global advertising companies and stuff, but I think utilizing and leveraging the -- the network of ALSs and the network around the community, around this room, is going to be very much more effective financially and also, you know, in terms of reach. So I -- you know, I put this in a sort of comment and I wonder how I can provide that comment through probably a more proper channel, and also the question really comes back to I wonder why it wasn't in the first place put out for public comments as well. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Edmon -- [ Applause ] >>ROD BECKSTROM: -- and thank you for the offer to help through some of the at-large structures. Barbara, would you like to respond to the offer, because I think that our communications group is very much -- very much would appreciate the assistance of parties that wish to help. >>BARBARA CLAY: Yes, absolutely. We would love to work with you, and I think that's a fundamental part of what we will be doing on the communications plan. It isn't an either/or. These are the elements that we had identified as the core issues that we would need to take an active role in engaging on. The community is -- it's -- to me, it is just implied that we will be working closely with a lot of members of the community in order to get this message out globally. You know, to do a global awareness-raising program, you know, it would be obviously beneficial to have all the support we can possibly have within the community, and I am, you know, happy to open this up for any ideas. As I said a moment ago, for anyone to contribute with this. We'll come up with a process to formalize that if that is the most efficient way to do that. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Edmon. Thanks, Barbara. >>EDMON CHUNG: The question is still to the board whether -- you know, why it wasn't put out to public comment in the first place. You don't have to answer now. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We'll come -- >>ROD BECKSTROM: Yeah. I'll have Barbara respond to that later. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes, please. Go ahead. >>MARILYN CADE: My name is Marilyn Cade and I'm going to address two topics. First of all, I'm going to comment on something that was said earlier. First of all, I would say that the decision to use professional services is not a policy decision. I was on the GNSO policy council. That is, I think, an implementation and a management choice, and I'm not -- so I just want to be clear it's not a policy decision, because we did not make a recommendation that the board outsource these functions. And that's an important message, because I would myself strongly agree that it's a very large number of potentially non-directly accountable parties to manage. The business constituency which I chair made a comment on this point, and I wish to be on the record on that on behalf of my constituency, and that is that the board may support a staff -- an executive decision to outsource functions, but not to outsource accountability. So we wish to just reiterate that statement to you, that that was very clearly a BC statement and it is on the record and we wish to reiterate it. The second question -- second point I will make is a restatement of a previous BC statement about communications about the new gTLD program. I welcome the offer now to be open to interaction with the community about the communications plan. The BC made a very important point that I will say again. There are over 2 billion Internet users. In the next five years, there will be 3 billion. 62 to 67% of those users do not speak or write English. They are not necessarily today registrants. We represent business users. We are very concerned that the communications plan also be suitable to raise awareness among users about the vast change, not just be focused on the recruitment of registry applicants or even awareness of registrants for those applicants. So I hope I -- our message is very clear that this is a massive change and an awareness program needs to take into account that vaster set of users as well. We do represent business organizations and we'll be very happy to work -- to use our business organizations and associations to provide comments on what that kind of messaging might be or even how to help spread the broader message. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Marilyn. There's a comment in reply from Bruce. Bruce. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Yeah, Marilyn. I guess -- I think you're right, we do need to make sure that we're covering the different groups. I think the timing of the messages, though, is a little different. So let's be clear. There won't be any new names until 2013, so I'd be interested in what you think the message to users is for, say, this year. Because I think it's the timing that's important, and the other aspect is that we've found in the round of 2000, at least, were we giving application developers and others enough time to understand that they may need to be making software changes as a response to some of the changes. So I think there are some defined user groups, but the messages and the timing of those messages might be different. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Bruce. I guess I would say about that if you're going to run an advertising campaign -- and that's what it feels like right now to me -- and certainly the introduction about what's the next big dot thing feels like an advertising campaign to me, this is not a criticism but if you're going to run an advertising campaign, then you should expect Internet users to see it as well. So if you don't provide enough information for them to see in the future -- and that may mean in two years blah, blah, blah -- then you may inadvertently miss an opportunity or even confuse them about the relevance to them. Just as you, I know, will be very sensitive to the fact that we must communicate differently in different cultures and differently in different geographies, there's also, I think, an aspect of that many of us in business understand if we are going to prepare to launch a product, we often understand we need to have a staged approach. But we can't just ignore the "and we have to start at the beginning," okay? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Next in line? >>OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: Yes. Hello. My name is Olivier Crepin- Leblond. I'm chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee. I'm not going to repeat what Marilyn just told you. I just wanted to tell you that at the ALAC, we agree with this, and you have to leave yourself enough time to reach all users out there. It takes a while to get through to everyone. So start that as early as possible. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Can I ask you to remain for a moment because we actually had an announcement concerning you a little while ago and -- >>OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: I hear so, yeah. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And we are delighted that you are able to join us and if you wouldn't mind just coming up on stage while I read this. The ICANN board wishes to recognize and thank Dr. Olivier Crepin-Leblond for his dedication and lasting contribution to ICANN and the Internet community through his service as the secretary of the EURALO. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much. If we can close off, then, that stage on the budget, we've got a couple of questions noted that we will try and come back during the session with answers. And move then to the IANA contract and the recent further notice of inquiry from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Are there any comments in relation to that? I see some people gathering. Let's begin at this microphone. Yes, sir. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Steve DelBianco with Netchoice. I submitted comments to the U.S. Government on the first IANA NOI and I'll do another set on the revised comments and that's not really for a conversation here today. Instead, I think that all of us in this room could stand to think hard about how we prepare for what might be coming, if that statement of work goes through. Because there's a line in this new statement of work from IANA -- let me read it to you -- it says, "Delegation requests for new gTLDs must include documentation demonstrating how the proposed string reflects consensus among relevant stakeholders and is supportive of the global public interest." Well, I'm troubled -- and some of you probably are as well -- that an IANA technical person would have to verify documented claims of undefined terms like "consensus" and "public interest." Where did this new IANA requirement come from? I believe that the U.S. Government and other governments are reacting to what happened in San Francisco with dot xxx. Namely, the board gave advice that included the phrase "no active support" and we proceeded to approve the contract. Now, I talked about this in the U.S. Congress last month when I testified, even pulled out a "mind the GAC" T-shirt because my sentiments are we definitely want to mind the GAC. They're a stakeholder too. And diplomats may believe that the words "no active support" are equivalent to "no," but engineers and businessmen like me and attorneys and civil society, we didn't see it that way. To us "no active support" sounded more like "We don't like it, we may even block it, but we aren't quite saying, do not proceed. So we may never really learn how to speak diplomatic-ese, to really understand all that, but there are three things all of us in this room can do to avoid or maybe have to prepare for this change to IANA. The first, we ought to implement the Accountability and Transparency Review Team recommendations to improve GAC participation in policy development. I think you're all conscious of that, so that's going to help. Second, we have to document what consensus means at every turn, so we can show how we arrived at it, and that's in the ATRT plan as well. And third, let's develop a very limited and specific definition of the words "global public interest," and I'm glad to see that's on the agenda for later today. So rather than focus here in this session on something we don't control, like IANA, let's focus on things we can and should do, to improve process on our own. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Steve. Just a follow-up question. I'm not quite sure. You're going to be objecting to the inclusion of that phrase because of these other circumstances and the other mechanisms for developing the new gTLD program? Or -- or not. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: I'm very concerned that those terms being undefined and handed to an IANA contractor -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: -- I think gives you two or three ways to misinterpret what the words "consensus" mean, to misinterpret what "global public interest" is, and you're putting multiple judgment points in the scale. I think it would be better on us to focus on judging what is consensus and judging public interest here, before a string gets all the way to the point of delegation. If it's just a matter of collecting documentation and evidence that we did it, I think that's fine, but you would -- I wouldn't want judgment calls to be applied there. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yeah. Thank you. Let's go to the other microphone. Yes, sir. >>BOB HUTCHINSON: Bob Hutchinson from Dynamic Ventures. I filed comments to the notice of inquiry. The response to those comments came back that the NOI record reflects a recommendation that IANA function contractor be required to gather and report statistics regarding the global -- global IPv6 and DNSSEC deployment. NTIA has not included this as a requirement in the draft SOW because it is not clear whether there is a consensus to include this in a new requirement for IANA functions and so the -- the inclusion of this would be, then, dependent upon further responses from the community and I'm just trying to make the community aware that if they are in support of IANA producing statistics on the IPv6 deployment and DNSSEC deployment, that they will need to include comments -- appropriate comments in the next round in order to raise the level of this. And I would thank anyone who is going to include a comment in their recommendations that is in support of this. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Let's go to this microphone. Yes, sir. >>MILTON MUELLER: Yes, this is Milton Mueller at Syracuse University, Internet governance project. Well, speaking of consensus and modifications of the IANA contract, I would like to return to the subject that Steve DelBianco raised. That is to say, the modification -- the proposed modification that would have you documenting the so-called consensus support for an individual TLD delegation and the so-called public interest status of that. I just want to make it clear that there -- there is no consensus for adding that to the statement of work. I think it's a very dangerous and subversive undermining of the ICANN board's and the ICANN community's authority over policymaking to put on top of all the work we do here to reach consensus a requirement to ask some technician to decide whether we have demonstrated that it's in the public interest. I think we have to work here under the assumption that when we work out these policies over such a long and tough period of compromise and negotiation, that that is de facto our judgment as to what is in the public interest, and any TLD that makes it through that process is thereby deemed to be acceptable and consensed upon, if you will. So I'm having trouble understanding what the intent of this modification is, and I'd love to hear from the board as to how -- whether you view this as being as disastrous as I do. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Well, if we can, we'll have some board reaction, but it's very important that we hear from the community rather than have a dialogue with the board at this stage. But let's go to the other microphone. >>JONATHON ZUCK: Yes. Jonathon Zuck of the Association for Competitive Technology. And I guess I just want to start by thanking you, Peter, for your service as chairman of the board. I want to suggest a multi- constituency working group to pilot a new project in dot nz for a thick WHEREIS database so we find you on the golf course to ask questions later when we need to. [ Laughter ] >>JONATHON ZUCK: And we're trying to grapple with all these new policies. My real point here is about the IANA contract. This feels like something for which there's already an open consultation and it doesn't seem like it's directly an ICANN policy issue. And so I guess I'm wondering why it's on the agenda for this meeting in such a prominent way when this isn't even a forum in which anything can be done about the NOI. So I'm not -- that's my question, is: With so much else to cover, I wonder why this is even on the agenda. As a fatigued volunteer yourself, with 30 minutes devoted to volunteer fatigue, this seems like just more fatigue and venting and less about policy development inside ICANN. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Just a quick response. Firstly, it's what we sensed the community wanted to talk about. We may have got that sense wrong, but certainly have rushed to the microphone to talk on this, so I think there's some justification. The other thing is that we found when we -- when the first round came out, a lot of people approached ICANN and said, "What are you going to say? Please will you prepare some statements," and then they can take the lead on a number of issues, and we got feedback after that, that our own preparation of a statement was helpful to others in preparing theirs, so I guess this is, if you like, perhaps a response to those two matters. Let's come to this side. Sir. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Hi. Kieren McCarthy from dot nxt. I think it is worthwhile talking about this, but I wanted to make a slight criticism of the way that it was -- the whole FNOI was characterized in Rod's speech, which was 80% of the people supported ICANN and "I encourage everyone to send in comments." What the FNOI is getting at is that people support ICANN despite what ICANN is not, not because of what ICANN is doing. The fact is that sort of the USG explicitly rejected the approach that both Rod and Peter put forward, which was "You should move to a cooperative agreement," and it made it sort of -- it was sort of a checklist of the things that ICANN isn't doing that it should be doing in IANA, and it took them from community feedback. So the FNOI was a pretty good reflection of what people in the Internet community said effectively what ICANN wasn't doing right with IANA. Things like automation, which I know David Conrad was working on years ago. The metrics. There's not enough metrics. You didn't explain how decisions were made, IANA decisions were made. It was saying, "Refer to" different policies or different Internet organizations. So these were criticisms, clear criticisms, of how ICANN is doing it, and so I'd like ICANN to acknowledge that and say, "Look, we understand these are criticisms of what we're doing with the IANA contract." I would like to hear ICANN say, "We're going to go and get the IANA contract by being really very good, by fixing all of this," rather than sort of, "Thank you, we got a lot of support, and please send in more support." You should be saying, "We're going to fix these problems. We recognize there's the problems. By the time we reach the end of it, the U.S. government will have no choice but to give it to us because we're so much better than everyone else out there." That's what I'd really like to hear, and until we've got that kind of culture and that kind of approach, honest approach, I don't think you will ever get IANA under a cooperative agreement. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Let's go to the other microphone. >>ELLIOT NOSS: Thank you. Elliot Noss from Tucows. I'll start by disagreeing completely with Kieren's comments that he just made. I interpret the IANA NOI as a fundamental -- in a fundamentally different way. I want to use it as a frame to address my comments to the GAC, so Heather, I'll look at you just because you're kind of the GAC person up there. You know, one of the things that I think we just saw that was so, so important for the future of the open Internet was the ICANN board, ICANN community and GAC dealing with an especially thorny set of issues and finding a way to successfully disagree. I think for the success of governments relationship, nation states relationship with ICANN, which is really the first exercise in global governance, that that type of ability to agree to disagree and to do it well could not be more important, which is why the IANA contract statements really deeply trouble me. Introducing consensus and public interest into that document clearly appears to me not what Kieren described, but an attempt to create a back-door set of controls. And I would really urge the GAC in particular, who represent the world's nation state, not -- the world's nation states, not just the U.S. Government, to express their displeasure with this. Perhaps informally, perhaps formally. But I really do think that we've had, you know, 10, 12 years now of people complaining about U.S. Government having too great a control over the Internet. This was sadly a bit of a reprise to some of that. I've always felt that there has been a respectful relationship between the U.S. Government, ICANN, and the Internet. This one deeply troubled me. So I really urge the GAC in particular, who are finding their place in their relationship with ICANN, to pick up on this issue. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. And next one at the microphone. Thank you. >>MICHELE NEYLON: Michele Neylon again. Still from Blacknight. As we're talking about IANA, I'm just coming back to my pet bugbear, which is one of transparency, especially when it comes to redelegation requests, and I've -- I've raised this in the public forum in San Francisco and I have had correspondence between myself, IANA, and Rod about this, but I still want to keep pushing on this, that there isn't enough transparency when it comes to redelegation requests. Obviously ccTLDs. And this is something that I think is very, very important when it comes to renegotiations of IANA contracts. Thank you. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Michele, for that comment and I certainly hope that if you have those concerns, that you'll share them in your FNOI response. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And now to this microphone. Yes, sir. >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Antony Van Couvering from Minds + Machines. And I'll take this -- seems like an appropriate time to talk about what I would like to talk about, which is consensus. And it's true it's not a defined term. However, today -- or yesterday -- we lost a very valuable volunteer, Mikey O'Connor, who is thoroughly sick of this, and what is he sick of? He's sick of people working long, long hours developing policy, handing it up to the GNSO Council, and hence to the -- and on to the board, and then we have to witness the dispiriting spectacle of the board and the GAC negotiating policy, coming up with new policy, and now, in the FNOI, we take it a step further where we find that even that consensus is subject to the U.S. Government's asking for the relevant stakeholders -- which in my opinion can only mean -- at least one of them being the U.S. Government -- to approve any new gTLD. And if we want people to work to create a new Internet, we have to respect their work. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Thomas has indicated he wants to respond. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Yeah. Thanks, Peter. Not to that comment, particularly but Milton, back to your concern about some language in the FNOI. I just want to say that, you know, I personally share concerns with some of the language, including the stuff that you cited, and just sort of informally talking with some others on the board, they have concerns as well. And it's kind of unfortunate that we haven't had a chance to be able to sort of discuss that a little bit more, but, yes, there is troubling wording in there and we'll have to, you know, respond as appropriate once we've had a chance to, you know, look at it more carefully. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Thomas. The other microphone. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Me? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes, sir. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Okay. Amadeu Abril i Abril, CORE Internet Council of Registrars, first speaking in his personal capacity. Something like 12 years ago, we were here in the first ICANN public meeting and for all that year and the next year, all the public forums started in the same way. The first reports were the IANA function and the first question was from me from the floor asking: Besides the management control, what has been done to transfer the policy control to ICANN? And the answer was silence until in the first Cairo meeting, the U.S. representative said, oh, we have not started to think about that. So I stopped asking the question. In fact, the there are three main reasons why we created -- we all -- ICANN was created was introduction of new TLDs, we would have something like that or that introducing competition in the market, we have something like that, if we look back, and having a way to -- how do we say that -- solving the anomaly of having a single government having a special responsibility on the policy on the root. We have not solved that, good or bad, and that's a problem. So we need to solve that and we are going backwards, not forward. I will not answer to that request of comments again. I'm not interested in that. The only comment I have is I love that country in general, but I don't think that they have a special right to decide what's consensus, in particular, in this area. And if they think so, the thing you have to do is to give, you know, electoral rights to all of us outside the United States if they want to rule our lives. That's all. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Any other comments? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Any other comments? Bertrand, did you want to comment on the NOI or the FNOI? >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Actually, I just wanted to make a quick comment on the wording that Steve used. When you say "here," the process "here," you mean the process for the evaluation and delegation of new gTLDs, right? Okay. That's -- just to clarify. >>ROD BECKSTROM: This is Rod. My last comment on the FNOI is that as discussed on Monday, we very much encourage all parties to share their views. I think we heard at the microphone today there were very much different interpretations of the responses to the NOI, and that's healthy. And that's the benefit of an open and transparent process where all parties are able to analyze the information and come to their own conclusions. And that's of benefit to the community and the multistakeholder model. Whatever your views are, we do hope that you will take time to share them publicly and submit them. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Peter, may I just remind -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We still have time on this issue. Go ahead. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Thank you. Bertrand, you asked for me to clarify that when I said "here" I meant all of us here at ICANN. But "here" I didn't mean the board. It is all of us. I don't want to suggest if we have a good process that everything that dumps out of the end of the process is by definition in the public interest. You and I differ a little bit on that sort of interpretation. I believe a little differently than that, that we actually should come up with explicit limited technical definitions for things like "public interest." And if we can, for things like "consensus." I know we are going to talk a little bit more about the public interest today. But definitions that are tight show that we did our work, we will check all the boxes and do all the things we need to do, rather than just say if the process was appropriately open and transparent, then it must be consensus and it must be in the public interest. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: If that's end to the comment in relation to topic, we come to the support of what -- needy applicants part of the new gTLD program. Any comment in relation to that? Support for needy applicants? This is something the board expressed support for in Nairobi. There has been a working group set up. We are waiting for a report. No? Interesting. Okay. There is a speaker. I see. Just a reminder that we're also taking online comments for the forum and they get read into the comments as if they were here. We tend to ask you if you are in the room not to try and go around the microphone by submitting comments through the online process. And I see we have some. So, Filiz, I will come to you in a moment. We have some at the microphone. >> ANDREW MACK: Peter, thank you. My name is Andrew Mack, and I'm a member of the JAS group. I wanted to start off by thanking the community for its support and its interest in our work. We are working really, really hard on this. We hope very much that the board is going to take the recommendations we make seriously and to participate. And I throw this out to other members of the community as well, especially people from the business community and especially from the business community in emerging markets. We really need to hear your voices. Second of all, we are really pleased to see this setup of a seed fund for new applicant support. But in my mind, real sustainability is going to come not just from a seed fund but from a combination of seed money, additional money and targeted price supports and fee reductions for needy applicants and underserved languages. It has got to be the combination of those two things. Without it, it is just not going to happen. The third thing is, with all due respect, $2 million? Really? Couldn't do more than that? I'd like to suggest that this is something that is enough of a priority that we should find not just now but going forward a little bit extra resource. If we think about the kinds of things that are going to be necessary, not only in the set up and administration of the system but also in the support that we're trying to offer, that may be a lower number than we want. Thanks very much. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry. Quick response, Bruce? >>BRUCE TONKIN: Really quick response. One is that's not saying that that's the total. That's saying that's the seed fund in which we invite others to contribute. So that's the first thing. So we certainly encourage others to contribute. And I've heard of people that are prepared to contribute to it. Secondly, be aware that at least in the GNSO when this was discussed about five years ago, the assumption was that there could be some funds generated potentially out of the first round that may establish a much larger fund going into the future. So I would encourage you to take, like, a ten-year view of this because these changes -- even if new gTLDs start getting created in 2013, it is probably five years before they will have significant traction in the market. So you need to take a long-term view would be my advice. But I agree with you with respect to encouraging support and also support the work of the JAS group. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: All right. I'm going to take the first three speakers on this side before I come over to this side. So you have the floor. >> LIM FUN JIN: Hi, I'm Lim Fun Jin I'm actually new to ICANN. I got this green little flag here. I run an I.T. business across KL, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Perth. I was actually quite happy to see the approval for the new gTLDs that's coming up in the next few years. What I have seen is that me myself, I own a few domain names for my company and the I.T. software service that I provide to my customers. And one of the things I get is I get solicited a lot by -- I don't know who they are, I guess they are registrars or something asking me to register more domains just to protect my trademark. And I don't know whether they are legit or not. What I also read was about the commitment for, I think it was, the DotAsia registry, to say when the new gTLDs come on board, the international versions, they will actually commit to protect the existing domain name owners against possible trademark issues by offering it for no cost for existing domain name owners under the DotAsia domain. I thought that was a wonderful thing, and I think it would help folks like me who do have these kind of domains registered. I hope ICANN can encourage new applicants to do the same as what DotAsia has committed to do. So that's just something I wanted to share. Yeah. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. And thank you for coming forward on your first occasion to help us. We need your -- we need that input. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Next in line. Thank you, sir. >> Good afternoon. My name an Aaron. I'm actually in the nation, but I live in Indonesia only 18 years, (saying name) five years, Singapore 11 years, and now the last nine years in Kuala Lumpur, Malasia. So I pretty much understand and appreciate the culture of Asia. Although I think not many Asians here, even though we are running in Singapore. But if you look at the statistic of the numbers of the Asian population, it is about almost 2/3 of the world. Of course, I would like to congratulate ICANN for the vote that happened earlier this week in internationalized domain names, the TLD support. It is very good. But when I walk around exhibition as well as when I look at the conference book, most of the domains are all in English, right? So my concern is that: Is there any support or incentive or motivations from ICANN itself to encourage all the TLD bidders to bid for other foreign languages? Because if this happened at the latter states, then people would get used to it even if they don't understand English. They would say, Oh, the domain name must be that. Then it would deceive the purpose of internationalizing and the support of the domain. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Just a quick response, no, there is no express program encouraging IDNs in the new gTLD programs, but there is a program to support applicants that come from developing countries, many of whom will want to be, I assume, proceeding with an IDN application. And there is the communications program that we talked about which is going to be directed to all of the world including the non-English world. So those are two programs. But if you have views about more that we can do in that area, I'm sure, as Barbara has indicated, her ears are open for this kind of input. Again, thank you. I see you are also a first-time attendee. Thank you for taking the trouble to help us with our policy development work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Last before we come to this side. >> JAMES HOLGATE: Hi, good afternoon. My name is James Holgate. My company name is Digital Media Limited. I'm based out of Hong Kong. I'm a small business owner employing four people dealing with customers in both English and other Asian regional languages. This is also my first time at ICANN. I know one of the goals of ICANN is to support the creation of gTLDs for the developing world and traditionally underserved communities. There was a lot of talk about how to provide money and support to companies and organizations that may step in and serve those communities. One of the best ways that ICANN can support those communities is by representing their languages and cultures. I was surprised to learn that ICANN was going to require Asian language domains to follow the style of English language domains by having more than one symbol or character. But most Asian languages don't express or carry their meaning this way. In Korean, Chinese and Japanese, the largest languages in the Asian region, we commonly use single characters to represent single concepts like dot flowers, cars, fish and even money. Using multiple characters won't make any sense or be practical to us. If ICANN is serious about supporting new gTLDs that reach the globe, it must respect the way the languages function and the culture associated with this. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. We will come to this microphone and after that we will have some online comments. Please, sir at this microphone. >> ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Antony Van Couvering. And, regrettably, this is not my first ICANN meeting. If we look at the cost of starting a TLD, the $185,000 fee is just one small portion of it. Certainly, there is a huge burden put on applicants by the actual process, by the complexity of the application, by the various rules that have to be followed, various material that has to be waded through. Despite the casual language about insiders that has been going around the last few years, no one is going to complete that application without the help of somebody who understands this stuff. So I would challenge all the people who are helping applicants, either as registry providers or as consultants, to make a difference in their fees for disadvantaged applicants. We recently announced new pricing, and we have a 50% discount for disadvantaged applicants. Now, mind you, that is our definition, not ICANN's. I have no idea what ICANN's definition will be, and presumably those applicants are not going to wait around to find out what it is. However, it is within everyone's power who is helping in this program to do it themselves, and I encourage them to do so. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Now, if I could ask Filiz, our director of the remote participation. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: Thanks, Peter. The first comment is from Thomas Lowenhaupt, director connecting NYC, Inc. My congratulations to ICANN on the conclusion of your 13-year effort to create an equitable process for issuing new gTLDs. I am engaged with a similar effort focused on the needs of residents and organizations of New York City, that is how we can equitably issue domain names to our 80 million residents and 270,000 civic and commercial organizations. Monday's historic approval of the new TLD process has energized responsible parties here in New York to a degree far in excess of that which we've seen since April 19, 2011, when a local community identified the dot NYC TLD as an important public interest resource and called for its acquisition and development in an Internet empowerment resolution. We have long encouraged the baseline study of a TLD's role in a city's life to include its role in civic efforts, in public education, health, safety, government administration -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, Filiz, the timer isn't working. Secondly, this seems to be an advertisement for a particular application. Is there a question for the board or for the community at the end of that? >>FILIZ YILMAZ: There is a request. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Let's come to that, please. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: Therefore -- there is a reason, if I may continue. With the expected deadline for filings with TLDs less than a year away and no firm indication as to the next filing opportunity, we have already heard reference to our planning process as more delays and asking when we will be able to file again. Therefore, I implore the board to issue a clear statement of the future filing opportunities particularly for cities with their complex review requirements before concluding its work in Singapore. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Ah, thank you. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: Can I continue for the second one? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes, please. If you could go to the second one, that would be excellent. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: It is for (saying name). I apologize if I am mispronouncing the name. How does one define needy applicants? Do all members from developing countries get a discounted fee? I think we should. We should keep in mind (inaudible) and other such factors when deciding this. What are the board's thoughts on this? Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: There is no decision yet because the board looks forward to input. Let's come to this side. >> My name is (saying name) and I'm speaking on behalf of dot (saying name), non-profit organization that promotes domain organization for cultures. We have been to plenty of ICANN meetings. And now after several times complaining in this open meeting about the (inaudible), we would like to thank the community for the work and the amount and the quality of the work done. And we would like to thank the JAS group for including ethical, cultural and linguistic communities among the world that might receive support from ICANN. We say this on behalf of the Association of Cultural and Linguistic Domain Names, dot cat with candidates that permit domains for Scottish, Wales, Britain and (inaudible) language, along with dot cat which obviously is our preference if there is success. So now it is time to write down our applications. ACLD members face a huge problem to complete this task. We still do not know which kind of support of which kind of initiatives will get support from the ICANN, and it is impossible for us to write down any business plan, organize any application submission without this data. We don't know at this moment the board cannot publish anything they are trying for the support program because the community still have no written agreement. We would like to encourage the community to complete the job as soon as possible. Otherwise, initiatives from developing countries and the small community (inaudible) proposals might not be able to meet the April deadline next year. In conclusion, we will ask the board if it is possible to publish any kind of timeline for completing the support program. And we will ask the board to provide the JAS group with enough staff to complete the program as soon as possible. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much for that. Can we come to this side? >> ZUO RAN: Good afternoon. My name is Zuo Ran from China Organization Name Administration Center. That is CONAC. First of all, I would like to on behalf of CONAC and to some extent on behalf of the Chinese communities, I would like to extend our warmest congratulations and great thanks to ICANN board and to those who participate here in the new gTLD program. This week you have made a very right decision. And for many years you have been working so hard to approve the historical change. As Peter said, to usher in a new Internet change, the good news is spreading very fast among the Chinese end users. As one of the two registries in mainland China, as always, CONAC will actively participate in ICANN activities such as variants working group and trademark protection working group, et cetera. As you know, some of our communities use simplified Chinese while others use traditional Chinese. Therefore, we are very concerned about the equal treatment of that. Now, ICANN is open. It is open to everyone. We are looking forward to the all important issues settled before ICANN takes the application. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, sir. Could I just comment that we also have -- Thank you particularly for putting that into English for the benefit of us all. Can I just point out that we have the simultaneous interpretation including in Mandarin if would you like to come back and say that in Mandarin for having it in your own record and your own language. We would be happy to translate it. >>ZUO RAN: Speak in Mandarin? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Why don't we let somebody else have a turn, and why don't you come back at the end and read it into the record in Mandarin as well. Just wait and let the other side go. Thank you. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Okay. My name is still Amadeu Abril i Abril, CORE, Internet Council of Registrars. And I will speak for CORE. Just one question, correction to the scribes on what I said before. It is not the place here. They said I was asking for electoral rights for those inside the United States. I said "outside." I was told that most U.S. citizens are allowed to vote most of the times and very often even more than once, especially in Florida. This topic is just one small point. We focus a lot again on the application fee. What we have been told very often is that, yes, this is serious but this is one time. Yes, you know, the support and the prices for the consultants, yes, many other companies are having clearly different set of prices for what they consider probably with different criteria for needy applicants. The problem is the recovering costs. Running a registry is very expensive because then it is in U.S. dollars. And $25,000 is not exactly the same everywhere in the world. It is not exactly today here that in many places in Africa in five years, the exchange rate itself, just the currency usage, is something that's hugely discriminatory for many people that live in places that cost of life, inflation rate have nothing to do with our standards. I was always told when I was a child that discrimination is written differently what's equal but also written equally what's different. And in ICANN, perhaps the dominant AngloSaxon culture we have in ICANN, it is not clear. But for us and for many people, that's absolutely clear. Why are we not a little bit generous? We try to fix the price that we have today, $25,000 for evaluation, the escrow price. All the recurrent costs that we have, we try to fix that in a way that will not make these people even more miserable five years down the road, trying to fix that in their currencies and with adjustments with the real cost of life and the real inflation rates they are facing. I think this would help even much more than reducing the application fee. This is one time and they can find a sponsor for that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. [ Applause ] Let's come to this side, please. I would like to see if -- yes, let's come back to the representative from CONAC and just, if you want to read that into Mandarin, please. >>ZUO RAN: I'm very happy that I would be allowed to speak in my native language. First of all, I was particularly grateful for giving me the opportunity to speak in my native language. My name is Zuo Ran. I come from one of the registries in China. First of all, on behalf of my registry and also on the whole community in China to thank ICANN particularly, the ICANN board for your hard work over the years. And, also, this week you have made a very important decision to push forward the development of the Internet community for the future. I would like to thank you for that. The new gTLD -- the news of the new gTLD has been spreading very fast in China. And within the last two days, I have received a lot of congratulatory notes via SMS and via phone calls from my friends in China. And I can say the community in China is very concerned with the progress of our work in this respect. As one of the two registries in China, CONAC has all along been very concerned and participated actively in all the activities of ICANN. And we would just continue to participate in all the important activities of ICANN including the variants working group, and that would include the intellectual protection of intellectual property. As we all know, as a Chinese community, part of our Chinese people are using the simplified Chinese characters and some of them are using the traditional Chinese characters. In fact, both versions are known as Chinese, but we hope that this could be used in our work. And now ICANN has already opened gTLDs, and this opportunity belongs to all of us. We sincerely hope that eventually when ICANN accepts the application from everybody, we would be able to resolve this very important issue. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Kuo-Wei Wu, you want to respond? >>KUO-WEI WU: You want me to speak in Chinese, huh? [ Laughter ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Please. >>KUO-WEI WU: First of all, I'm very pleased to speak on behalf of ICANN's board and to hear that the Chinese community has been actively so energetic in supporting our important decision with regard to the new gTLDs. And also the Chinese community has given us the very strong support for our future development. And this is something that we like to hear and to see happening. And just now mention about variants. You are appropriately aware in variants, we have an ongoing project and we hope that this issue could be resolved smoothly and expeditiously. So as the Chinese, you should know that what is happening apart from Chinese, we also have to look into the other languages. And today China is such a strong nation, you should be able to understand that the people in the -- with the other language group, they also have the rights. And let us all work together. Let us cooperate and resolve this matter together. Thank you for your intervention just now. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We want to be as careful as we can about time observation. Let's go to that microphone. Thank you. >>WERNER STAUB: My name is Werner Staub. I'm with CORE, Internet Council of Registrars. I have a small comment about the subsequent rounds which was actually addressed by one of the remote participation speakers as well. I would like to add a couple of other reasons why this is necessary. Of course, applicants need time for their internal processes. Those applicants need time to be sure that they do the right kind of projects. And if they are faced with a situation of either having to wait years in ICANN time -- and ICANN has a very bad track record of keeping promises in terms of timeline. So nobody is going to believe that ICANN is going to start the next rounds in two years unless something isn't out beforehand. I would really urge ICANN to announce the following rounds, fix one per year, 12th of January 2012, then in 2013, also 12th of January and so on, to reassure people that they will be able to submit their applications at the right moment without having to rush and, basically, run into enormous expenses which in the end are the worst thing that can happen to needy applicants. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Good point but the very quick response is that we've undertaken not to start the second round until we've completed a number of evaluations and there's other evaluations built into the AoC, so it's really almost beyond us to put a date on that. >>WERNER STAUB: It always depends what you mean by evaluation. I think this is subject to interpretation. And if you look at the risks involved by having highly disorderly first round, simply because it forces people into a panic, I think this interpretation must be made very carefully. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I completely agree with your point. I'm just pointing out a practical difficulty in terms of the kind of solution you propose, but we're very sympathetic to the issue. Thanks. Let's come to this microphone. Thank you, sir. >>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS: My name is Constantine Roussos from the dot music initiative. For the record, I would like to say I'm from Cyprus. It's a small Island, less than a million people, so my native language is Greek, so I wanted to talk about the importance of IDNs and this is the third time I come to the mic, the third ICANN meeting, to talk about the bundling of multi-scripts. I've asked the board and staff why there hasn't been an answer in regards to discounts for applicants that are trying to do the transliterations of the same application in different IDNs. If we don't do it, there's going to be less IDNs out there, and I think if IDNs is a priority, something should be done. And also, I don't think we should be paying extra money for the same job that consultants or these hired people that ICANN's going to get to look at the applications and evaluators to do the same job like six times. So again, we'd like to see a reasoning why this hasn't been answered. I think it was discussed at GAC. I'm not sure who doesn't support the bundling issue and why it's taken so long to get a response. And this is nothing to do with variants, so that's -- that's my comment and I'd love to hear why this hasn't been discussed and whether there is going to be some kind of, you know, support for applicants that do want to, I would say, spread the love to IDNs in different -- and for different underserved communities on the Internet. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. We'll see if we can get a quick response. It would be very nice not to have to keep answering that question every time so let's see if we can't deal with it once and for all. Let's go to that side, please. Thank you. >>MARY UDUMA: Thank you. My name is Mary Uduma and dot ng. I would like to appreciate the great work done by all communities in moving the new gTLD forward. The board and staff have done tremendous work for the past six years. Great progress, I would say, but now the journey begins, and we must all join hands to see to the smooth implementation process, starting with the communication strategies. I would like to encourage the board to continue to openly and transparently engage the GAC in resolving most, if not all, the outstanding public policy issues in the new dispensation. We'll expect the board to engage regions, countries, territories effectively and efficiently in the communication phase of this journey by identifying and establishing champions and promoters in each of the regions or areas. Since I have the microphone, I will say that my country, Nigeria, no doubt, you know, in my own opinion is the most populous black country on earth, is the best and important point of the chain to begin with. I therefore invite the board to consider organizing communication events in Nigeria because whether we like it or not, the image people think about what will happen in Nigeria when we have opened up all these floodgates of strings and new gTLDs. Nigeria is also bidding for ICANN meeting for 2013. The coast is brighter. We not only have political a stronger nation but also stable growing democracy. There are business communities that are rising up to the challenge of the new age. Unrestricted investment climate. Fast growing telecommunication market in Africa, with unprecedented return on investment. We aim to be among the 20 developed countries by the year 2020. These are things for Africa business so the communication will have to go to the African businessmen to be able to play in this new era. So we are our brother's keeper and will ensure that Africa will participate, especially those that are not here. They will be at the ICANN meeting. So effectively, the small and medium-sized businesses around our area will participate in the process of the business of domain name business. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much, and thank you for the interest in hosting an ICANN meeting. We very much depend on that kind of community support. Now, if I could just ask Ram Mohan, who is not only an expert at variants but also on bundling, can you address the question that was raised by the dot music interest about bundling scripts? Ram? >>RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Peter. Two things. Certainly the board has heard the questions. It's not that it's not heard the questions. And there has been serious and significant work effort devoted on this area. The fact is, however, that there is not a simple answer to the issue. There is -- this issue takes time to study and to come up with a solution that potentially is generic and applies across multiple languages and across multiple scripts. There is a variants project that is working very hard at looking at some aspects of the problem. ICANN is spending both dollars and expending significant effort in this area. Having said all of that, I think the honest answer here is that there probably won't be a quick solution to these issues, and it's even likely, it's even possible, that solutions that may be identified may not make it in time for the -- for this round of the new gTLDs. This is an area of significant effort, but the problems are quite difficult and may not all resolve in time. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. We've got -- just to make it clear, I'm going to close the speaking order behind the three people who are currently at each microphone. Please address your comments to the applicant support issue that's in front of us. It's back to this side. >>HONG XUE: Thank you. I'm Hong Xue, from Beijing Normal University. Thank you, ICANN, for providing simultaneously translation to Chinese speakers and I hope this is going to continue. Not only the one time services. I'm here to talk about IDNs, IDN variants and their relation to trademark clearinghouse. It sounds very complicated. Instead, it's very complicated. I do believe the trademark clearinghouse mechanism is going to be complicated than we expected. I've learned from the policy that the clearinghouse entity -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, sorry. Can we just stop you for a moment? This is actually not the topic. We're running out of time. The topic is the new gTLD -- applicant support for the new gTLD applications. I'm quite happy to talk about the clearinghouse and IDNs, but not at the moment. It will have to go in the any other business at the end. So do you have a point about the applicant -- support for applicants? >>HONG XUE: Not exactly. So I will save that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We'll come tock that. Thanks very much. So let's go to this side and hopefully this is about support for applicants. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: Yes, indeed, it's about applicant support. My name is Rafik Dammak. I am here as the co-chair of the JAS working group, so I just wanted to say that I am listening to many comments and feedback from the community, and I want to ask them if they can send all their questions and comments to the JAS working group because we have an open public comment period for the second milestone report, and if also you have enough time to commit, you can join the working group. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Let's come back to this side. Yes, sir. >>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, chairman. Mouhamet Diop from Senegal. I'm from the registrar constituency and also the addressing support organization. I just want to first thank you very much for being consistent with the core value of ICANN by opening up the new gTLD space because competition and choice are the core values we're trying to define and I think for many people who heard about all the fights regarding IDNs and new gTLDs, these are consistent with this core value. I also want to highlight the fact that ICANN recognize that there was a special treatment that have to be done for developing countries. It's a long way from accepting the idea to putting in place an action plan, and I really want to thank the JAS working group by bringing on the table solutions on how ICANN is going to treat the problem for the new gTLDs in developing countries. But if we look at the market space as a whole, I mean, what we tried to achieve is to better serve the community. The registrant. And these registrants in developing countries don't have in front of them members from the ICANN community. What they have, they have a multilevel resellers, second-level resellers, fourth-level resellers, fifth-level resellers, and this brings the market in a way that there was a missing link in the developing country for the TLD market. And this missing link is a registrar business. And what I'm trying to highlight here is there is a window that has been open to have new analysis for the cost for people intervening in the market space for domain names. My concern is, can we extend this analysis to registrar who, in the vertical integration, can be also registry but at the end what my concern is, in areas like Africa, with 900 million people, only four registrars, to serve the whole community, it seems like all the effort we are doing for registrant protection, law enforcement, code of conduct, all these things we're trying to set up, if you don't have actors who commit in it because they are not part of that community it's like what we are doing will be useless. So I just want the board to try to endorse more than what we're doing. Thanks for the achievement, but we need more. Try to push ahead and try to see how we're going to help to get more registrars in developing countries in order to better serve the community because these people will be committed to ICANN and they will endorse the code of conduct and they will be part of the whole community and this is really the missing link and I don't think it's going to help a lot. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Thanks very much. Madam. >>CAROLIN SILBERNAGL: Hi. My name is Carolin Silbernagl and I'm from the dot HIV initiative. Dot HIV, we will apply for the dot HIV domain as a single means of -- to raise funds and awareness for the fight against HIV and AIDS, and I would like to comment once more on the point already said that the burden of application costs is not only linked to the application fee, but is also, yeah, depending on the whole process. And I would like to relate to the point stated, yeah, that also in service, it's also in the things that you have to set up. And what we as dot HIV experienced here -- and this is -- this goes out as a big thank you to all of the members of the ICANN community present -- is that there is a huge support, huge support for a cause like us, for a social cause and a full nonprofit initiative. What we experienced are open-minded people that are ready to give feedback, that are ready to contribute, and this was really -- this was a great experience. In my mind, industries as they grow bigger, they also have a growing responsibility to think about the possible social impact and the way that they contribute to society. New TLD -- the new gTLD program is a great opportunity for that, and I was really happy to see that we meet people here that are open to give support. We have ongoing support -- consultant support by dot sun, for example, but apart from that, there were so many good interviews, there were so many good conversations we had here and so many signs that people are really happy to support us in the future. So thanks for you and I would like to encourage the whole ICANN community to continue with that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you and I just can't help but recall being told by other members of the community in Nairobi that there was no evidence that there was any need for a new gTLD program and it's delightful to hear that members of the community such as yours are going to take up the need and will use the program. Thanks very much. >> Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Madam, you're the last at this microphone. I've actually closed the speaking order on that side so we can come back, later, perhaps to this side and -- no, no, this is the last on this side as well, so... away you go. >>ELAINE PRUIS: Hi. I'm Elaine Pruis, currently working with Minds + Machines, and we're a registry service provider. My previous position was with CoCCA, which is the Council of Country Code Administrators and under that model we worked with several ccTLDs to provide services at cost. We shared resources across 20 different ccTLD operators, so providing services to disadvantaged or under-resourced registries is near and dear to my heart, so I've been involved in the joint applicant support working group since it formed. There's a couple of things I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention, and also ask for some feedback from staff or the board. The first thing is, as Rafik said, there is a comment period open on our current report and it would be very useful to have some input from the community. The first report that we put out for comment, there was no response, and we're a very small working group and we need a lot of help. So if you all would take the time to read that report and comment, that would be very helpful to us. One thing that I'm wondering about is I think it was the Trondheim resolution, there was $200,000 set aside in the ICANN budget to help the staff develop some resources for this program, and one particular thing is a clearinghouse where registry providers or consultants could indicate their willingness to provide help to needy applicants and then needy applicants could also indicate their need. And I think there was a little bit of talk of that kind of getting started but I haven't seen any progress on that or I haven't heard anything -- any further development, so I'd like to know what is the state of that. And another thing I wanted to point out was that in the working group, we did come to consensus that the primary basis for receiving support was need, and then the secondary basis was that you would be serving a community that doesn't already have representation on the Internet. So I'd like just to bring that to mind. As far as providing support to registrars in these countries, I hear that's something that people think that would be useful, and I'd like to respond to that by suggesting perhaps in those regions the ccTLD operators could be of assistance rather than diverting this -- what sounds like a fantastic $2 million fund for needy applicants to help bolster a commercial entity such as a registrar. So that's that comment. And then I just wanted to thank the board for all of your work. It seems to me we've got some -- the GAC has been working on it, our working group has been working on it and the board has been discussing three different ways of helping our needy applicants, so thanks for your efforts. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Bertrand, a response? >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: This is our answer for Elaine. This is a comment for -- by Werner Staub regarding the succession of different rounds. To reference the paragraph in the applicant guidebook, which is Paragraph 1.1.6 indicating that the objective for opening the next round is one year after the closing of the first round, but this is an objective. And the second item is that during negotiation on the program, it was agreed upon the GAC's request that an evaluation be done on the impact of the opening of new TLD on the stability of the root and the delegation -- effect of delegation will be done once this study carried out. So the text is 1.1.6 and Werner is right by saying that a sufficient provision of successive rounds is -- will quiet the candidates' doubts and... >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: -- staff have been busy collating them will deal with those. So we're going to take a break now until 4:40. That's shortly than the advertised time but we've used up some of our time on these discussions. Could you please all be back at 4:40. There will be a presentation starting at that time and it's going to begin at 4:40, so please be here, be ready, see you then. Thanks. [ Break ] >> Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be kind enough to take your seats and in fact, if you would be kind enough to invite your other attendees back to the room, it's very important that we begin our public forum so there is sufficient time for all of your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mouhamet Diop, who is president, Director-General of Next Global Solutions from Dakar. [ Applause ] >>MOUHAMET DIOP: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and I think that we need to thank ICANN for giving to Senegal the opportunity to be the next host for the ICANN meeting 42 in Senegal. And for those who are hesitating, I just want to tell you something. You will miss the biggest, nicest, warmest event that ICANN has ever organized during its whole existence. So Senegal is a nice warm, great, with a long history memorable site and monument. For people who want to eat, imagine that Singapore will be just like a student in front of the teacher because Senegal has a long history of food and gastronomy that is at the cross between Europe, U.S., Latin America, and the whole of Africa. Senegal is ahead of Africa in terms of conversion, openness, and cross-cultural environment, a very tolerant environment, with warm people. For people who follow ICANN meetings, let's say that you will have nice evening events with very warm dancing, music, arts environment, and I think that you will not be bored when you come to Dakar, because the schedule will be so full between, let's say 7:00 in the morning up to 2:00 in the evening. So I think that you'll really enjoy and I think that ICANN have made a great decision to come to Dakar. And you will have the government of Senegal in relation with all its internal organization like the regulator, IRTP, the minister of telecommunications, and ICT and Brussels office, all of them will be your host for that special event. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm just giving you the advice: Book your travel for Senegal. I don't think that anybody will miss this opportunity. African people will be the host for the event. It's not only a Senegal ease event and I told that all the delegates coming from all African countries, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Kenya, western, north/South Africa, all of us. let's work together in order to make the next Dakar event, the biggest, the greatest ICANN ever in the future. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much, Mouhamet. I'm sure it will be a tremendous ICANN meeting in Senegal. Thank you very much. I'd like to ask Rod Beckstrom now -- we were carefully taking note of a number of questions and promised to come back with answers. Staff have diligently been researching the answers over the break and I hand it over to Rod to deal with them. Thank you. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Peter. And thank all of you for your -- the strong interest that you've -- many of you have expressed in contributing to the communications efforts and comments on the communications plan, and I'd like to hand it over to Barbara Clay, our vice president of communications, to share our next steps. >>BARBARA CLAY: Thank you. Our next step is really quite simple. We will be opening a comment forum on this issue, either this afternoon or tomorrow morning, for a three-week period, and we would welcome your comments and contributions to that forum. Thanks very much. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Secondly, there was a question from Elaine Pruis regarding the Trondheim resolution on providing some information and tools on the Web, and so I would like to let Kurt Pritz, our senior vice president of stakeholder relations provide some -- provide an answer to her question. >>KURT PRITZ: Thanks, Rod. Actually, Elaine and I had a meeting with -- according with ICANN standards, we actually had a meeting during the break on this issue, so ICANN has mocked up that clearinghouse page that will have on one- half of it parties seeking some sort of aid, whether it's technical aid, advice, or financial aid, and on the other side of the page those that might want to donate technical advice or services or money, and we'll be publishing that shortly. And what we want to do with the community -- you know, Elaine volunteered and I've a posting from Richard Tindal -- is enlist in advance some of those who might post to the contributing side of the page, so that when we put this thing up, it's a success and the way we intended so we're going to move forward on that. >>ROD BECKSTROM: And finally, Michele Neylon asked a question about bad debts collection and about the amount of bad debts on the balance sheet, and Akram Atallah can provide some verbal commentary on that. Akram is our chief operating officer and acting CFO. >>AKRAM ATALLAH: Yes. So we -- we did a quick look, and there was, in the first part of this year, the collection agency closed about $357,000 of bad debt. Most of those closed were actually because the entity that owed us money is out of business. And that's the problem with bad debt. Most of it is because it's -- the companies that owe us the money are out of business, and we expect to get very little refunds from the bad debt but we have the fiduciary duty to go out and try to collect the money before we close the bad debt. I think so far we've collected $15,000. So I'm not very enthusiastic about how much we're going to be able to get out of the bad debt. Thank you. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Akram. And Peter, those are the answers to the questions. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Great. Thank you, Rod. And thank you very much, through you, for all the staff getting the material together to answer that. Let's move to the next topic which is the Accountability and Transparency Review Team recommendations, and perhaps just by way of short-circuiting some of that, just explain that the -- there's a full-time team working on this, and the current state of the play is that the recommendations have been broken up and handed out to the various board committees for oversight, depending on the nature of the matter, and all of those board committees have worked on those and adopted various resolutions which are going to come together to a board resolution tomorrow, which I expect to pass, and which I expect to -- largely, if not completely -- accept the recommendations and begin working on the various implementation. That is, of course, for those that haven't already been implemented. There's a large number of them that have already been implemented. So with that, by way of relatively brief introduction, let's throw open the floor to any other questions or comments about the ATRT recommendations. Yes, sir. Go ahead. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Kieren McCarthy here from dot nxt. So I've been following this very closely, as you know, and I went to a lot of trouble to put together, you know, this document which goes through each one and lists out which staff has said has been done and I've given them a traffic light code as to whether any work has been done with it or a deadline has been missed, whether some has been done or whether it's been completely done. And unfortunately, it's hugely disappointing. There's 27 recommendations. 10 of them are red, which means that nothing at all has been done. 14 of them are yellow, which means something has been done. And only 3 are green. And the green is good and it all relates to the same thing, which is board minutes. So the problem is that you got the report six months ago, and I would love to have seen -- you were specifically asked six months ago to provide an update in June. Meaning this meeting. I would love to have picked up the meeting bag and had in that the printout of the 27 recommendations and all the work that you've done and all the work you're going to do in order to fulfill them all. But we don't have that, so we've got a blog post and one staff update which didn't break down according to recommendations. And then when you go through the staff update, everything is a proposed initial plan or work that's underway or it's really -- there's not a lot of work that's been done on this, and you knew this deadline was coming and six months is a long time to actually get something done. I also found in the PPC session that you took a decision not to tell people the work that had been done so far on -- I think I've got five recommendations -- until the budget which is 2.6 million was approved. Now, this is the complete opposite of what you should be doing, what accountability and transparency is. You're approving millions of dollars before you even tell the community what the work is that you've done in order to justify the millions of dollars. So apart from the board minutes, which are greatly improved and much like -- and the rationales which are greatly improved, there's still room for improvement, that's great. I've been really underwhelmed by the ATRT efforts and I hope that you recognize that rather than pretend that it's actually all great and it's all being done, because it isn't and you've got a lot of work to do. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. If there's -- can be some response, just collate them all, collect them, and come back at the end. I'd be interested to hear from the chair of the PPC if there's a response in relation to that. But let's go to that microphone. >>JONATHON ZUCK: Sure. Jonathon Zuck, from the Association for Competitive Technology. I'd like to draw the analogy of a garden. This is all one big garden. You might even consider it to be a community garden in which there are a lot of plants that are grown of different species and I think we're about to see a lot more plants being planted and that will hopefully bear some fruit. But the ATRT identified some weeds in the garden, and I think that it's important to take note of that, and there's a Chinese expression that if you don't grab the roots of the weeds when you weed, then the weeds will come back when the spring wind blows. And I think that's particularly apropos here, that just because we've gotten through this huge milestone of new gTLDs, we really need to get back to the core basics of accountability and transparency of ICANN and the trust that's necessary from the community and from governments, et cetera, for any of this to be a success. And so we know so little about what's actually going to happen with the ATRT at this point, and so there's not a lot to criticize other than what Kieren already did, which is really just the lack of progress and information on something that I think is too -- so critical to the future of this community garden. So again, I'd just encourage you to really focus in on the ATRT and make that a number one priority going forward and implementing all of those recommendations at a very minimum. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. At this microphone, sir. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Peter, Chris Disspain. I'm speaking, I think, as somebody who was on the ATRT. I think. No, I know I was on the ATRT. A couple of things. Look, it's very easy to say that nothing has happened. Lots and lots and lots and lots has happened. Most of you all know that -- those of you -- I've been running around trying to get information and I acknowledge that there is -- there may be better ways of communicating but it's quite hard, really. I mean, you know, what do you want? You want a note every time somebody has a meeting to say that a meeting has taken place? The ATRT recommendations, we knew when we made these recommendations that some of them are very simple and some of them are very complicated. It might just be a paragraph of words, but those paragraph of words took months of discussion to come to, and I think anyone -- everyone who is on the ATRT acknowledges that a number of those recommendations are complicated and are only going to be achieved step by step. So I acknowledge, I would say that there needs to be an upswing in the level of communication to a point. But I think characterizing it as nothing has happened, no progress has been made, is not correct. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chris. Next in line. Thank you. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. My name is Marilyn Cade. I'm also going to mention that I was on the President's Strategy Committee for three years and during that period of time, we did an extensive amount of consultation with the community. And many of the recommendations were reflected, I think, or at least the input that was reflected out of the President's Strategy Committee report was reflected into the ATRT work. The 27 recommendations are extremely meaningful to our ability to ensure the success of this organization. And I think all of us agree on that. And without saying that nothing has been done, I will point out that the ability that I have and that many other people have to ferret out what has been done is very challenging. And perhaps it has meaning to some of you that if I can't find it, it is really hard to find. So the advice I would get -- and I did sit through the committee report this morning. The advice I would offer all of us is I think we need a fundamental coaching on this. I would have liked to have opened this meeting with a sponsored briefing on the ATRT done -- provided by the staff, to have helped all of us to figure out where to find things. We didn't do that. So I would recommend that we ask the staff to do a Webinar for the members of the community who are interested and perhaps we can get briefed and up to date and that will help us in being able to understand where the material is and how we can contribute going forward. I am probably going to take a couple of seconds to say, I am not satisfied with where we are in the status of at least two or three of the topics that I think are very critical. One of them has to do with a complete redesign of the public comment process which must be integrated throughout the entirety of ICANN. It is not gTLD policy. It is a formative change. And the second is I don't know the details on the independent review and reconsideration, and that's a very, very important and critical area. But I understand there may be details coming. Thank you. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you. Denise, would you like to provide somewhat of an update? Denise is an adviser to the CEO, and she is working on supporting the affirmation review teams. >>DENISE MICHEL: Thanks. I would be happy to. Thanks for the comments. They're always helpful. Those of you who have your laptop here, there's an accountability and transparency page on ICANN's Web site. If you use the quick links box -- I think actually Karen put on the Web site. If you use the quick links box at the top, there is a drop-down menu. Go to "accountability and transparency." We're parking all of the Affirmation of Commitments and accountability and transparency work on that page, linking it from there to make it easier to find. That includes the status report of the implementation and board action. And it also includes the initial implementation plans. And we've heard a few requests this week for Webinars and more information and briefings and public comment periods. So we'll be discussing that with the board this evening and keeping the community updated on that. And so all of the information status report is on that page and happy to answer more detailed questions offline. >>ROD BECKSTROM: Thank you, Denise. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And I think, Mike, PPC was raised. It is only appropriate that you have a right of reply. The comment was something about deliberately not telling people things. >>MIKE SILBER: Thanks, Peter. I'm a little surprised by that comment. I suppose the critical issue is what is the result -- what is the role of the Public Participation Committee as now suddenly a communications committee and personally, I don't think that's what the role is. In addition, and as Denise indicated, and if you go through the materials, you'll see that responsibility for different of the recommendations has been assigned and allocated within various of the board committees and some within other appropriate structures. I don't really understand what the point of the particular attack on the PPC is, if that's suddenly responsibility for accountability and transparency within the organization. If, however, that is the intent and the community wants it that way, then maybe with a more appropriate chairperson, the PPC could take it on. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm sure the PPC has a perfectly appropriate chairperson. Let's go back to this side, and we can have a follow-up after that. >>MICHELE NEYLON: Michele Neylon again. Just actually following up on a couple of comments from the other speakers just now, the question I have is does ICANN have an actual concrete plan to improve the usability and accessibility of the main ICANN Web site? Because this is one of the biggest problems a the lot of us have. I spend a disordinate amount of time navigating the ICANN Web site. And if Marilyn can't find information on that and I can't find information on there when I know it's there -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Can we come back to that? >>MIKE SILBER: I will respond to that immediately. There is a major rebuild of icann.org. In the meantime, in terms of the public comment process and some of the pages that are on public comment, there is a rework of some of the templates to try and make that easier and more accessible. However, the entire icann.org Web site is being rebuilt. I'm not going to get involved in terms of the project plans around exactly when, but please be assured it's a problem that everybody is aware of and there's a ground-up rebuild of the entire site to try and address those issues. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Let's see if we can stick to the ATRT now. Building the Web site is actually a slightly different topic. Follow-up question from Kieren. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: I wanted to say it wasn't meant to be attack on the PPC, Mike. I think where my frustration with that lies and my frustration clearly came out is that I went through the entire -- coming here the entire ICANN Web site to see what's happened with an open mind and couldn't find anything at all. I mean, there was a staff update and blog post. And considering that it was about the accountability and transparency and then when you ask people that are doing it, you say, oh, well, we're doing lots of stuff, but the whole point is that you tell the community what you're doing. Now, Chris is saying, well I don't think you should tell -- should say every meeting. We don't have to tell people every meeting but have a page where you just put it up, quick minutes. So a demonstration of the work that you're doing. And when there isn't a demonstration of the work that you're doing, it is not a bad assuming that you're not doing it. The whole point is that the ATRT recommendations are supposed to shift ICANN into thinking we'll provide this information, we'll make clear to you the work that we're doing. And because it is the ATRT, it is very frustrating when you can't find anything at all. And that was my point. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Thanks very much. >>MIKE SILBER: Kieren, sorry, if I can quickly respond to that. I think the point is well-taken and it is something that we need to look at. There is a fine line between making your drafts so transparent that you can never get any work done because people are always critiquing your work. But at the same time I think the point is heard and well-taken. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Let's go to this side. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you very much, Pete. My due regard and respect to Chairman, President and fellow members, directors of ICANN. My name is (saying name). I'm a lead person in Singapore, and I'm ashamed that I'm alone because we are hosting. I don't know why your host is not bringing Singaporeans here. I've got to take session off at (inaudible) to be here today. And I remember ICANN 1999, Marina del Rey, subsequently and thereafter also, Kuala Lumpur, I notice that the terms of reference and protocol, decorum and so on, is not what we expect as laypersons, members of the general public. Firstly, with regard to, number one, sir, forgive me, with due regard and respect -- I really respect your respective look at one's presentation, each and every one during the voting session. And I'm ashamed that I'm not qualified to present this particular proposition. But nonetheless, I have had in mind that ever since 1st October, 2009, when ICANN is supposed to be independent, that independent that we have had in mind is a kind of glamorous freedoms of accessibility and possibility, but it does not seem to be. Restrictions of information, resources and so on is getting worse than we expected. Let me say one thing. For example, when you depart Amman, Jordan for Singapore, the Singapore government put up the money for you, yes, facilities, kind words, good remarks from keywords and so on, whatever not. But do you know that Singaporeans were not told and Singaporeans were not invited to participate because if they were invited to participate, then you find the whole complex will be full of them. But I don't know. I couldn't reconcile that. Put that aside, it is for you to reconcile even your registration by registration one through three are defective for people to participate. I don't quite understand. I send the feedback, nothing come back. So let's get to the understanding of the proposition of the gTLDs. Now, what I understand is that it is -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, I hate to interrupt. I'm just waiting for a link to the work of the accountability and transparency. >> Exactly. When you talk about accountability, I look at it here, that you know, you are aware from our respective audience here in terms of what kind of protocol, numbers -- when people want to speak, why not give them numbers? And you find repeated guys repeatedly talking repeated items. Those who are looking for opportunities do not have the opportunities. By the time we want to wait for our turn, then we find the subject matter has been more or less moved forward on to. So I leave it to you. If there is public feedback that you think that I still have a proposition to say on your gTLD, for example, which we think that we missed that opportunity, all the time because it is diverted into something else -- and I think that it is why here, can you make a distinction so that everyone can hear the question and you can pick and choose to address the question rather than the timeline -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: So I understand that you still want to talk about new gTLDs. We've closed that because we had more than the scheduled time. If there is time at the end, we can come back and revisit. Sir? >>PAUL FOODY: Paul Foody speaking on my own behalf again. Just the point about the Web site and how difficult it is to find stuff on your Web site. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: That isn't actually the topic. It is accountability and transparency review team recommendations. >>PAUL FOODY: Okay. This is a suggestion. Just e-mail all of us registrants who have given you our e-mails, okay, and said you can e- mail us and tell us when you add stuff to the Web site, where we might find it. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that suggestion. All right. That's the end of the teams of the accountability and transparency review team recommendations. Let's move to another topic which was raised as I understand it from the At-Large. It is the topic of volunteer burnout. So I guess we really need to hear from some of the volunteers who may or may not be burned out. I can say it is something that obviously the board has a high level of concern because the whole ICANN process is so dependent on volunteers at every level including, of course, the board. The board are all uncompensated who the chair gets a very generous stipend. So let's start here and go here or come to another arrangement. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Mikey? Chris Disspain, again, speaking as a volunteer. I just wanted to saying it a real issue. I'm very lucky. I happen to work in an organization that let's me do this. They know that it takes a fair bit of time and effort and they are prepared to allow me to do it because in Australia we have a very simple view. We expect to Australian public to buy in to the multistakeholder bottom-up model. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to support the global bottom-up multistakeholder model. But it is very, very, very hard to find people in the fortunate position that I'm in. I think it is a real issue. I have no solutions other than to say I understand why it has been brought up, and I think it is really important that we remember that there is a lot of work in this organization is done by volunteers and that includes people on the board. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Is the solution for them all to come and work for auDA, Chris? Is there room? Okay. Back to the other microphone. Sir? >> MIKE O'CONNOR: The Australian mafia speaks. My name is Mike O'Connor, and I am speaking in my individual capacity and I was kind of pushed up here on stage by a bunch of people behind me. I think I represent a burned out volunteer not unlike many of you and others in the room. I don't really have a lot to say. I got up in the high branches yesterday and I kind of accidentally created maybe a tempest in the teapot and I'm climbing down out of the branches on that. One of the things that we might think about is we as volunteer leaders and as volunteer workers, mostly the reward that we get is the acknowledgment of the work that we did and the recognition for what we did, all of us. I think we all deserve a round of applause for all the work that we do. And I think sometimes when we're tired and we're all tired because we've been on a long march to get the new gTLDs out and bunch of other things, we need to just step back and celebrate ourselves the best we can. And so to those who -- my analogy of the day is like I am a small furry creature that got scared yesterday and I ran up into the high branches and I started pooping on everybody. [ Applause ] My apologies for that and for anybody who feels they have been pooped on directly my apologies to you directly. So anyway, like Chris, I don't have a magic bullet on this one. It is a hard one, and it is crucial that we do this well because it is fundamental to what we do. And that's all I got because I kind of got booted up here -- I wasn't planning to talk. Thanks a lot. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. Let's come to this side. >> MIKE SAX: Hello. My name is Mike Sax, and I have a software business creating mobile apps. Volunteer burnout is a really serious issue, and it can really affect the effectiveness of the organization. We can look at ways to encourage volunteers to find more volunteers, but that's one approach. There is another approach which is to look at how effective we are in accomplishing our mission. When you are running a business, one way to be really successful is to pick your mission, to define it and to execute it with a laser focus. So if we stick for our mission and we don't take on new tasks, we can be more effective. And in the meetings I have attended during the past few days, there has been quite a bit of mission creep. Like, in the consumer interest meeting, you know, we started breaking down the definition of "consumer interest" and different elements and then trying -- coming up with different ways to track those with surveys and other things. And, basically, we're creating a lot of work for ourselves that's not necessarily serving our core mission. And, in fact, doing that takes away from our ability to effectively execute that mission because it wears down the volunteers. So if, for example -- if we define our core requirements in a very specific way that's in alignment with our mission, I think we'll be more effective. And public interest, which we'll talk about in the next part of the meeting, is really something that we can define -- that we shouldn't think of solving the world's problems but if we accomplish one Internet, One World and we define it narrowly, we will be much more effective in accomplishing ICANN's mission and making sure that our volunteers feel like they're doing important work and can accomplish it without excessive burden. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Mr. Sax. Let's go to the other microphone. You, sir? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Peter. Eric Brunner-Williams. I want to thank you for the travel support. If that may not have been available due to the resignation of someone on the ALAC, I wouldn't be here. So when you ask to what end or what purpose -- how to get your value or a value out of volunteers, I don't think -- I mean, if I had not been here, what little I have done here wouldn't have -- I wouldn't have been here to do it. So as incoherent as that is, I'll stop there just to avoid embarrassing myself further. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Back to this side. >>WERNER STAUB: Werner Staub. We talk about volunteer burnout, are we? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes. >>WERNER STAUB: The first thing I would, of course, want to say is that we would have more time for any other business than just ten minutes at the end. If volunteers participate and find that anything does not exactly fit into a topic want to be disciplined and they find at the end there is only ten minutes, that is not workable. So I think we could improve on that. We could also make sure that the people have more time once a subject starts to know that they have to -- there is time to speak and to concentrate and line up and so on just before when you have many people speaking, it almost looked as if there was nobody speaking. So quickly the new topic was entered and people asking briskly, speak now. It is not so easy, especially for those who did not speak this their mother tongue. Now, another little point, I didn't know where to put it, because we have so little about any other business, deaf volunteers cannot listen. And we can say this is detail. But in the last couple of ICANN meetings, the decibel level of all the gala and music night has graduated to the point of really being a danger for people's health. I would like ICANN to do something about it and really look at this as a matter of meeting organization to make sure the decibels stay below 80. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I agree. I find them -- >>WERNER STAUB: Finally it is about the meeting organization. We've had, I believe, (inaudible) in terms of meeting organization back in the days when the board handled them. And handing it over to staff wasn't so easy. It is associated with many problems. One of them is that there are political aspects in organizing meetings which the board has to take responsibility for. But there has been one effect which is the cause of volunteer burnout, that the meetings are now announced on short notice. We don't even know now where a meeting a year from now is going to be. I think we should have the knowledge of where the meeting is going to be at least 12 months ahead and ideally 18 months. For those who who have to have visa preparations, to find support for their travels, how can they be sure to participate if it is such notice in countries where months are necessary to get a visa and, of course, many months to get travel support. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Very good point. Let me finish the point I was saying before. I agree with you certainly about the decibel level. I find those evenings on occasion physically unpleasant, and I think others feel the same. So if we can just keep the noise down to health and safety levels, obviously would suit a number of us. [ Applause ] As I understand it, it is the registrar constituency that wanted this particular topic brought forward. I'm not sure whether that's a sign that the registrar community is suffering any more than anyone else. It seems to be a community-wide issue. So thanks to the registrars for bringing this forward. And now let's go to that microphone. You, sir, have the floor. >>RON ANDRUFF: Good afternoon, Ron Andruff. I wasn't planning to speak on this topic, but I think the issue of burnout that we're feeling in the community often has to do with the fact that within our organization, being a bottom-up consensus-driven organization the feeling comes about when groups work long and hard and really are often under the tight time frames that we've been under more recently to come up with a consensus policy. And -- or ideas towards consensus. And we find that the work is done. It is then handed off and handed back to the board or handed back to the GNSO and then the net result of the work is pushed to the side and the body we hand it off to then takes a decision either to dismantle parts of those -- the work that was done or to change it completely. An example for that would be VI. As we all know, that was a very contentious issue and there were changes made after a tremendous amount of time. So I don't want to belabor the point of VI, but I just want to bring out the fact that it's really critical as an organization that we hold very fast to the principle of bottom-up. And if we have a lot of people working and the bottom-up consensus policy works, I think we all would feel a lot less burnout. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much for that. Let's come to this microphone. Madam? >>AYESHA HASSAN: Good afternoon. Ayesha Hassan for the International Chamber of Commerce. I think part of the volunteer burnout issue is also the fact that we have a number of people who spread themselves very thin and there are not enough volunteers. So some of the things that have been reflected in the global business community that I represent is that if there is more focus, there have been efforts on these items but I think more focus on work flow prioritization, greater predictability and watching what all is flowing at the same time will also happen to broaden engagement and get more people to carry the burden of contributing to the substantive issues in this organization. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. Let's go to the other side. You, sir? >>MICHELE NEYLON: Michele Neylon yet again. I wasn't planning on speaking on this subject either, but I think there are certain things that need to be said. The work that a lot of volunteers do wouldn't be possible without the support of ICANN staff and I think they should be thanked and thanked often. They do fantastic work trying to bring us all together. And, you know, there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes on where they are trying to ruffle out -- sort things out with making sure everybody gets along well. But the real issue is that there is literally not enough people who do get involved, and perhaps that is a perception issue. I only started coming to ICANN meetings purely by accident because a friend I knew in the industry said, hey, there is an ICANN meeting, why don't you come. If he wouldn't have done that, I never would have turned up. A lot of people seem to work on the perception that ICANN is terribly complicated, it is hard to get involved, you have to have some kind of special, I don't know, contract or some kind of special relationship to get involved. And I come from a country where there is only four of us who actually turn up at ICANN meetings. And that is something that does concern me, that there is such a small number of people who do actually get involved here. And it may be as part of this public outreach for new gTLDs something could be done to make people aware of the fact that turning up is all that they need to do. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. And let's close after these two and then there is some comments coming from the board. You, sir, at this side? >>MILTON MUELLER: Milton Mueller but my friends just call me SSRT. [ Laughter ] Two quick points about burnout. One is that the people who actually volunteer are interested in policy impact. And when the policies that they work on are not effectively implemented or undermined, that's when you get burnout. I don't think anybody who has actually gone all the way through a process and has achieved something, even though they know they have to compromise, I don't think they feel burnt out. The other thing I think you really need to understand and probably don't is that there's a very important distinction between two kinds of volunteers. There are people who volunteer; that is, they are donating their time. And there are people who are, okay, not paid by ICANN but they are -- this is their industry. They get paid to work on ICANN, okay? And the burnout problem should not affect those people as much as it does the others. The people who are not paid to be here, who are not working for a registrar or not a professional lobbying group, those people are the ones that don't show up, Michele, and those are the ones we need more of. But the level of complexity and the extended time periods makes it almost impossible for ordinary people to just show up at an ICANN meeting and feel like they're accomplishing anything. So two simple points. Thanks. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. And the last word on this topic from that side? >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Thank you, Peter. Antony Van Couvering from Minds+Machines. I have my little badge here with the CHH, that stands for methane. That's what we produce a lot of in the VI working group. It was a very hard group to work in. There are a lot of very strong, competing interests. There is a lot of lobbying. And we ended up at an impasse. Now, I want to respond to Ron Andruff because actually I think the board acted very correctly in that sense. We showed that we produced an impasse and at that point it's up to the board to decide, and I think that everyone who participated in that, we fleshed out the issues and we did it quickly, and I think burnout also happens because these things drag on and on and personally I was happy to put in the work and come to a result in a fairly short time, even though it was not a positive result. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks for that. Let's see if there's some quick comment from board members about the topic of burnout. I see Bruce wants to contribute. Bruce. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Yeah. I just want to pick up a couple of points that have been made. I think Ayesha is correct in terms of prioritization. What I find seems to be happening in the community, if I look at the agenda for this week, I don't -- I couldn't follow everything. There's so much going on. So I can only follow small bits of it. I get the sense that people often don't take serious attention to an issue until they see the board's about to make a decision on it, and then suddenly everyone complains from multiple directions and then we have to go back and change the work. So really what that's symbolic of is the fact that the original work started with a very small group that obviously reached consensus within that group. Others really didn't participate because they didn't sort of see it on the high-level agenda, if you like. But then about we put it on the board agenda and say on Friday, we're going to vote on X, and then suddenly we'll get letters from governments, we'll get security people, and then all of a sudden the board's put in the position of somehow arbitrating this. And maybe we need to get better at pushing it back to the original group to say, "Here's some new information. You know, what's your view on it?" But I think that's part of the issue, that we're not getting wide enough engagement early enough in the process and we repeat work coming back to Milton's thing about how long it takes. You just get exhausted because you keep repeating the same discussion for years that you already had two or three years ago, and someone comes and thinks they've got something new. And I've seen that even this week, new stuff coming from certain areas that, you know, we talked about two or three years ago. They weren't there then, but it wasn't until they saw the board actually going to do something that, you know, we suddenly got all these letters. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Thanks, I've got Rita and Bertrand and Erika and Katim but we also have another one online to Filiz, if you could feed us that, then that will help the board respond. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: Yes. I have one online comment. I'll just read it quickly and let you know the sender. My question is related to the process of the ICANN's public participation and the public comments. I am an active volunteer for submitting my honest opinion and propose since last four years for ICANN. Most of my suggestions has been adopted by ICANN and now the beneficiary is our old countries and territories. In fact, I was lucky when those whose proposals and suggestions to public interest were recognized by the review and implementation teams, but there was of about one year in between when the same proposals were not only acknowledged but the silent response reflected me badly to reduce my activities. However, after about one year, when I got to know all of the proposals were adopted as presented, that has provided me new blood in my body and enough oxygen to breathe in the voluntary contribution. I'm lucky, one, for getting the fellowship support and have, but in subsequent applications we are rejected without any justifiable objection. No doubt that most of the business of ICANN is running through voluntary contribution. It is my request to the board to please formalize some mechanism to acknowledge the contributions coming from the public. How do you do it? I leave it up to the board. But at least acknowledge their work. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Thank you for that. Let's go then to the board list and I've got beginning with Rita. >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON: Thank you, Peter. I do think that volunteer burnout is a serious problem here. I think we all feel it, including the board these last six months. It's difficult. We're all flying around the world. There's so many issues. Everyone is working really hard. So it's a problem, but I think it is a little bit complex to fix. We've heard a lot this week about prioritization of activities, about trying to recruit more people here. I think all of these things will be important. And I think something Anthony mentioned is important as well. I think Bruce picked up on that. Just as an example, I remember when we were doing the GNSO reform and we -- I believe it was Mexico City -- presented a scenario of what we were thinking and I know, because I was presiding over that and we did this whole presentation and then I looked at the audience and it was sort of like, "Bueller? Bueller?" No one really had any comments. And months went by and finally right when the board was about to make a decision then we got flooded with comments, so then we started all the debates that we'd already had and we thought that we concluded. So I do agree with Bruce a bit. We do need to prioritize. We need to deal with making sure there's enough people, and I think we do need a focus so we can all try to work together to combat this problem. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Rita. Next, Bertrand. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Peter. Having participated in a certain number of working groups, having seen the work in the GAC, seen the work in the board now, and seen the work of the staff, I do share that there is a concern. I want to share a few key words to maybe guide the work ahead. The first one has been mentioned is the notion of recognition. It is extremely difficult to make sure that the comments that are posted in the public forum -- I mean, the online comments -- are clearly reflected, because the role of the staff is to aggregate them. However, there is a keen desire on the part of the staff and the board to make sure that when people do make comment, not only are they taken into account fully, but that the people who do the comments are acknowledged, and that their contribution is welcome, so that you don't have the impression of sending things just in an empty box. The second -- the second key word is the one that actually Ayesha has taken from my mouth. It's the notion of work flow. And I would add another element, which is traceability of the work flow. It's extremely important to be able to easily know at what stage of a process the discussion is, so that you can know when you want to chime in or when you don't need to. The third element is a key word that a lot of people know that I'm very fond of. It is the notion of silos. The later the community is being brought together, the more entrenched the positions are, and therefore the harder it is to reunify it. I think one of the approaches is to use the physical meetings a little bit more to put the actors together very early in the discussion, and in that respect I was extremely encouraged by the discussion that took place yesterday on the notion of a summit for -- or a meeting for developing countries where people from all groups, including the GAC and other entities, were around the table and debating before it became a sort of issue. The next one is structure of meetings. I think it is an area where we need to work upon, especially as we are now changing a little bit the nature of the activities, now that the policy of the gTLDs is done, and how we can use those meetings to facilitate workshops and exchange of best practices. And these are basically the few key words that I want to share. This is directly connected to the previous topics of the ATRT implementation, because this is all about improving the working methods and making sure that we are all more efficient, including in the production of documents, how to make them more compact and so on. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Bertrand. Erika. >>ERIKA MANN: I can understand perfectly well that volunteer burnout is a problem for you, and this affects, I think, all of us. I mean, the whole ICANN community has engaged for so many, many years in shaping this ecosystem and it gets more complex, so it's no wonder to experience this. I enjoyed many of your comments, and I think if we -- I don't want to offer a solution. That's not the role here. But I wonder if one question from a point which Ayesha raised and which was mentioned by a gentleman earlier from Singapore, because this is very community driven, but if we will combine this with a more stronger regional outreach wherever we are, we would at least broaden over two years, three years, we would broaden our community substantially, and I think all of your, you know, ideas to reach this and how to shape something like this would be more than welcome from the board. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Erika. Katim. >>KATIM TOURAY: Thanks, Peter. I think this is profoundly important topic because really volunteers are, at the end of the day, the lifeblood and the oxygen of ICANN, and I think anything and everything we can do to avoid burnout, we should do. I have very briefly three suggestions, three things I think we should do. I don't mean to say for one second that this three-item list is exhaustive. As you have all pointed out, there are a whole bunch of things we can do. But I think it will be a good start for us to do three things. One is to first know who our volunteers are. Secondly, I think we should listen to them. And thirdly, I think we should recognize them. Beginning with the issue of getting to know our volunteers, I think what we ought to do, for a start, is to try to do a profile of the ICANN volunteer, to really get to the core of who the volunteers are. As has already been pointed out, some are actually volunteering because some entity, some company, some organization is paying for them to be here. So clearly those people probably are here because it is in the direct interest of an organization or a company for them to be here. And there are those who are here purely and purposefully for the love of the cause of ICANN and what it is doing. Clearly, what motivates those people and their burnout point is going to be different by virtue of the fact that their wherewithal and their motivations are different. So I think it would be very helpful if we -- and I think the head of the PPC, Mr. Silber, would probably discuss this with the Public Participation Committee to see if we can probably come up with an effort to do a profile of the ICANN volunteer so we can get to know them the first time. Secondly, I suggest we also listen to the volunteers. I have said this before, and I will say it again. I think it will be very helpful if, whenever we have the public forums, the preponderance of laptops that are open on the -- on this table here, the directors or the board laptops that are open is reduced, because if you right now took a survey of this very hall, we are here to listen to you, but it seems to me that if you took a survey of the hall right now, you will find that 99.99% of all the board members have their laptops open, and the number of the volunteers and the ICANN public that is -- those of you down there, the percentage of you that have your laptops open is far lower than the proportion of board members who have their laptops open. I think if anything, it should have been the other way around. So we really have to learn to listen to people when we mean to say -- when we say we're here to listen, we really should act like and we really should listen. Now, I know the argument has been made that we need the laptops to do our own internal communications in Jabber and stuff, but I think that is a very weak excuse and I think what we should do is have all hands on deck, all ears, and give people the proper listening that we should do for them. Thirdly, I think we should recognize people. And I say this because I would like to provide one example. I really started cutting my teeth in volunteering from a community radio station in Madison, Wisconsin called WORT. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Katim, is there a recommendation at the end of this or something? This is a long presentation when we really are listening to the community. >>KATIM TOURAY: Absolutely. I'm coming. Mikey here -- Mikey O'Connor sitting over there is one of the people who helped cofound that radio station. WORT puts out a publication called "Radio Pilot" and I often go to their Web site to look for all volunteers that I had worked with because they always feature a volunteer in the "Radio Pilot." If ICANN can, on its Web site, highlight fellows -- people who have participated in the fellowship as I've seen it begin to do, which is very good, I think what we can also do is to, in our publication and also on the Web site, have a volunteer corner that will, from time to time, recognize volunteers who have contributed to the community. I think if we do those three things, we'll be well off to our way to reducing volunteer fatigue, and thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. And Cherine. >>CHERINE CHALABY: I am going to be brief. I personally have been involved now with five ICANN meetings over the last -- sorry, four and there's one to come in Dakar, so over a period of 16 months, I will have been involved with five meetings. And I really value those meetings. I mean, it brings people together. But I notice a heightened burnout during those meetings by volunteers and by staff. And the amount of work that goes into packing everything together and pressing everything together to satisfy the purpose of these meetings is just tremendous. And it is only an observation and a thought that we ought to think about for the future the number of meetings we have per year. Especially that now we have launched the new gTLD program and we are going to go into a phase of execution. Our role is going to change somehow from the policy development to something more, including execution. The question would be is -- and this is not for now but in the future -- would we revisit at one point? It's only a suggestion. I haven't got any recommendation on that. Just thoughts. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Let's move on from that to the next topic, which is a community discussion about what it means to act in the public interest. The microphone is open. Yes, sir. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Thank you. Steve DelBianco with Netchoice and fully applaud putting this topic on the table. It's something I've talked about a few previous meetings. You probably know that. Let me start with why. Why is because ICANN model fosters an incredible diversity of stakeholders but often the interests of each of those stakeholder groups are rather narrow, not diverse. For instance, I could see environmentalists among us invoke the notion of public interest to require, say, all the registrars and registries to reduce their carbon footprint and use renewable energy for their servers. And, you know, there are people in this room who think that's a good idea. Really. And if we don't narrow -- Michael. If we don't narrow the definition of public interest, it ends up creating the scope creep that generates the volunteer burnout we talked about. Okay. So that's why we've got to define it. How is a little bit tougher. I'm cautious about the process of a cross-community development of a definition and I think we can learn a little bit from the very brief experiment so far with Bruce Tonkin's Cartagena resolution, the Jonathon Zuck resolution on defining consumer trust, choice, and competition in the context, again, of the Affirmation of Commitments. I would say that we've got a slow start but we're picking up speed. We have learned, I think, a little bit better on how to create a charter that's consistent across as many as four ACs and SOs. That's a challenge, because Bruce's resolution on that previous definition asked the GAC, the ALAC, the GNSO, and the ccNSO all to provide advice on those definitions. Second thing we're learning, I think, is how we're going to report back to our respective ACs and SOs so they can endorse certain elements of what the definitions are and forward it to the board so that you can figure out the right approach. So let me turn to the notion of what it should be, so that's why and the how. And as the what, I think we've -- I've said this before but I think a definition that will work well for ICANN is one that's very limited scope and it focuses on what we do. Registrations and resolutions. And with respect to those two things and the global public interest, I think we'll arrive at two concepts for registrations and resolutions. Availability and integrity. Availability of a registration in any language or script, for instance. Availability of resolutions 24/7/365 anywhere on the globe, for instance. I'd say that integrity of registrations is accurate WHOIS information and holding a registry or TLD operator to the promises they made about screening applicants and that's going to be huge in the new round. I think the integrity of resolutions that they're true and accurate and consistent all around the world. So I genuinely look forward to helping to define a community definition of public interest in our context and in our time. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Let's go to the next microphone. Yes, sir. >> Yes. Thank you very much, chairman. Good afternoon again. My name is (saying name) from Singapore, layperson. My question here, in the context of public interest, chairman and members of the board, is everything under the sky. I wish to draw back one particular incident that happened in Singapore in this round and of public interest, not just Singapore interest but global interest, that the minister who happened to be a minority -- the first time in the history of Singapore -- do not turn up to participate in your event and we have a minister of state. On Tuesday, I was with him and the others. We were taking photographs for the communications. I had the opportunity to say to him, "Why wasn't you there?" And he said, "Well, grateful was there. Must be there." Now, the question is that ICANN should never ever be, you know, a platform for lobbyists in terms of money and funding alone, but a question of a certain host country must send a representative of reputable position to -- in order such important resolution to be bear witness to the process of the undertaking, which I see here none. Not one member of the industry is represented in Singapore, not anywhere except the government, and Singapore is gaining the reputation of the resolution passed in Singapore. This is U.S. saying the Arabs -- the Americans were talking about giving good remarks with regard to the Arab spring and so on, but in Singapore, we are under a monopoly. You know, undemocratic country. Now, the question is you guys -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, just again, I hate to interrupt if you if you could use your last 20 seconds to bring it back to the interest of acting in ICANN's in public interest. >> Yes. I would say in terms of public interest, the gTLD, for example, sir, that is a yesterday (inaudible) proposition, which I think it is (inaudible) out-of-the-box proposition which, you know, we would be very happy to contribute. And the question is that this is a yesterday's proposition and is a nonissue matter which I would say here, can we go for non-bureaucratic approach into innovation and so on. That's it. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. Let's see if we can work with that. Thank you. On this side. >>PAUL FOODY: Paul Foody, speaking on my own behalf again. When it comes to public interest, might I suggest that ICANN should look at it from the point of view that you really shouldn't do anything that is going to have a catastrophic impact on the global economy. On the people of the world. And when I say that, it's widely known that it's my opinion that the new gTLD program is nothing more than the theft of the goodwill that has been earned by the existing registrants, the hundred trillion dollar goodwill, as I believe it to be worth. You guys have done everything in your power not to tell the registrants what's going on. You've got away with that one. But at the same time as we've got the -- the issue of the removal of the goodwill from the registrants, we've also got the issue of what it is you're creating. And you are transferring enormous wealth in the terms of intellectual property which can be transferred anywhere on the globe. And think about the sort of impact that that is going to have on the global taxation income to every country on the planet. You've got firms such as KPMG who are incredibly innovative and inventive when it comes to creating IP assets. They -- it was reported by the BBC that KPMG came up with the idea of capitalizing the management foresightedness of a well-known company and it was hundreds of millions of dollars. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Mr. Foody, again, I don't want to interrupt. They say anecdotes are interesting. But can you bring it back to the issue of ICANN and the public interest? >>PAUL FOODY: Well, the fact that ICANN has been able to carry off this new gTLD program without, so far as I'm aware, any sort of consultation with tax people who will be advising the lucky recipients of these ICANN golden tickets, quite honestly I think that that is something that really the public interest demanded. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Okay. Let's go to that side of the room. Thank you, sir. >> Okay. My name is Richard from NetMission DotAsia and also ALS. So I would like to talk about the public interest and more specifically about the interests of young people with ICANN. Well, I'm -- this is my first time participating at ICANN, but except the kids brought and babies brought by the participants, we are actually -- NetMission ambassadors -- among all the youngest people here in this meeting. So -- [ Applause ] >> Okay. But still, the participants here and also the staff, they're all very supportive and friendly, but we think that ICANN can do more about involving more young people in ICANN meetings. We would like to see more official support such as a mechanism to involve young people, and actually NetMission DotAsia is actually -- we are organized by a program organized by DotAsia but then we are a group of young people that are really passionate and we can contribute to ICANN meetings. Last week, just here in Singapore, we organized YIGF camp in Singapore, which is a new version of IGF, and we involved students from both Hong Kong and Singapore and we have solid discussions regarding the digital divide, cyberaddiction and also privacy, and here I would like to talk about here that we would like to have more fellowships programs and more workshops for young people, so that we can know more about the complicated system of ICANN and we can -- so that we can engage in this mechanism. And please here we wish that in the future ICANN meetings, you can -- we can see more young people here so that we can be a very active stakeholder in the Internet, that we can also make decisions in helping ICANN. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And now, sir. >>ELLIOT NOSS: Thank you. Elliot Noss, Tucows. I'd like to talk about ICANN and the public interest in two contexts. The first, I want to start with a quick "what is the Internet." And we've talked here before, the Internet is an agreement and a series of protocols, and most importantly is the greatest example of decentralized creation of wealth that the world has ever seen. And when I say "wealth," I'm talking about not just of course economics but information, political freedoms and other forms of wealth. At the very center of that creation is a single authoritative root. ICANN's first and greatest act in the public interest is to protect that single authoritative root, that tiny kernel at the center. And to ensure its integrity. The second element of the public interest is a bit broader, does step outside some of that core protection of the single authoritative root. ICANN is an actor in a greater play that's taking place. We're in a transition from a world of nation states to places where global governance has a place. So ICANN is the first best example of a bottoms-up stakeholder consensus, and the governance that flows from it. It is very important that ICANN demonstrates the continued success of that, and that's acting in a broader public interest, one that in the greater sweep of history is likely to be its greatest remembrance and the place where it can have its greatest impact. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Let's go to the other side of the room. You, sir. >>JONATHON ZUCK: Yes. Jonathon Zuck from the Association for Competitive Technology. We kicked off this meeting with a drumbeat and a rather aspirational visit from a dragon sort of wishing us luck in this next phase of ICANN, and so it's with that drumbeat that I feel emboldened to continue my drumbeat that anything related to the public interest be measurable and evaluatable in the future, so that we should strictly define what the public interest means, make it realistic, and make it measurable. And that is the only thing that will make the evaluation process down the road something that is, in fact, evaluative instead of just an act of rationalization after the fact to try and figure out how it was that what happened was in the public interest. We really need, as Bruce suggested in his resolution that was passed by this board, to make sure that we, early on, decide how it is we will evaluate whether or not what we did was in the public interest, and that's going to come from defining it specifically and putting real metrics associated with that success and measuring that success. So let's make sure the dragon didn't visit us in vain and we can really measure our success later on when we're reviewing the success of the new gTLD program. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Let's come back to this side. >>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Thank you, Peter. Antony Van Couvering, Minds + Machines. I would like to recall, first of all, our previous discussion about volunteers, and everyone here is maybe acting in some commercial interest or other interest, but they're also acting as a measure of conscience. And everyone needs to measure their own conscience and what they do. So I'm going to speak against any sort of definition, because if you look at that phrase "act in the public interest," you can look at the word "act" and ask what it means. You can look at "public" and ask what it means. You can look at "interest," and ask what it means. And you can also ask if there's only one public interest. I submit that there are many and they're represented by the volunteers here, and that definition will change over time. And any attempt to constrict it to mean this person's point of view or this set of criteria is doomed to failure and will fossilize the organization very quickly. We need to come together as people and act as people according to our consciences, and so I urge you not to try and bind that in any way. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks. The cautionary warning. Let's move to the other side. Thank you. >>LIM FUN JIN: Hi. I'm Lim Fun Jim from Kuala Lumpur. I spoke earlier. Yeah, I just wanted to speak a little bit about public interest. I'm quite -- I mean, I know that the purpose for the new gTLDs is a very good thing. Especially it gives accessibility to -- especially for internationalized domains, gives accessibility to nonnative English script writing people, but it also has -- it's like a blessing and a curse, because it has the potential to really cut up the Internet and make it a little -- quite confusing. For example, I give you an example is if you have a new gTLD or internationalized domain that sounds like an existing one, it will actually confuse a lot of people. If I have to tell my colleagues please go to, for example, in Cantonese si fu dot net, the character si fu dot net, he should be able to type in the native characters in Chinese, si fu dot net and get to the same site as s-i-f-u -- which is master, I think we all know -- dot net. So I think that, you know, in ICANN's interest of making a better Internet, a one world one Internet, we should encourage ICANN to look at the implementation details of the new gTLDs to reduce the level of complexity and possible confusion that it may have as it rolls out. That's all I wanted to say. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Back to this side. Thank you. >>WERNER STAUB: Yeah. Werner Staub from CORE. Just a very brief comment, actually. Agree with what was said before. Public interest is not definable in a way that is static. It changes over time. The only thing that we can certainly say as a qualifier that we mean the whole of mankind and that's the only thing that is stable, I believe. The rest will change with time and with the imperatives that come that we cannot predict. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Agreed. How many think they are queuing on this side of the room? We are looking to close this topic as soon as we can. We have got other things to get on with. Let's close it after the two gentlemen on the left-hand side. Is there any more on side? Some have requested time for other business, and I would like to get to that if we could. Let's treat that as the end then and let's come back to this side. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Peter. Eric Brunner-Williams. We have addresses. We have autonomous system numbers. We have protocol parameters. And we have domain names. The scope of the public interest associated with each of these and with each of the forms of how we execute underneath them, that is our existence of registrars for the public interest of competition somewhere between the formerly unified registry on registrar function, the existence of several registries to create competition within the formerly monolithic registry function. These are a different kind of public interest, the public interest in achieving -- some competition policy aim. We have, as Antony Van Couvering said, many public interests and they are not static over time. So I really would not like to see the public interest codified or restricted as if it was something that could be defined by statute. I think it is something quite living and has to be interpreted kind of like the common law. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Yes, Madam, your term? >>ROBIN GROSS: Hi, this is Robin Gross with the noncommercial users constituency. As someone who's been somewhat of a long time advocate saying ICANN should represent the global public interest, I think we should have an exploration and discussion about what does that mean, what does something mean to be in the "public interest." However, I also have grave concerns about where this discussion could go and where it could lead, particularly since we see a lot of large actors, governments and such that are really bringing this issue forward -- this public interest issue forward. So I have some concerns about this. For example, when we use labels, things like the public interest, that sort of means we don't have to think anymore. Once something has been decided that it is in the public interest, well, I guess we don't have to evaluate or examine whether or not we need to think about that anymore. So I'm concerned about trying to, as we just heard from the last speaker, codify that and not allow for something to be a breathing concept. I think perhaps the better thing to do is talk about principles and principles that we can agree can help us to achieve what we think is the public interest, things like openness and promoting freedom and making sure the Internet enables education, communication, innovation, exploration, these kinds of things, these principles. So how do we achieve that? How do we get to what we think is the public interest? Well, I think it's -- by building the right process, to reach that result. So if we can build the ICANN internal processes that allow for all of these important viewpoints that when taken together will create the public interest, that is the right answer. So I'm concerned about this idea that once a decision has been made within ICANN under the processes, that then there's going to be some kind of additional separate evaluation, perhaps external evaluation, as to whether or not that particular decision is, quote-unquote, in the public interest. I see that as an opportunity that's ripe for abuse when somebody didn't get what they want in the internal process to then go forward and try to get another bite at the apple and say, Well, yes, I know that the decision came out this way but it is really not in the public interest and so you shouldn't do it. So I have concerns that it is just too ripe for gaming and abuse. And so I think we want to make sure we talk about principles, about what "public interest" actually means. And I'm glad we are having this conversation. I'm really glad. I'm also concerned if we try to decide amongst ourselves right now what is the public interest, or in the future, that we will miss the boat on that. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. I think another warning that we should take account of. Yes, last on this topic. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Okay. Alan Greenberg representing myself. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'll close it. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I'm sorry. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Carry on. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I find myself partially agreeing with people who are presenting diametrically opposing views. And I think if we're going to have any sort of definition within our context, formal or informal, it is going to have to be a combination of different things. Public interest is going to change over time. It is partially going to be a very subjective thing that your stomach tells you it is in the public interest. On the other hand, I think we need some examples of definitions. And Steve DelBianco gave a few to begin with, or at least the core of some. And I combine this discussion with one I had earlier today in another meeting where we were talking about the difficulty of getting people to participate in working groups. But as soon as you actually have a document which is almost about to be enacted, people come out and start coming on it. And I think we need to start putting some things in writing, whether it is from bottom-up or top-down and start getting reactions in writing and so we can try to gauge can we go somewhere which is a viable direction for ICANN. It is too core of a thing to leave it completely undefined. On the other hand, we certainly don't want to cast it in concrete. But I think we have to stop just talking about it and try to put something in place. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Well, we move then to -- we are going to close that and move to a different topic. I think however defined by whom, people will agree that the service by Rita Rodin Johnston as a director of ICANN has been in the public interest. We are going to have a time now for public comment in relation to Rita's service. She steps down from the board tomorrow at the end of six years. Is there anyone who would like to comment? The microphones are open. >>AYESHA HASSAN: Can I go ahead? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sorry, yes. Go ahead. >>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you. Ayesha Hassan. I have been given the pleasure by members of the leadership of the business constituency to share our appreciation, Rita, for the hard work you've done over the years. We've greatly appreciated your thoughtful contributions, your ability to listen. Even when you may not have reflected some of our views in your decisions, we've greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss with you. You've been thorough, concise, insightful, delightful and upbeat. And even in moments of a very person physical accident, you have come back to ICANN and devoted your time and energy. And for that, we recognize that that has taken personal time and energy. All in all, we greatly appreciate your service to this organization and we wish you all the best and do hope to be working with you again in the future. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Ayesha. On this side, please. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Peter. My name is Chuck Gomes. I will be speaking in my personal capacity, but I'm pretty sure that my comments will reflect all of us from the contracted parties house. It wasn't called that when we elected Rita, but she has spent six years working hard, as I know all of you do. In fact, I just totally respect all that you do, and Rita has been an example of that. I don't think that she has focused just on the contracted parties house. I think she's focused on the public interest and the interest of ICANN, the interest of the community. And she's represented those interests very well. She started way back, at least in my experience, in the beginning of the registries constituency. And that's where I got to know her. We went from one member in the constituency to multiple members, and she was a part of that transition. She, as an attorney, became very adept at understanding the issues related to registries and registrars and the community as a whole. And I think she's been just a tremendous asset to all of us, not just the board. I'm sure you guys appreciate it even more than some of us do. But she's been an asset to the community, and I want to thank her for six years of fantastic service and all of that has meant to all of us. Thank you, Rita. [ Applause ] . >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Chuck. This side, please. >>WENDY SELTZER: Thank you, Wendy Seltzer. I had the privilege of serving as ALAC liaison on the board along with Rita and found her then to be a tremendous role model and example of conduct and impartiality in reasoned argument and discussion and now serving with the noncommercial users constituency, noncommercial stakeholder group and GNSO Council, felt privileged to have Rita as our elected board member again for those qualities of reasoned discussion and tremendous presence in the arguments that she takes part in. So thank you very much, Rita. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Wendy. And to the other side. Thank you, sir. >>MIKE O'CONNOR: Mikey O'Connor. Very short with an explanatory comment afterwards. My comments are, Rita, woo-hoo! I would like to point out that domain is available in almost every TLD as far as I can tell. Thanks a lot, Rita. [ Applause ] >> My name is Inya Kemabonta. I'm from Nigeria. I want to use this to say what because this is the first time I have ever met her. I have heard so much about her and so much about her work. I actually came from Nigeria apart from the fact I'm representing a particular constituency to be in a committee. Unfortunately, she is having to leave and I know she is leaving with good record. But I go forward. I'm a delegate from Nigeria. I'm a fellowship applicant from the Nigerian Internet group. I'm here to participate in my capacity of a representative of the civil society. I want to make it known to the board because of the work Rita has done so far, that the existing gap in Africa is getting smaller as ICANN moved closer to Africa. And based on the last issue on the support that should be given to that ALAC, ALAC developed a program support policy that was to support the joint African growth. I want to call on the house that I am here presently supporting the beat of Nigeria to host 2013. And I know we are prepared because there is a growing number of young professionals down there in Nigeria so eager to learn more from the best practices that so far so good ICANN has developed. I'm in full support of the starfish. A small story we had to pass on. A small boy who goes to the seaside picks a starfish and throws it back into the sea. There are a thousand starfish that get pushed to the shore. An old man comes to him and says, Why waste your time? Why have to pick up a starfish and throw it back when a thousand more die? You know what he says? He said, To this starfish, it counts. So to Africa, Nigeria, it counts. To my constituency, the civil society, it counts. And, finally, I say this, we are moving in the right direction and I say, Rita, God bless you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much. And let's go to the other side. >> DESIREE MILOSHEVICH: Hello, my name is Desiree Miloshevich with Afilias and chairwomen of dot me registry. I would like to say a few words as well since I have known Rita for a long time -- I believe since the Berlin meeting -- and have followed her interest in ICANN. And it is -- at some point in time I was concerned that she has left the community. So when she got back, I think we all recognized her enthusiasm and willingness to contribute to the development of ICANN and really intent TO work on the issues that she believes and that is a bigger, faster, better Internet. So just wanted to publicly thank you and also to mention that you have been an inspiration to a lot of women here in the community and to continue to do the work. And whatever you end up doing next, I'm sure it will be a success. Thank you, Rita. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Desiree. Now let's come to this side. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: My name is Naomasa Maruyama. As a non-native English speaker, it is a very difficult thing to give you the good warm words to you. But let me try it. Among all the board members, Rita is the oldest friend of mine. I first met you in -- Do you remember that? It was June of 1998 in Geneva, IFW meeting. I still have a business card I got from you then on my desk. And I have lots of good memories about you. And, also, among the old memory of you, the best is the -- your speech in Santiago about UDRP. It was great. Your speech was great. You were not so fast, good pronunciation, easy to hear and competent. The substance of the speech was great. So let me give you one title for you "mother of UDRP." [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >>ELLIOT NOSS: Elliot Noss, Tucows. I had warm comments but now that I know you are the mother of the UDRP -- no. [ Laughter ] Rita, I want to start, of course, by thanking you for the work you've done for all of these years because it really was ironic that there was all of this volunteer talk and here somebody who has given so much of her time. But I wanted to dwell more on the future because I think that this is -- this moving off of the dais is going to be such a big step forward for you. So from me to you, I'm super excited that you'll be joining us down here on the floor now to participate in so many things that are sitting in front of us. And I think you'll come to find soon that being down here instead of up there -- and I don't wasn't to discourage the rest of you -- is a lot less work and lot more fun. So I really want you to embrace that. And I think it's sitting with a time of great professional change for you, and I wish you the best of luck in that. And I want to finish by pointing out -- you know, I want to share some thoughts from my son Joe who has a large crush on Rita. [ Laughter ] I don't blame him because she flirts with him horribly, and he is just a 13-year-old boy. He was very happy to know that you would be down here on the floor because, as many of you know, he comes to a lot of ICANN meetings. And he always complains that Rita is much too busy with board work. So when I told him that she would now be participating more on this end, he was especially excited for Toronto in 2012. Rita, from both of us, thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Elliot. Let's come to this side. >>ANNALISA ROGERS: I'm Annalisa Rogers. Rita, you are such an impressive member of the board. As we heard from so many already, I just wanted to add that your talents and accomplishments obviously go way beyond your long involvement here at ICANN. I want to thank you for being such an inspirational person to more people than you know, and it has been such an honor for me personally to meet you and to discover your warm and caring nature. And I have no doubt and I look forward to watching you continue to inspire those around you as you continue to make a difference in so many more ways than you actually plan to. Thank you, Rita. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Annalisa. That side. >>ELAINE PRUIS: Hi, my name is Elaine Pruis. Rita, I just want to thank you very much for your service, especially I've noticed how well you have handled discussions with the GAC in the last six months but trademark issues. I think you've been the best proponent of what the community has put forward and have done a fantastic job explaining how we have all come to the positions we're at. You have been an inspiration and great role model and I really appreciate you. Good luck. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Elaine. This side? >> MARY WONG: Hi. My name is Mary Wong. I'm here on behalf of Stephane van Gelder, Jeff Neuman and myself, respectively the chair and vice chairs of the current GNSO Council. Stephane sends his regret. He had to go to another meeting. Otherwise, he would be here to convey the message on behalf of all three of us. Although we are new to the council positions that we assume and we haven't had much of a chance to work with you, we have come to respect your wisdom, your steadiness and your constant dedication to duty. The fact that you're leaving the board is definitely our loss. And we hope that you will continue to contribute not just to the GNSO generally but in many ways across ICANN. And now speaking personally, since I've got the mic and my time is not yet up, I would like to echo what Desiree said earlier, Annalisa as well, you have been an inspiration to many of us individually, myself included and certainly to a lot of women in this community. There is a lot of work to be done there as well including a "women in the DNS" initiative that Karla on ICANN staff, Annalisa and others have started. So I very much hope in addition to all the other things you will have time to enjoy, we hope, besides just going back to work, that you will find time to help us build the initiative as well. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Mary. And on this side. Thank you. >> Hi, Rita. I'm Alexa, COO of Architelos. Rita, I don't know if I can add any more to all the wonderful things that they've said about you. But one of the things that stands out for me is your intelligence. You don't mince words. You are not very loquacious. But when you do talk, it is very realistic, very rationale. Regardless of which side of the argument a person may be on, the comment that I have often heard about you is "when you talk, people listen" and they respect your opinion. And they can understand what you're saying, which is -- which goes a long way in this community. I just want to add to the rest of them that you have also been an inspiration to me. To be able to see you up there and really hold your own and then some and not back down in terms of what you really believe in and be able to stand up for it, for anybody is an inspiration. So I think no matter what you do, where you go, you truly are a gem. And whoever you work with or for are truly fortunate to have you as we've been fortunate to have you amongst us. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Alexa. By way of explanation, the board will move a resolution tomorrow thanking Rita in some detail and the board will have an opportunity tomorrow to make comments and support. So in the interest of time, the board will be holding its comments until the ovation. Rita, can I ask you to come forward and accept a little token of the board's appreciation of your service. And then we'll ask you to make some comments on this side. [ Applause ] >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON: Hi, everyone. It has been a great week for ICANN. I feel the energy and excitement here is electric, and I think it is a tribute to all of the hard work we've done to launch this new gTLD program, all of us. The program launch is particularly special to me. During my six years on the board, it's occupied a major part of our time. But there has also been a lot of other changes during my term: The GNSO restructuring, the IDN launch, the Affirmation of Commitments and the ATRT, the appointment of an ALAC board member, instituting compensation for the chairperson, this week $2 million from the reserve fund for needy applicants, one of the best ones, consistently receiving executive summaries to help us get through our 16,000-page board briefing books. But in reflecting in my time on the board and after sitting through discussions this week with the constituencies and advisory committees, I thought I'd share the following observation. We've come a long way, baby. As Peter said, the launch of the new gTLD program and the active participation of all of you, the SOs, ACs, over six long years, the GAC, the ALAC, commenting on a GNSO-generated policy was a really, truly victorious situation of this model at work. As Naomasa said, a long time ago I was sent first by my law firm to an IFWP meeting to discuss setting up ICANN. And quite candidly, I didn't really know what a domain name even was. There were many smart people that were writing documents and bylaws to set up this multistakeholder model, which is going to be innovative in among other ways that it had a geographically diverse board of directors to oversee its work and had a number of groups feeding into it to advise and present policy recommendations. In the early ICANN days, there was definitely a smaller community in attendance. There was no ALAC. And the GAC met behind triple secret password-coded doors. Now there are cross-constituency groups, a robust and growing ALAC. And, well, let's just say we have all seen a lot of the GAC these last few months. But what struck me most historically this week was the repeat and clear message to the board from the GNSO constituencies, the ALAC, the GAC, even the addressing supporting organization, we want to work together better. We want to have input into each other's policies and thoughts early on in the process. And what I took, the most important message, we care about what other people in this community have to say. It was music to my ears, and my message to all of you -- and I hope Steve Metalitz and J. Scott are not out there because I'm going to use a trademark phrase -- "just do it." We can build informal requirements and processes and channels. And we're all techies here, so social networking groups can be set up, chats, tweet streams. But I don't want us to forget the value of looking someone in the eye and doing something maybe we don't do so often, talking, listening, empathizing, planning and compromising. So, again, rather than wait for formal processes or for board direction, I invite you all to talk to each other and engage now. And I urge you to talk not only about new gTLDs but about the rest of the important work that everyone's doing. One of my hopes is that the organization will hire a new CFO very soon to handle some of the budget issues we've just heard about this morning and also what may be a likely large inflow of funds from the new gTLD program. I personally feel a large responsibility in life to give back. And my hope is that we will all have a wonderful opportunity to make some financial contributions not only for needy gTLD applicants but for needy people. World technology doesn't require wires anymore. Microfinance cannot only change lives but it can change entire ecosystems. If we can join those two together to inspire and enable people -- and it won't surprise you that I'm especially concerned with empowering women and girls. But if we can expand the choices available to needy people around the world, to do what they want with their lives, to me that is the greatest gift that technology can provide. And if we can enable that with new gTLD funds, whether from ICANN or from community matches, I will truly feel that all of the difficult work these last six years has been worth it. I don't want to end without expressing my abundant and heartfelt thanks to all of you and everyone who has made my time here so rewarding and somewhat insane. To the boards past and present, I want to do a special shout out to Peter, our fearless leader and my friend, to Bruce, my debater and oracle. He has an encyclopedic knowledge second to none. And to Ramaraj, who has taught me by example what being a first-class board member really means. I want to thank everyone in the community for these times and I want to give a special shout out to the women. I'm happy to say now there's too many to name, but at our women in the DNS breakfast, which unfortunately I was too busy to attend, there were 80 women there, and I was also thrilled to hear Adam say that we have 23 women that have applied through NomCom for positions, so to all you ladies here, I want you to know that nothing I do is particularly inspirational. I want you to know that your voice does count. I want you to apply for positions of leadership, continue to take the mic, participate in working groups. Bottom line, rock it like I know you can. Finally, I want to thank ICANN staff for their tireless dedicated and, through it all, great attitude. To John Jeffrey and Amy Stathos and the rest of the legal team for putting up with me and my "I know I'm a board member but you can't beat the lawyer out of me" attitude. To my dearest Diane Schroeder, the vortex of power as I call her, who has taken such good personal care of me all these years. And a special shout out to my colleague back home James Talbot. He's actually been with me from apparently the day I birthed the UDRP, but also through Afilias and dot tel today. Thank you J.T., for all of your hard work and for always making me look good. So I just want to leave you all with a couple of my favorite quotes from Dr. Jon Postel, the person who started this all, and he said, "The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together. Be conservative in what you do but be liberal in what you accept from others." So please remember while you're all continuing the important work here, if things get difficult, if positions seem hopelessly deadlocked, if tempers start flaring, the ICANN multistakeholder experiment has worked. Woohoo! [ Applause ] >>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON: Thanks. I love you all and will miss you. Thank you. [ Standing Ovation ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Rita. Obviously much emotion from all of us. Let's move then to the any other business section of the agenda. There were two items that wanted to be raised. Rainbow -- Professor Hong Xue, or Rainbow as she prefers to be called -- wanted to talk about IDNs and the clearinghouse, and Alice Munyua wanted to talk about another issue. So I've given those two priority. If Rainbow is here and you want to make your point about IDNs and the clearinghouse, now would be the time to do it. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: Peter, Peter. Sorry. Filiz here. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes. >>FILIZ YILMAZ: I also have four lined up from the remote. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Well I, don't see Rainbow coming. Is Alice here? And I see a colleague of Alice's. No? In which case we'll move to the front microphone. You, sir, have the floor. >>PHILIP OKUNDI: Thank you, chairman. My name is Honorable Philip Okundi, the chairman of the board of directors of Communications Commission of Kenya. That is the Kenyan regulatory authority. I would like to make some observations. To begin with, I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate and commend the outgoing chairman of ICANN board of directors -- that is you, Peter -- for providing necessary leadership during this critical period in the development of the Internet. As a developing country, Kenya is encouraged by the ICANN's board's acknowledgement of the peculiar limitations and challenges that the developing countries may and have faced in participating in the new gTLD programs, and indeed in strengthening our country code top-level domains and other ICANN areas of work. In this regard, the support endorsed by ICANN board is, without doubt, a good starting point. I wish to thank ICANN, its board, for this gesture. I, however, wish to note that going forward, a lot more support and resources will be required to implement activities to ensure that this new gTLD process meets the global public interest in promoting a fully inclusive and diverse Internet community and infrastructure consistent with the Affirmation of Commitments. Kenya fully supports ICANN's unique multistakeholder model that provides for the participation by a broad spectrum of interested groups. We've seen that today. In fact, I am thrilled by the patience of the board, the whole day today, letting us talk our minds about the process of the Internet business. As a country, not only have we adopted the same model in developing the ICT policy and regulations, but we have been active in the global Internet arena and are committed to remain actively engaged in the global Internet governance agenda. That is because I can say here that in September 27th to 30th of this year, Kenya shall be hosting the sixth annual United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi, barely one and a half years since the 37th international ICANN meeting took place in Nairobi. That was in March, the year 2010. I'm pleased to report that preparations for the IGF meeting are in really top gear, and this is under the able stewardship of my colleague, Alice Munyua, who is sitting here behind me, and with the support of all relevant government agencies as well as industry and other stakeholders in our country. On behalf of Kenya government, I wish to extend our special invitations to you all and the entire Internet community to Nairobi this September for the IGF meeting. The African Internet community and other regions consider the Nairobi IGF, the meeting, as an important build-up event for the -- what is coming for the 42nd international ICANN meeting to be held in Dakar, Senegal. We shall use that opportunity to discuss a number of issues, which are always very common within the ICANN circles. So for ICANN, the Nairobi meeting shall be a good platform to begin outreach events, to promote not only the new gTLD program, but to encourage African stakeholders to engage in various ICANN processes. We therefore welcome your participation and support to make the IGF meeting a success. I look forward to sincerely seeing you in Nairobi this September. As I conclude, I would like to express our best wishes to Peter Dengate Thrush, this our friend. We welcome to Nairobi and we'll not be happy to see you go, but we want to wish you really the best wishes for your future. And also to Rita, who is retiring from ICANN board, as we've heard already. Peter and Rita, I'm sure you will remain active in the Internet circles. Maybe in different capacities. So I really thank you and wish you the best of luck. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you very much, Philip. And naturally we wish you all the best with hosting the IGF. Let's come to this side. Thank you. >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Hi. Kieren McCarthy from dot nxt. So I just want to say I'm delighted that you approved the applicant guidebook and I think that's probably why everyone's in such a lovely mood, because they're not as tense as we normally are at this point in a meeting, but there is still an enormous amount of work left on that, and so I want to extend an invite and also I have a question. The invite is to a conference that I'm running in the end of August, 24th to the 26th of August, in San Francisco, which is mostly built around the new gTLDs, and the aim is to fill the holes that you can't have at ICANN, so I invite you all to come and the community to come. It should be extremely useful for everyone involved in this. The question I have is that one of the big compromises with the GAC that you reached, the GAC backs from a lot of IP issues and said, "If you do a review in a year's time after the 75th gTLD, we'll put these other questions on hold," and I didn't see that in the board resolution. There was board resolutions about lots of the other changes but I didn't see the board resolving that it would run this review, so I doubt whether that's a slip-up but I wondered what the logic was with that. And also, I've been tracking, you know, what the requests for changes are. I don't know whether some changes have not been noticed, whether they've slipped through the net, but I have a list of five and I want to make sure that you're aware that there are some that may have been lost, so that it didn't crop up and create a problem later on. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks. I think the easiest thing would be just to check with Kurt on the question that you raised. Let's go to this side of the room. Thank you. >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: Yes. Hello. My name is Alexander Schubert, founder of the dot gay application. In the past when new gTLD applicants appeared at the mic, at the public forum, that usually meant criticism. This time, I simply want to say thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for thanking us. [ Laughter ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Let's come to this side. >>EDMON CHUNG: Thank you, Peter and with all the thanks to actually Rita and Peter, you still have one more day to work and here's a piece of work. [ Laughter ] >>EDMON CHUNG: IDNs are critical. IDNs are critical for DotAsia initiative and IDN TLDs are an integral part of DotAsia. DotAsia is probably the first and maybe the only new gTLD that has included provisions for running IDN versions of our DotAsia TLD in our original proposal submitted to ICANN back in 2004. DotAsia is very excited about the board resolution to move the new gTLD forward. We're especially keen that IDN gTLDs are conceptually included. Unfortunately, the current version of the applicant guidebook places an inappropriate requirement for macro-regional TLDs and may make it very different for DotAsia to deliver on our promise to operate IDN versions of the DotAsia TLD. To summarize, we believe that, first of all, a one-size-fits-all arbitrary percentage requirement is not appropriate and disrespects the diversity between the macro regions. Secondly, we believe that -- [ Applause ] >>EDMON CHUNG: -- the early warning system, in essence, was what was used for the original DotAsia application works, and works well, for a regional TLD like us, like DotAsia. Thirdly, we feel it's even more important to have a requirement for a regional TLD operator to continue to work with the GAC and GAC members in their region even after the delegation of the TLD and not just during the application period. Because -- and fourthly, because of the nature of DotAsia, being a bottom-up organization for a macro-regional initiative, it may not even be appropriate for individual governments to sign any document of support or objection against a regional initiative outside of their local jurisdiction. So we did support -- we did send in comments previously, which was strongly supported by our community, and we have also made some suggestions which -- you know, that we feel are appropriate adjustments. So finally, we welcome and realize that the board left room for fine- tuning the application guidebook, and we urge the board -- in fact, I stand here to beg the board -- to at least take up the issue and talk about the issue, and we -- from DotAsia we feel that we have been contributing to ICANN and to the community quite a lot in the past few years, and we beg you to at least take up the issue and to direct staff to consider making such fine-tuning to the guidebook to make it possible for IDN TLDs for the DotAsia community. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Edmon. And last, but I'm sure not least. >>WERNER STAUB: Werner Staub from CORE. I've got six items. I'll try to spend 20 seconds on each. First of all, about meetings, I would like to respond to what Cherine said with respect to reducing the number of meetings. I wish to express that this is not a time to relent and it probably will never be as long as ICANN is the solution for Internet governance. The requirements increase drastically every year, and we will not be able to cope with all the things that we have to do if we do not meet regularly, and I think three times is just about what we can handle but also the minimum. Secondly, the communications plan. I heard that we talk about a 30- day comment period. Well, maybe the comment period in the traditional sense could be limited to 30 days, but we certainly need, for the communications plan of the new gTLDs, an ongoing feedback mechanism where everybody can participate because this is not -- we will only understand how it works as we see it and we have to be able to correct it as we go and put in suggestions as we see the opportunities. Third, workshops and meetings. We have had many good workshops. I think, you know, we can thank the people who have organized these workshops here. But as they have made strenuous efforts to provide the best quality, one aspect has gotten lost, and we could see that in many of those workshops we had essentially people from Anglo-Saxon cultures, English-speaking countries, as the sole or almost the sole presenters on those workshops. Moreover, we had no objective or transparent process in which we could know what kind of workshop was going. We could volunteer to be a presenter. It was just always a surprise that, oh, hey, great, there's a workshop about this. Had I but known that, we would have contributed something. So I think we have to come up with an idea of how to organize those workshops. Fourth, translations and terminology. Recently, you know, I tried to read the Spanish translation of the applicant guidebook and I came across terms like something translated in English "disputes for chains." If nobody knows what disputes for chains are, read the Spanish translation of the guidebook. It is actually string contention. So the terminology is so bad and so impossible to understand that we see here that a lack of coordination is not the problem of the translators. It's something that ICANN has to do. Terminology must be managed. It is important for the documents that come out to be understandable. And small things now, the two last ones. We've seen an increasing number of PDFs on the ICANN Web site and some of them now tend to become, even if they're documents produced by ICANN, in pixel-based format, so they're not searchable. I think whenever possible, avoid what was done in the dot xxx contract, which is not searchable, just pixels and very heavy. We would like to see the searchable original. And finally, in the real-time scribing, again I would like to thank our scribes. They're doing an excellent job. But I find that their position doing this remotely is extremely difficult and we see the consequences. Very often we see, instead of the name of the person, something like "saying name," which is because they put too much stress on that, and I think we should at least have some meetings when they're physically present in the room so they can get used to faces and have a better participation. This will help them prepare when they're -- for the times when they're not here, and possibly also introduce technical tools so people can announce their names, at least. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. All right. I was going to close things there but why don't we have the last word. >>PAUL FOODY: Well, thank you very much, Peter, and good luck to you and Rita. The two of you have worked very hard. There's no disputing the amount of documents you have to get through. So I'm sure that you will be very sorely missed. So thank you very much. On a separate note, I have an estimate that the Internet's worth around about $100 trillion. I just wondered whether or not the board has ever carried out a valuation itself. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: No. >>PAUL FOODY: Okay. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Well, thanks to the board. Thank you to the community. Again, very useful public forum. We close this now and resume tomorrow morning with reports from all of the board committees and reports from some of the officers and very much look to seeing you at that very early morning session. Meeting closed. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Marilyn seeks a plea for reopening. >>MARILYN CADE: I do. For 30 seconds. My name is Marilyn Cade and I would like to note that while we've been here, we've had an opportunity to recognize Peter, who will be leaving us, but there are two books that are being passed around for members of the community to write notes to Peter to express their recollection of whatever he did while he was here in his 13 years of contributing to ICANN. So I will wave one of them, which was organized by the business constituency, and there's another one floating around. And I hope that if you haven't signed one of those two books, that you'll find them and do so and wish Peter well. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Marilyn. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Meeting closed.