SO/AC Joint Public Meeting
Sydney, Australia
22 June 2009

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Good afternoon.  Oh, crumbs!  Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Chris Disspain and I am the chair of
the ccNSO, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, and this is
a joint session of the ICANN advisory committees and supporting
organizations.  And it's going to be facilitated by Patrick Sharry, who
most of you probably know.  And he's going to explain how it all works
but I just wanted to say a couple of things before we started.

The first is that the reasons why we're having these sessions -- and
this is the third one -- is because the chairs of the ACs and the SOs
got together and thought it would be useful to try an experiment with
some sessions at ICANN meetings putting all of the ACs and SOs in a
room together and talking about subjects that might be of interest to
them.

One of the goals for that being that we can save -- sometimes save
some time, so that we don't have to go and talk to every single one of
the SOs and ACs ourselves.

Sometimes, though, the goals for these things get lost in the
translation.  I just wanted to remind everybody that that's the purpose
of this.  It's actually supposed to be a session for the SOs and ACs by
the SOs and ACs.

And we've chosen the topic and asked for representatives of them --
each of the SOs and ACs onto the panel.

Second thing is the pieces of paper, and I can see that there are more
colors this time, Patrick, so I'm very excited.  I have no doubt you'll
explain all of that in a minute.

But the pieces of paper raised some issues last time, and I just
wanted to be absolutely clear that no one is suggesting that by
counting the number of green pieces of paper in this room this
afternoon, we suddenly become aware that everybody would like ICANN to
be painted green.

It's just to get an indication from the audience of whether they have
agreement on a particular thing that's been said or they agree with a
particular thing that's been said.  It's no more and no less than that.
And it's a bit of fun as well.

That was it, wasn't it?  

Ah, one other thing.  We -- it would be -- it would not be unfair to
say that we have had some scheduling challenges for this particular
session, so we're working on those and are going to see if we can
actually create a circumstance where we have this sort of session not
clashing with a heap of other things for the length of time, so it's no
one's fault.  It's just the way it is, and we'll do our best to fix
that for next time.  Thanks.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Chris.  As includes has said, this is a
joint meeting of the supporting organizations and advisory committees,
with an agenda that was devised by the chairs of the supporting
organizations and advisory committees in consultation with their members.

The topic for this afternoon is institutional improvements, the roles
and responsibilities of ACs, SOs, policy staff, and the board in
ICANN's processes -- current situation, possible evolution.

The way that we will run the session this afternoon is we have our
learned friends around the table here and I'll get them to introduce
themselves in a moment.  They will be the focus of the conversation,
and they will just be reacting to each other's suggestions, ideas, and
thoughts, and that, in fact, is the whole purpose of this session.  So
that people in different SOs and ACs have the chance to hear the views
of others and we can then work collaboratively on seeing where that
takes us.

As the audience, you can also join in, and you can join in in a couple
of ways.

You can join in through the pieces of paper that Chris was mentioning
before.

Those of -- sorry.  You probably haven't noticed this week but in
Australia, we actually have very strong sunshine and one of the things
that sunshine has done is faded the red pieces of paper.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  And turned them pink.

So this piece of paper [indicating] for our purposes today, we will
see, is the red piece of paper.

We also have a dark green piece of paper.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  And I think given the proximity of colors,
particularly for those who might be colorblind or similar, I think
we'll focus on these two pieces of paper today [indicating].

So we have a green piece of paper and a red piece of paper, even if it
does look a little bit pink.

At various times during the proceedings this afternoon, I'll ask the
room to give us an idea of what they think of a particular idea.  And
you can do that by showing your support or showing your disapproval of
that idea.

Those of you who were in Mexico, have probably got a bit of a feel for
this, and it's really no more complicated than that.

Support [indicating].  Disapproval [indicating].

Very good. 

There will, at stages this afternoon, either as we go or at the end,
be the opportunity for people to come and make a comment at the mic,
and we have a little bit of flexibility about where the mic can go to.

I would ask, if you're doing that, first of all, that you be sure that
what you're saying clearly addresses the topic that we're discussing
this afternoon.  There will be a general public forum later in the week
where you can raise other issues.  This afternoon we're really seeking
comments on the topic for this afternoon's discussion.

So that will be the second way that you'll be able to participate.

The pieces of paper, comments at the mic.

At the end of the session, we will publish a -- a summary of what's
been said, and that won't be a consensus document, that won't be, you
know, a decision about anything.  It will just be a collation of the
views of the discussion.  And you'll have a chance to comment on that
in an online forum that Kieren McCarthy will set up.

And then the fourth way that you can participate is that we have the
usual remote participation tools, so you can ask a question in the
chatroom, if you're participating remotely, hello and welcome, and you
can also make a comment in the chatroom.  Kieren, when he sees those
comments at appropriate times, will come up and sit on the chair here
and pester me till I put them into the public forum.  And we'll try and
work in that way.

So this is a session where we're really looking for people to
participate and the format we've chosen is one where we've tried to
encourage that.

That's about all I need to cover before we go to the introductions. 
And since we've started with Chris already, we might just go with Chris
again.  I'm expecting that we may get one or two of our people who have
been delayed in the previous session coming and joining the table a
little bit later on, and we'll just have to make that work as it
happens.  But at the moment, if you could just let us know your name
and where you're from.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Chris Disspain.  Sorry.  I'm shy.

Chris Disspain, chair of the ccNSO.  From Australia.  Is that what you
meant.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Chris.  Either is fine.

>>ROBIN GROSS:  Hi.  I'm Robin Gross.  I'm the chair of the
noncommercial users constituency and I'm from San Francisco.

>>DOUG BRENT:  Hi.  My name is Doug Brent.  I'm on ICANN's staff.  My
job is chief operating officer at ICANN.

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  Hi, I'm Lesley Cowley.  I'm from Nominet who run dot
uk so I'm from dot uk.

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  Patrick Vande Walle from ALAC.

>>HAWA DIARITE: Hawa Diarite, Africa, ALAC.

>>JOSE SALGUEIRO: Jose Salgueiro, ALAC.

>>BEAU BRENDLER: Beau Brendler also with ALAC from New York.

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  Good afternoon, I'm Heather Dryden.  I'm the
Canadian representative to the GAC, so I'm from Ottawa.

>>YRJÖ LÄNSIPURO:  Good afternoon.  Yrjö Lansipuro Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Finland, GAC.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Michael Palage, registry constituency, Palm Beach,
Florida.

>>RAMESH NADARAJAH:  Ramesh Nadarajah, APTLD, Malaysia.

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  I'm Vivek, from ALAC, from Bangalore, India.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Bertrand de la Chapelle, I'm the French
representative in the GAC from Paris and a vice chair of the GAC.

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  I'm Olga Cavalli.  I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina,
and I'm a NomCom appointee.

>>RAY PLZAK: Ray Plzak, vice chair of the SSAC and ICANN board member.

>>LOUIE LEE:  Hi.  Louie Lee, the ASO Address Council chair, Mountain
View, California.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, everyone.  

We met at a breakfast this morning and had a little talk about the
topic and what we would do, and we've decided that we would kick off
with a few people who have got some views on the topic and then let the
conversation go.  As you can see from the pieces of paper on the
chairs, we've got some questions that we'll try to address during the
afternoon, and we won't necessarily work through those in order, but
that's the sort of material that we'd like to cover.

So Bertrand.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Thanks.  I know that Patrick is giving me
the floor in the first instance so that I don't have the time to dabble
too long.

[Laughter]

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  He knows me too well.  Thanks for allowing
me to introduce this.  It's an interesting exercise, and I -- I want to
launch this by saying that one of the goals in choosing this topic is
fundamentally to tap into what I would call the widespread frustration -
- and I will explain -- and also tap this to liberty the positive
energy for change.

Why do I speak about widespread frustration?

I think everybody here among ourselves is putting a tremendous amount
of work, time, money, and energy in processes that are very time-
consuming, getting phone calls and conference calls at wee hours,
reading huge amounts of documentation, contributing to a lot of
processes, and in the various constituencies, I think it is also
widespread feeling -- and this is why I'm talking about frustration --
that this is not producing as much consensus, as much result, as much
positive moving forward as we would expect, and we are all looking
forward to improving those processes.

What I want to say at that early stage is that in no way -- and this
is very important that Doug Brent is on the panel as well -- this is
not either discussion about the unsatisfaction or frustration of the SO
and ACs versus the staff, because I can share and we will have the
opportunity to share that the frustration is felt among the staff as
well because they put a tremendous amount of work.

They also are sometimes satisfied, and on private discussions, we all
have this feeling that sometimes they are not listened to, the work is
not recognized, and so on.

So what I want to introduce as a starting point is that this
frustration is actually a very positive energy, and the positive energy
can be leveraged for change in two dimensions.

The first thing is this kind of increased interaction between the
different SOs and ACs, and this very early experiment is an attempt at
showing that when you put the SOs and ACs around an issue, you move
forward instead of working in silos.

And the second dimension of change is the general topic which is the
range of institutional evolutions that we will all have to decide was
of the internal review process and because of the post-JPA discussion. 
So it's just to frame the debate and allow everybody to be very Frank
about how they feel.  It is not against anybody; it's just how we can
make this work the way it can.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's great.  Thanks, Bertrand.  So this is about
utilizing the energy to move forward.  Beau, what's your perspective on
that?

>>BEAU BRENDLER:  Well, I agree that -- I agree that the energy can be
positively harnessed.  I would say I think I can probably speak for
most everybody in the ALAC when I say that there is a huge, huge amount
of work for a group of volunteer people to do.  I know that there have
been criticisms of the ALAC over the years for various reasons, but I
think it's improving steadily on a number of fronts.

But just about everybody in the group is volunteer.  I myself might be
facing a situation where my new employer, you know, may not want to pay
for me to be here.  I had the pleasure of -- you know, as a consumer
advocate for years, I had the pleasure of being funded to come here. 
Unlike many people on the ALAC.

So it's a very difficult situation, but I think one thing that could
help would be to try to improve the circumstances of trust with staff,
because I know a lot of the staff are very talented and intelligent
people with law degrees and advanced degrees and nice personalities and
such, but yet there's such distrust that it seems sometimes that they
do a lot of taking meeting minutes and making photocopies when perhaps
there could be a way that they could play stronger lead roles in some
of our activities.

And I think we've been very lucky within the at-large to have growing
increasingly good relationships with our staff, so that's kind of where
-- where we were talking about this morning.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's great.  Thanks.  And I see a couple of green
pieces of paper so that's terrific.  Lesley, what's it look like inside
the ccNSO.

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  I think we've got volunteer exhaustion too.  And
that's not only because of the jet lag.

[Laughter]

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  I think what often happens is that you have people
who feel very passionate about a subject and, therefore, who are very
keen to participate and evolve policy on that subject.  But generally,
those people also have day jobs, and this is a real feature of an
organization like ICANN and similar organizations that particularly in
a time of a recession, there is pressure on the day job as well as your
volunteer work, and many of us struggle to fit both in.

Because that's what we do.

But increasingly, that makes it harder to participate, harder to keep
up to speed, and you get more exhausted.

I think moving forward, we have to find a way of cutting through some
of this.  We have to evolve, and that doesn't mean that we have less
participation.  It just means that we use our time as a valuable
resource more.  And I think we probably have to get better at
prioritization.  We're very good at developing huge long lists of
things to do, which then take up increasingly amounts of staff and
volunteer time without a realization that there is not infinite capacity.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Terrific.  Thanks, Lesley.  And the GNSO?  Olga?

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you, Patrick.  If I may, I will speak in my own
language, which is Spanish.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  And Olga, before you do that --

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  This is great.  I like it.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Just before you do that, if you have the headsets,
English 1, French 2, Spanish 3.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  (Speaker is off microphone).

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  There will be a multi-SOAC PDP on the order of
languages for next meeting, Chris.  Don't worry.

English 1, French 2, Spanish 3.

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Okay.  Thank you, Patrick.  I love using Spanish, so
I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity.  I know it's expensive
to have the translators and the interpreters structure here, so I'm
very happy that I can use my own language.

In my experience, to give my time to the council it has been very hard
and demanding, and it's also been something marvelous to give my time. 
I would like to make a special comment about participation of the staff.

The work groups which I have been in charge of, the drafting team
about travel policies for example and also the working team on
constituencies which is -- sorry, I'm using English at the same time --
which is part of the restructuring process of GNSO, I would like to
mention specially the excellent work that has been carried out by the
staff.

Not only with the drafting team for travel policies, who could get,
after a very interesting meeting we had in Mexico -- you are laughing
because I don't remember whether you were present, but you were very
much involved.  We got funds for all the council members, to have the
possibility to travel.  At least that's what the document that's being
under consultation says.

And in regards to the support I get from -- as a chair in the working
group in restructuring GNSO, if -- it's a big demanding -- the work for
the council, sometimes I wonder myself what would be my life if it
didn't happen.  If I wouldn't have that much money with the GNSO, what
would I do if I didn't have that time?  But it's been a marvelous
experience and I thank all very much.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Olga.  Thank you.  Could we have someone
from one of the other SOs or ACs who would like to make a comment? 
Louie, if I grab that microphone there for you. how's that from the ASO
side?

>>LOUIE LEE:  Hi.  Well, the Address Council is made up of 15
volunteers from around the world but we enjoy the support of the RIRs,
which is made up of staff, paid staff, and they act as our Secretariat,
and the ASO -- the executive council then is made up of the RIRs CEOs,
so they are paid staff and they fully support us in our work on the ASO.

So along with our travel and arranging the meetings, the
teleconferences.  So at least in that regard, for support, we're okay
there.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh.

>>LOUIE LEE:  Is there any questions about how we operate that way? 
No?  Okay.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  No.  I think that's good.  That's good.

We're talking a lot about frustration.  That's where Bertrand started
us off.

Would someone like to be a little bit more specific about what we
think might be driving that frustration?  Jose?

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Maybe everybody's happy.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Yeah.  Could you leave, please, Bertrand?  You're
ruining the party.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Bertrand, maybe you are the cause of the frustration.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Jose?

>>JOSE SALGUEIRO: Same as Olga, I would like to take advantage and
speak in Spanish, although in ALAC we can always speak in Spanish
because we have translation.

Part of the frustration personally that I feel in my work in ALAC is
that we, within our organization, work a lot.  Many things are carried
out.  Documents are submitted inside.  There are many things happening
that come out.

But my impression, my personal impression, I wouldn't like to make
this as an institutional position, but my personal position is once
everything is scattered out, everything is done, it's not always -- or
very few times it's taken into account, and that really is frustrating
for the work team.  It's very frustrating when not everything is taken
into account or used.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Jose.  Hawa?

[Scribes have no translation.]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  If you could start again.

>>HAWA DIARITE: For this presentation, this has allowed us to express
in our languages, that things are improving, because in the past we
couldn't express ourselves in our own language, only in English.

And so a great part of the countries in the world were excluded from
the discussions, so things are improving.

Even if there is frustration, we have to look at the positive side of
things, and together seek common consensus and overcome this frustration.

There are real frustrations, but this depends on the interests of each
group.  Each group -- interest grouping has its own interest to defend,
each group has its own volunteers who spend a lot of time and a lot of
energy for very little result.

So we should really listening carefully to what they have to say, and
in these forums work together to improve the situation.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Hawa.  I'll go to Yrjö and then I'll come
back to Doug for a staff comment from there.

>>YRJÖ LÄNSIPURO:  Yeah.  Thank you.  I think that part of that
frustration -- frustration comes from the fact that so much information
is available, and there's so little time to read it, and actually, this
is not something specific only to us.  This is a feature of almost
everything we do now, and paradoxically, of course, the Internet and
the ICTs have contributed to this situation.

But this being said, I think that at least in the GAC, I would --
during that short time I have been a member since -- since Marrakech, I
think that the situation has been improved tremendously and a big -- I
would like to thank the staff, ICANN staff, and especially our liaison,
for summarizing and making all these efforts to compress information
for us.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Right.  Yrjö, if I can just dig into that a little
bit, Yrjö.  So what you're saying is, yes, there is this enormous
volume of work, but the big improvement for you has been getting
succinct summaries written by staff that lets you move through the
material quickly?  Is that --

>>YRJÖ LÄNSIPURO:  Sure, sure, yes.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's what it is?  Good.  Thank you.  Doug, how
does that look from a staff perspective?

>>DOUG BRENT:  Well, you know, I think that hearing a lot of these
thoughts, they're echoing and reflecting many of the conversations that
you hear within ICANN staff as well.

So the topics of discussion are actually very much the same topics of
discussion you hear within ICANN staff.

I think a lot of this -- at least in my mind -- is about context. 
I've been at ICANN 2 1/2 years, which I understand is less than
probably the majority of the people in the room, but even in that 2 1/2-
year time frame, I think, at least from my perception, the volume and
the importance of the work undertaken by the community has dramatically
increased, even in the last 2 1/2 years.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Now, Doug, I'm going to stop you there and we'll
just check whether your perception is right.  To our pieces of paper --

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  The volume of work has increased considerably in
the last two years, yes or no?

Okay.  So you're right.  Yet again.

[Laughter]

>>DOUG BRENT:  That would have been an interesting departure point if
we couldn't agree on that.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  It would have been.

>>DOUG BRENT:  And I think that the importance of the work is also --
you know, the importance to the community, obviously in ICANN's history
there's been many important things, but I think certainly over the last
couple years, many important things.

That when we talk about scheduling, it was interesting that, again,
the conversation started out by how hard it was to schedule this meeting.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh.

>>DOUG BRENT:  You know, for the computer-oriented people in the
audience, one aspect that you talk about is thrashing.  When you're --
when you're using all your available resources, there really just
aren't any more left to do the work, and so I think one of the
questions we have to ask ourselves is:  Is it better scheduling that we
need or, you know, more priority on the meetings that -- you know, the
many meetings going on?

Just some other quick notes I took so far, and comments.  I think this
idea that Lesley is talking about, which is evolution to use -- you
know, use time and prioritize the work is a really important idea.  I
think people probably -- those who are paying attention, over the last
couple years ICANN budget saw tremendous growth.

This year, that growth is actually substantially moderated, and I got
to tell you from a staff point of view, less than 5% this year -- from
a staff view, one of the drivers of that reduction in increase was the
view that we could just keep hiring more staff.  That does not help
solve the community problem of the amount of work that goes through the
community.  That when we have a board meeting where 300 pages of
material are given to the board for one month's board meeting, just
growing staff is not the answer.

And I think, you know, so I'll say the kinds of -- the just -- don't
want to go forever but these notions of the amount of work, the passion
that people bring to that work, exhaustion, volunteer and paid -- and I
think this trust issue, which I hope we get into a little bit more
today, would be a good point of discussion.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good.  Thank you.  Patrick?

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  Well, apparently the headsets do nothing to
work for French channel.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Ah.  Could someone take responsibility for sorting
that out, please?  We need better -- or we need the French headsets.

I think that one's working.

Okay.  Right-oh.  Patrick.

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  I am still a bit jet-lagged so my brain is
moving slow.  I will speak in French.

[Cheers]

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  I just wanted to point out that from the point
of view of ALAC, we have noticed a specificity, which is that we are a
committee which must deal with documents from all sources.  Technical
documents, documents on intellectual property issues, documents on
thinking -- I'm thinking, for example, about the contracts with the
registrars and the registries.  And the way in which ALAC is organized,
we have two-thirds of our members who are -- which are elected by local
organizations, and they are elected on the basis of their
representativity, their capacities for leadership within their own
region.  They're not elected on the basis of their specific technical
skills.  So we -- in ALAC, we have a group in ALAC where the skills are
-- the skills that we have amongst the members of ALAC don't
necessarily cover all the issues that we need to cover.

For example, compared with other committees such as SSAC or, for
example, the people who are in the SSAC are chosen on the basis of
their skills and only on that basis.

So ALAC we're elected.  The quality of the work that we can supply
depends, to a great extent, on the competencies of the people who make
up the committee at any given moment.

At any given moment, depending on the type of document which is put
before us, we can have better or less -- lesser quality responses.

So I'll just confirm what others have said, that the volume of
information that we've had to look at, particularly in the two or three
weeks before the meetings, has been particularly large and difficult to
digest for the volunteers.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Patrick.  I have some more green out
there.  Michael?

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Thank you.  To try to give a specific example of, I
think, frustration and the good and the bad, so let's consider the
following.  NeuStar recently filed a funnel request for single and two-
character allocation in .BIZ.  So now let's discuss the positive.  At
the entry or midlevel staff, that request went in to Patrick Jones who
oversees the funnel request.  It got posted, timely resolved. 
Everything is going good, right?  

Now let's talk about the frustration.  It now has to go to the ICANN
board to get implemented.  It is on the queue.  It is on the agenda. 
And all of a sudden the registry operator is, like, What happened at
the board meeting?  There's no feedback, right?  And all of a sudden --
so this is contracting party getting ready to want to announce
something and they are like, "What happened"?  

Then you have to sit there to start calling board members or staff to
say, Was it accepted?  Was it rejected?  All of a sudden you didn't get
in.  There were some concerns raised at the board.  What were those
concerns?  Well, you have to wait for the minutes.

Now, with regard to the minutes, let's dovetail over to another issue
here.  Back in 2000 -- all right.  Hold on.  Let's stay on the positive
side here, right?  Again, sometimes I can be overly critical, but I
want to focus on the positive here.  

I had the benefit of sitting on the ICANN board from 2003 to 2006. 
The ICANN board is generally provided briefing documents by the staff
that outline the issue that they are before it.  And very
constructively, they generally give you both sides.  They go, Here's
the issue.  These are the potential -- you know, these are the
positives.  These are the potential criticisms.  Unfortunately, the
community doesn't get to see those documents.  I still do not know why
they are not made available.  There are certain limited situations
where there may be attorney-client privilege or something that is
confidential.  But I find that few and far between, why those issues.

So getting back to the communication here, one specific request, Doug,
is when you post that agenda and you have that line item, I think it
would be really constructive to allow the community to see what the --
what staff has represented to the board. 

Again, where the breakdown in frustration comes in is right at the
top, that decision-making process.  Okay, we see, we see opaque black
box, out result.  And it is that last sort of mile of the decision-
making process where the frustration grows.

And just to follow up on this, again perhaps a constructive response,
during the congressional hearings approximately two weeks ago in
Washington, D.C., there was an exchange between -- now, I'm drawing --
the G.C. of GoDaddy.  The general counsel of GoDaddy, Christine Jones
and Paul Twomey on the issue of the transcripts.  I was on the board in
2005.  It was the Luxembourg meeting where the Reconsideration
Committee made the request because there had been a number of requests
regarding the inaccessibility of timely transcripts and minutes, et
cetera.  And in response to requests submitted by Bret Fausett, the
Reconsideration Committee said, Yes, move forward with realtime
scribing of the board.  That was the -- that is what the
Reconsideration Committee said.  It went to the full board and the full
board in Luxembourg said, Yes, move forward, staff, with implementing it.

Now, what we had the implementation as a result of that was not
realtime transcription.  It was the, quote-unquote, detailed minutes
and this is what Paul had argued.

What we need to do is just provide those realtime transcriptions, let
the community see what the documents are and then let it see how it's
presented, okay?  When I was on the board, the one phrase I constantly
used to pound into Paul Twomey was "true gold does not fear the
refiner's fire."  Staff is doing a good job in a number of instances. 
Don't be afraid.  Show us what you have.  Let us see the interaction of
the board.  And I think it is also important to see how the board
members are presenting -- are performing, particularly those that are
elected by the SOs.  If they're not prepared -- again, when I was on
the board, there were certain board members that would not have the
time.  They would tend to ask some questions, were not prepared.

I think the community needs to see how their board members are
presenting.  If they're coming to board decisions without having done
their homework, we need to know that.  So I'll rest with those -- that
point.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Michael.  Little bit of support around
for that.

Yes, Ramesh?

>>RAMESH NADARAJAH:  I want to say I have been involved in the ICANN
process since about 1999, and then I dropped out of it for a few years
between 2002 to -- well, back -- well, I just got involved again
recently, 2009.  So that makes it, what, five, six years that I have
been out of it.

And being involved then and being involved now, I can see that there
is vast improvement in the process.  There's still the same level of
frustration, but I think that is -- as someone pointed out just now, it
is because of the overload of information.

So the summaries really help.  And having a proper process that we can
look at now when we want to get something done is very useful.  But one
of the things that I personally find frustrating is I think what
Michael just said, which is when it goes up to a certain point, then it
goes into a black box.  We don't know why certain decisions are made
until quite a bit later.  And it would be useful to know why certain
decisions are made so that, if necessary, we could address them before
they are actually implemented, if we feel that they really are wrong.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good.  Thanks, Ramesh.  

Chris?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Thank you, Patrick.  I just wanted to address a
couple of points going back to talking about the workload frustration
and perhaps trust.  When -- five years ago -- and if I get these dates
wrong, I apologize.  I'm useless with dates.

Five years ago, things were different here.  There was no ALAC to
speak of.  ccNSO just started.  The GNSO was smaller, et cetera. 
Things have moved on a bit, and we actually have more people to deal
with all the time.  We have a whole raft of ALAC people who we liaise
with who weren't there before.  The GNSO is probably, apart from
radically changing its structure, is going to get bigger because there
will be all sorts of new constituencies, city constituencies or
whatever the hell it is going to be and I think we need to recognize
that and recognize that actually maybe, just maybe we need to look at
the model, the whole model and say, "How do we make this work better?" 
Because it wasn't built to necessarily take this strain.  It might
work.  It might be able to with some tinkering.  But, on the other
hand, the best way of figuring out what to do is usually to go back to
a blank sheet of paper and say, "What next?"  Just to take an example,
if I could -- if the ccNSO needs to liaise with the at-large
organization, who says that has to happen at an ICANN meeting?

There could be a model that under certain circumstances a specific
meeting was called -- and it may need to be face-to-face.  It may need
to be.  Just what we need, more travel.  A specific meeting is called
to deal with a specific topic between -- it doesn't have to have any
the plinth for the board members.  It doesn't have to have any of that
stuff.  It just has to be a meeting.

And just, finally, on the trust issue, I think that trust -- trust is
engendered in organization by leadership.  And it's not the staff's job
to engender trust actually.  It's the board's job to engender trust. 
And there is a woeful lack of trust in many issues because it doesn't
appear to matter.  It doesn't -- it's not talked about.  It's not dealt
with.

It's partly to do with the black box that people have been talking
about.  It's partly that.  It's partly -- and I know because I'm on
boards.  It's partly the lawyers.  No offense to John or anyone else
who is in the room from the ICANN law office.  It is the ICANN lawyers
saying you mustn't do this, you have to be careful.  The catholicism,
small c -- again apologies to any Catholics in the room -- the
catholicism is so high that it actually ends up in stupefying -- I
mean, nothing really happens unless you really push.  That's my two
pens' worth.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  I will quickly go to Lesley and down to Heather. 
And I might in a moment or two take a couple of comments from the floor
as well.  Lesley?

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  I wanted to react to something that Michael said. 
I'm one of those people that is not looking for a transcript of
everything because I think -- I think what that means in reality is you
then get pointed to the transcript and you then have people who are
reluctant to be on record so you have more in-corridor conversations. 
And I'm sorry, that's the reality, as I see it.

But I do agree about accountability and I would like to pick up on
another point that I think Bertrand made or somebody else made about
the black hole that input sometimes goes into, at least that's how it
feels.

Many of us labor over input and spend many hours revising and changing
what input we're making, and then you finally get to send it off and
then you never know what happens to it.

What I would like to see in terms of accountability and transparency
is an audit trail.  I don't expect all of my wonderful ideas to be
taken and accepted, but I would kind of just like to know they're
considered.  I would like to know what opposing ideas there were and
how a decision was made.  And that to me would be accountability and
transparency.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  There is some pieces of paper waving.  Does that
point that Lesley is making ring true to people?  Okay.  Good.  Good,
good, thank you.

Let's get a GAC perspective.  I'm going to go to Heather and then,
Michael, I will come to you in a moment.

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  Thank you.  I thought I would jump in here because
Chris had introduced this idea of talking about the ICANN model more
generally.  And so in preparation for this session today, the GAC had
thought about how we might contribute to the discussion.  So we've put
together a few points to talk a little bit about how we work and why
and then possibly being able to, from that, work out some ways to move
forward.  Bertrand has already given a perspective as a GAC member. 
You know, there is some frustration and we certainly have seen
improvement as well and we need to, you know, continue with that.

So from a GAC perspective, first of all, it is a bit unusual for
governments to participate in this fashion in a private corporation
with such global reach.  So, you know, bearing that in mind, this is
how we try to do things.  First of all, the main focus of the GAC is to
provide advice to the ICANN board and, just as importantly, to bring
back information from ICANN to our respective registrations.  It is
very much a circular kind of information flow.

GAC members prepare that advice based on national approaches to public
policy with regard to those issues arising from the DNS.  So I think
this links a bit to what Patrick was saying about the various
competencies that you need because documents come out that deal with
economic issues, legal issues, technical issues, administrative, you
know, you name it.

So when we go back, we're trying to draw on advice from our government
colleagues, other departments, other counterparts in other governments
in other countries.  And, of course, quite importantly we need to
consult nationally with stakeholders in order to develop that advice.  

And it takes time.  And this is why you regularly hear from the GAC, I
believe, that we are looking for those documents as early as we can.  

Transparency is important, but too much transparency coming back to
what Lesley was saying isn't necessarily helpful in that regard.

Well, continuing, the GAC works primarily on the basis of consensus
and we generate that advice usually in the form of principles-based
documents.  As a way of defining "consensus," this kind of agreement
exists in our perspective when there is no strong objection to what has
been drafted as advice.  So that's what we mean when we say we work on
the basis of consensus.

Why does this work well?  Well, it works well between governments
because of sovereignty considerations because governments cannot defer
their sovereignty to other governments.  This is why individual GAC
members are not able to represent the GAC.  However, this is sometimes
the expectation from other parts of the community, you know, with
working groups and this sort of thing, when we have liaisons identified
to participate in those constituencies.  However, I think Yrjö has
already remarked that liaisons can be very valuable as a way of sharing
information and also in planning meetings.  So that is important for
that to continue, but these are the challenges that are associated with
that.

The GAC doesn't necessarily have to do everything on the basis of
consensus.  We can also generate advice as options rather than focusing
on one single agreed GAC position.  Governments or GAC members might
also choose to provide inputs individually and directly to ICANN, and
there are also times or topics where the GAC is actually not able to
offer advice.  And we would think that's still of value to the ICANN
board as well.

As you know, the GAC has developed several key principles-based
documents, for example, and examples of that would be the delegation
and national registration of ccTLDs and the introduction of new gTLDs.  

So why principles-based documents?  Well, guidelines developed by the
GAC are well-suited to the ICANN context as national circumstances can
vary and guidelines can be set at a high level.  This allows for
adaptation in decision-making and implementation.

So hoping that that is at least somewhat informative for the
community.  We now have a proposal of sorts in thinking about the
policy development process overall at ICANN.  We wonder whether it
could be amended to allow for the integration of the views of the
entire ICANN community closer to the outset of such processes.  In
particular, the GAC believes that its contributions would be more
useful earlier on in those processes, so if we can think about ways to
look at that.  Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's great.  Thanks, Heather.  We will come to
that in a moment and pick up on the point Chris made if this was a
blank piece of paper what might we do and we will try to integrate that
at that stage.  I got Michael.  I've got Bertrand.  I've got Robin and
then Beau.

Michael?

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Just to touch on two points.  Regarding your
comments, Lesley, about wanting to know what's going on, let me make
clear what I don't want.  I don't want access to the private board mail
lists of thousands of e-mails.  I don't want access to that.  I don't
want access to the board -- the briefing sessions that they had this
weekend in confidence here.  I'm not asking for access to that.

I'm not asking access to the board retreats, the multi-day retreat
that just happened in Vienna.  And I'm not asking for access to the
board's chatroom, the Jabber which is always one of the things that
keep -- I'm not asking for any of that.

The only thing I'm asking for --

>>DOUG BRENT:  Smart man, Michael.

[laughter]

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  That Jabber was quite interesting during the three
years to get through some of those longer sessions.

All I'm asking for is the same thing that we're going to have this
Friday.  We're going to have a board meeting on Friday where the
transcribers are going to take down all the words from the beginning to
the end.  That's all I want, and let that happen on a monthly basis. 
That's the record I want.  And, again, for those junkies like myself
that will read every word, yes, let ICANN produce that nice little
synopsis, the one-pager where they can quickly go through.

But I think having that -- right now, again, this frustration and lack
of trust, I think we have to go to that extra step to give it.

Just a second point regarding the white paper -- and I will keep 30
seconds.  I agree, Chris, I think we're at an inflection point in the
ICANN evolutionary process where it's probably time to have a second
evolutionary reform process.  But for that evolutionary reform process,
we would not have had a ccNSO and I believe that the current periodic
three-year reviews are not providing that broader thing.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Michael.  Very quickly from Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Two things from Michael.  First of all, I don't
think you would like each board meeting to be set up that way, would
you?  With discussions happening in private the night before and then a
performance in front of the microphones on Friday morning?  Surely not.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Hang on, hang on.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Let me respond to that briefly.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Not without a microphone.  And it will be brief,
Michael.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  I think we actually do provide some insight.  I
know it is a little scripted.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  A little?

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Trust me, we can go back to Tunisia.  Go back to
Tunisia.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  I'm not saying it doesn't break out every now and
then.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Let's get moving on from this.  Bertrand?

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Actually, it is a nice segue.

I think the main point that was made by Doug, I think, in the early --
beginning of this session was about the increase of work.  I think the
problem we're facing here -- and it goes to the inflection point, to
Chris' comment about the white paper approach, is operational
scalability for this organization.

Fundamentally how much is the current setting?  The current
organization of circulation of information and processes going to be
working when confronted with the increase in work that is going to be
broad by the IDNs, the new gTLDs and so on.  And it is a problem for
all of us.  This organization has basically withstanded -- withstood --
sorry, withstood the last ten years with not a big evolution in the
structure of the DNS, in the way it is run but just a big uptake in the
number of users of the Internet.

This didn't increase really that much on the burden of ICANN as such
because it is an infrastructure exercise.

What we're doing now is moving from the initial role of managing,
coordinating something that is existing with minor additions, like the
new gTLDs, into something that is a real policy for the management of a
domain name space that's basically a semantic spectrum.

This is a policy role, and the scalability of this policy role is
bringing completely new types of interaction that are more related to
what parliaments do or the policy making than the natural technical
organization.  This is bringing a lot of problems and not a lot of
actors have had to deal with this at the global level.

So I just want to highlight a few themes, not detailed themes but just
--

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  I'm just going to push pause for a moment.  Can I
get a sense of what the room thinks about this?  Who agrees with the
sentiment that's been voiced here that we are at some sort of
inflection point that we need to have a serious look at whether the way
we do things is scalable?  Can I get a red or green piece of paper?  No
red pieces of paper anywhere.  One there from Mark.  I might get a
comment from you in just a moment, Mark, if that's okay.

Bertrand, continue.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Actually, a few illustrations.  We were
talking about the roles and responsibilities of the different actors. 
A lot of the words we use are actually ambiguous in many cases.  We
don't put the same meaning behind the word.  When we talk about the
GAC, there is a lot of discussions about, "What do we mean by
'advisory'?"  As a matter of fact, you can have very strong advice that
is supported by a very complete overwhelming consensus within the GAC
and even if we adjust "advisory," I think it will be taken into
account.  On the other hand, if you have a non-advisory body that's a
committee and is completely fragmented and we don't agree among
ourselves, then our non-advisory will actually not be taken into
account as much.

So advisory, you get private-sector led.  Wow, we can spend hours on
what does that mean.  Some of the contributions to the NOI said we
actually should move to multistakeholder model fully.  You get bottom-
up.  Well, actually, is it bottom-up?  Is it top-down managed bottom-up
process?  I don't know.

What I see is, first, that when we talk about staff, we don't
distinguish between different functions that have to be distinguished. 
There is expertise function.  There is neutral secretariat function. 
There is operations, implementation and enforcement function, and there
is legal and general process-oriented functions.  And I'm talking only
here of what we see.  There's the whole managerial stuff.

Second point in terms of we've talked about the information overload. 
We all know now that transparency doesn't just mean more paper.  We all
know that.  And, for instance, the debate that is very interesting
about when we give input, do we want a response on our input?  Yes, we
do.  But what I noticed now is that we are now confronted with an
additional work for staff that is doing a summary of the comments
before integrating them, more paper.  We need more efficiency.  I don't
know what the solution is, but we know that we must tackle the overload.

And, finally, there is a big question about where does the decision
take place.  The GNSO reform process, the council reform process said --
when the Board Governance Committee said the GNSO should be less
legislative, this is what the PDP reform today is trying to implement
in the GNSO.  And I fully support, of course, what Heather said
regarding the communitywide engagement at the level of the working
groups.  I just want to raise the question of, is the board too
operational?  And I think when you talk to board members, they do feel
that they're dealing with things that are of a very different level. 
This is an important issue.  So as a concluding remark, this notion of
an ICANN 3.0, to name it this way, there is an undeniable window of
opportunity or period that is whatever happens on 30th magic September
day between that and mid next year maximum, this process of revising
the internal functions and the general architecture must be completed.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Bertrand.  If we can get some quick
comments from people we haven't heard from yet.  Robin, I know you're
interested and Vivek as well and I might get a staff input as well
after that, Doug.

>>ROBIN GROSS:  Can you hear me?  I wanted to start off with two
points that I wanted to commend ICANN on that I think are major
improvements and then two points of places where we could do more work.

First, the new travel policy which is going to fund all of the GNSO
Councillors' travel to the ICANN meetings is an enormous step forward
for the GNSO, and particularly for my constituency, the noncommercial
users constituency.  We've often had to leave councillors home because
there is no funding to send them to the meetings.  This is a really big
step that is important for the GNSO and especially us.

The other issue -- the other point I wanted to raise is being a very
good step in recent weeks is the new rule about documents being out --
having to be out, what is it -- 15 days before the meeting, 15 working
days.  That's another thing that I think it is a small step, one tiny
little rule, but I think it will help people come to these meetings and
more prepared and be able to engage and make more effective use of our
time while we are here because we will have had an opportunity to
actually read the details and the fine print in the reports.  So those
are two things that I think are great.

A couple things I think we could use some work on and one is the issue
of transparency and the black box and we've talked a lot about that.

A couple things that I think we could use some work on, and one is
this issue of transparency and the black box and we've talked a lot
about that and I don't want to just go over that, but I have a solution
-- or a suggestion for that, which is something analogous to in the
United States we have a law.  It's called the Freedom of Information
Act.  And it basically requires the government to provide its citizens
with information and the inputs and the policy discussions that go on
when they're making public policy.

There's a recognition that the citizens, that those who are being
affected, have some right to know what is being said behind these
closed doors and be able to respond to that.

So I think we should find some way to have something analogous to the
Freedom of Information Act applicable to ICANN, so we can't -- so there
isn't a situation where, for example, the new gTLD recommendations and
the -- ICANN staff went out and combed the world and came back with
expert reports on things, legal reports, and we asked for these reports
at the India meeting, we were promised them at the India meeting and we
still don't have them.  So how on earth are we supposed to even know
what these experts are saying?

It's a situation where ICANN is saying, "Trust us.  This is what they
said and this is how we interpret it and this is what we mean.  You're
just going to have to trust us that this was the input into that policy."

And we don't because we're -- you know, we've got a lot of lawyers in
all these countries and they're reading these reports and they're
going, "This isn't the legal standard in my country" but how can we
bring that forward if we don't even have access to the inputs?  So I
think we need some kind of Freedom of Information Act so we -- to get
those -- to get those policy inputs back out to the public.

And then the other -- the last point I wanted to raise was on the
special role of the noncommercial users constituency and noncommercial
stakeholder group as we're evolving to in ICANN, in the GNSO, and there
is a recognition that noncommercial users -- and use is an important
part of the Internet and deserves a certain recognition and is an
important part of the policy-making process, and, you know, we
appreciate that that's recognized in the GNSO structure, but what we
need now are some resources to actually be able to get to the table to
have our constituents funded to come to these meetings.

Our constituents have to take off time from their paying jobs to come
here for a week.

This is a very unique situation as compared to all of the other GNSO
groups.  We have to take time off, nonpaid time off.  We have to come
up with the funds ourselves.  We have to find volunteers to do this. 
And there needs to be some kind of a recognition that NC -- the
noncommercial users is a special case.

And I think ALAC is very similar to this as well.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh, yeah.  We have lots of good green support
to that one.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  From them.  Yep.

>>ROBIN GROSS:  There are no economic interests funding our
participation and if we don't have resources to get to the table and to
be able to participate, that policy piece isn't going to be part of the
outcome, and we -- there is a recognition that it needs to be there, so
let's get the resources so it can effectively participate.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Great.  Thanks, Robin.  Vivek?

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  I need to give a disclaimer.  I'm not a lawyer. 
But law teacher.  Neither am I a Catholic.

[Laughter]

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  Having enough frustrations has been put down
across here, and of course all have been flagged green that these
frustrations are real.  And also, I saw the wording "its possible
evolution," so I thought it's my solemn duty to introduce a new type of
frustration or a forthcoming frustration which may come.

This I believe from the context of evolution of Internet, and some
kind of benchmark like next 1 billion users.  And next 1 billion users
has to come from some parts of the world.  If I try to not leave out
but to market India and China, where it's 2 1/2 billion population out
of the 7 who are living there, roughly, they are the ones who have to
finally,you know, fulfill the remaining scaling of the Internet.  

So I am looking at the forthcoming frustration about -- even in a
larger sense -- is the space for these countries in terms of real
participation or is it a bit of tokenism, which is happening?

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh.

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  And probably -- I really don't know, probably
what you call -- you're lucky you have French, Spanish, and English
here.  You know, I really don't know whether you speak mandarin or
speak something else.  It's going to be difficult.  And probably
sometimes I -- I talk about ICANN and things within my circles.  I'm
talking not just common man, I'm talking about a law school.  When I
said that, you know, "I can," they said that "we can."  You know, they
don't know what's "ICANN" in one sense.  

So it's really -- what I'm really looking at is that space, when you
said about policies, sovereignty, parliaments, all that is going to
come.  

Now, at present, there's no frustration in that space because
ignorance is bliss, right?

So there are -- they really don't know what is the governance
happening.  They -- as long as they think some broadband Internet, the
technical matters.  When it moves to a space of governance, I think
that representation, really we are not even taught where you evolve the
next few years down, or even now it's happening in some of the
conversations here, and that is going to take different tangential
frustration compared to vis-a-vis ACs, SOs and policy stuff.  I think,
you know, I don't want to add further frustration.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  All right.  Thanks, Vivek.  Beau?

>>BEAU BRENDLER:  Here's a perhaps slightly more specific example that
does play into what's been said about scalability, black holes, and such.

I think we need to challenge ourselves, in terms of policy-making, to
rethink or analyze the working group model as it's been happening. 
That's a big frustration for me in the ALAC specifically.  I've
participated in three or four of them now.  They go on forever. 
They're constantly going back to the charter to find out a definition
of a word or what's in scope, what's out of scope.  It doesn't really
work.

So anything that we can think of to try to improve the working group
model, whether you start a working group at the beginning of an ICANN
meeting and make sure they have a result by the end of the same ICANN
meeting and keep them in a room and whatever --

[Laughter]

>>BEAU BRENDLER:  So...

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Now, Doug's been waiting quite a while.  We
need to get him this microphone here.

>>DOUG BRENT:  Thank you, Patrick.  I'd like to make three separate
comments, and I won't monopolize everybody's time.  I'll do them very
quickly.

First of all, Mike Palage, many of the comments you were making, you
were looking at me, so I just wanted to tell you I saw you, but I think
those are really board -- they're really questions for ICANN board and
I think they're valid questions and that's really where to go with them
and I'm not -- not on the board.

In terms of some -- the changes we've been talking about, that various
people have been talking about to, you know, an evolution, a bigger
evolution, I also wonder if there's more modest steps we could take
just from a process improvement side.  One frustration that I'll share
with people here is that in terms of document production, if you think
about publishing papers taking 45 days for comments, making sure
they're translated, adequately reading and summarizing those documents,
playing those summaries back, and then posting three weeks prior to a
meeting means that you have 4 1/2 days to do the work.  I'm
exaggerating, but actually only very slightly.

And for people who have been involved in, say, software product
development, often the cycle times, how you do your product cycles, has
a great deal to do with how successful you are.

So I sort of wonder if that's -- if that's something we need to think
about.

Also, in terms of more modest changes, if you looked at the new gTLD
comments, I can't give you the exact estimate but there's about 200
pages of comments summary produced, which on the one hand I'd say is
some of the best work ICANN has done, in that it was very clear what
comments were read and how they were interpreted, but I don't know that
it passes this test of "accessibility," so transparency is one thing
and the amount of work and effort and energy and cost that went into
producing that was quite substantial.  Just imagine reviewing all that
documentation, much less originally writing it and producing it.

So in some sense, the GAC may be providing a lot of leadership here by
focusing on principles that represent the input of the GAC, the advice
of the GAC.  Maybe there's something there in terms of when you think
about the inputs and the outputs of the policy process.

So I just wonder if we took some more prosaic optimizations of this
work we do, if that could help.

The last comment, and I'm almost done, is related to this trust issue
and I really appreciate what Chris said, which is leadership, which I
think at every level.  Certainly the people around this table, I think,
provide a lot of leadership for the ICANN organization.  That
leadership element is of the essence.

I will additionally say that just this notion that Bertrand brought up
of roles and responsibilities is also very important and I know from a
staff perspective, we often wear different roles.  I know that as AC
and SO chairs or participants, you're sometimes wearing different hats
as an individual representing your group, and I think that that's -- I
think that ICANN is at the stage where we could go through a painful
process -- maybe "painful" like the travel work, but that if we really
did spend some time on that roles and responsibilities piece, I think
that could also aid -- you know, leadership is number one, but I think
that could aid the trust equation as well.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Good.  Thanks, Doug.  I'm going to take that
mic back from you.  I'm just going to take a couple of very quick
comments from the floor, if there are some.  I'm going to ask Mark
first because he was the one red piece of paper when we were talking
about whether we're at an inflection point and I'd just like you to in
30 seconds or so, tell you why you've got a different opinion.

>>MARK McFADDEN: A typical contrarian.  Is that what you're saying?  

Yeah, I think one of the issues was scalability as well but one of the
things I would to reflect on is -- and I would like to ask the people
in the room to reflect on is how happy you should be that you're
frustrated.

[Laughter]

>>MARK McFADDEN: You should be extremely happy to be frustrated
because there are many other models for this work to be done, where you
wouldn't have a voice at all, you wouldn't be able to express your
frustration, and you wouldn't be able to point out problems and expect
and feel entitled to get solutions.

So the first thing that I would point to is be happy that you are
frustrated.

The second thing -- oh, please don't agree with me.

[Laughter]

>>MARK McFADDEN:  They'll just send you down a very bad path.

[Laughter]

>>MARK McFADDEN:  The second thing, besides -- besides feeling happy
about being frustrated, another thing that I would point out is that
all of us in the room have the tools to affect the scalability of the
organization.  Every six months, this organization produces a strategic
plan.  Every six months, this organization produces an operations
document.

Now, both of those are profoundly -- and I -- (Speaker is off
microphone).

[Laughter]

>>MARK McFADDEN:  Profoundly interesting documents.  But for us, what
they reflect as a community is an opportunity to prioritize the work of
our own organization, and after all, ladies and gentlemen, it is our
own organization.  It is not the staff's organization.  It's not the
board's organization.  It is our own organization.

And so we have the tools in place to do that prioritization, and I
would say that if we're frustrated -- and I think as I pointed out, we
should be happy we are -- we have the tools to ease some of that
frustration and to change the parameters.

I'd respectfully finally disagree with Chris, who I often agree with,
but in this case anyone who wants to see a transition, a reform of
ICANN, ICANN 3.0, needs to have participated in the recent reform of
the GNSO.

That would take the word "reform" out of your stomach, out of your
vocabulary.  You would never do it again.

And so I invite -- since we're not done with it, I invite anyone who
thinks that we should do a reform of all of ICANN to come with us and
participate in the reform of the GNSO.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Terrific.  Thanks, Mike.  Quick comment from Chris.
Is there interested people --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  I actually agree with Mark -- sorry, Patrick.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Away you go, Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  I agree with Mark and what I said has now been
characterized as, you know, ICANN 3.0.  What I actually said was when
we're trying to figure out the answer to the frustrations, et cetera,
we actually need to look at the model and start with a blank piece of
paper.  The mere concept of throwing perhaps a completely new reform
process is scary, but I wanted to really pick up on something that Doug
and Bertrand said.

Two things, I think.  Yes, roles and responsibilities is incredibly
important and needs to be dealt with, but in the case of the board, I
think so is purpose.  And that actually picks up on the point that
somebody made about having -- I think it was you, Bertrand -- about
have a too operational board.

auDA in Australia is an organization that has a very similar structure
to ICANN.  It -- except we have members, but anyway, the board is
volunteers and appointees, and frankly there is no way that we could
run the organization if we had a board that was as operational as the
ICANN board is.  It's just unworkable in my view.  And that's
incredibly important.

The second thing I wanted to say is that I heard a -- it goes back to
the staff and roles and responsibilities.  I heard a comment yesterday
or the day before in a meeting where somebody said that the staff were
not part of the community.  And if anybody actually believes that -- so
I just wanted to make the point and I said to myself at the time I
would bring this up in this session.

The staff are just as much a part of this community as anybody else,
and have just as much of a say as anybody else and I think that's
really important to remember.  It's why we've got a note in the thing
saying, "Please don't think this session is going to be about tearing
strips off the staff."  That happens way too much anyway.  It doesn't
need to happen in this environment.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Thanks, Chris.  Quick comment there.

>>SIVASUBRAMANIAN MUTHUSAMY: I'm Sivasubramanian Muthusamy from ALAC. 
I'm a participant in the ICANN process for the last one year, and I'm
very, very impressed with ICANN.  It is an unusual organization.  You
know, all this talk about frustration and what is missing, we fail to
take a moment to stop and admire what is extraordinary and great about
this organization, and it happens to be an organization that is
political, but has to deal with the national and business politics.  It
is a nonprofit body, but it has to deal with profit interests, and the
challenges are unusual.

And it's not a small business or a small-time NCO, but a corporation
that is founded to manage critical Internet resources for the next
millennium.

So it is just hardly 10 years old.  It started with a credit card
swipe and for a corporation started as a corporation so small it has
done exceedingly well in such a short time as 10 years.

I think we are all very, very impatient, and we want things to happen
overnight, and the kind of evolution that is required of an
organization of this nature cannot happen overnight.  I would rather
give it another 20 years, maybe 30 years, and for now it is excellent. 
It is very good in terms of structures and the way it has evolved. 
Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Lovely.  Quick comment, Izumi.

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  You're contesting for the board.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  I'm the former ALAC member, just sort of retired.  I
spent more than 10 years around at-large at ICANN before it started,
and I agree with you, perhaps, that we may need more -- another 10
years or 20 to address all the frustration issues that we are facing
with.

And I agree with Bertrand that the amount of work, given that, with
the new gTLD, ccTLD, the geopolitical -- not the geopolitical, but the
geographic names, that gives a lot of work domestically now in Japan. 
You know, trying to start to have an open bidding process for the new
IDN ccTLD.  We are asked by the government to set up a council, private
sector led.  A lot of new amount of work is happening domestically
which are related to the global ICANN process.

So what I see is not only the quantity of change.  It is a quality of
the change that we all have to face.

Perhaps it's not necessarily a reform or restructuring of one bold
step, but it could be a Kaizan or step-by-step improvement and changes
that we have to sort of evolve in for another 10 or 20 years more. 
Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good.  Thanks, Izumi.  Sebastien?

>>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET:  Sebastien Bachollet.  I'll speak in French. 
Thank you.  I'm from Iraq.  

First of all, I'd like to thank you for this form of interaction
because despite the complexity of ICANN, the possibilities to exchange
views on such difficult questions together is vital and I think this
model with the SO and the ACs put together is extremely useful.

Let me say that we don't need reform, we need reforms --

The question we should ask ourselves is how are we going to simplify
things.  An expression in French is why do it simply when you can do it
in a complicated way, and I think -- I think ICANN is now in such a
situation.

So I'd like to encourage you all to reflect on how each of us could do
to simplify the situation and not to complicate it even more.  I think
then we would have made a great step forward together for the future of
the Internet.  Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Sebastien.  Peter?

>>PETER VAN ROSTE:  Thank you, Patrick.  My name is Peter van Roste. 
I'm the general manager for CENTR.  

CENTR is a platform for Country Code ccTLDs.  

Three brief points to make.  I mean, first of all, on a positive note,
at least for myself, is that when I'm asking my members these days what
the best service CENTR is provides for them, they quite often point out
that summarizing ICANN documents is one of the most essential services.

So joking aside, I think this is a very significant point in the
context of this discussion.

Secondly, when talking about working groups -- and I understood some
of the points that some of the speakers have been making -- I've seen
the working groups work well within ccNSO.  And it probably comes down
to trust in the leadership.  You trust the people that are leading
particular working groups.  Without naming any individuals, but the
working groups on participation and budget, they have done a
significant amount of work and they've made sure that the cc community
contributes to the ICANN requests for information.

And then the third point is -- and this has also been raised but I
want to reinforce this quite strongly -- the operational planning
cycles and the strategic plan cycles are very important, and I think we
need to reflect as a community on how we can void to contribute to the
mission creep that is bound to happen in any large organization.  Thanks.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Terrific.  Thanks, Peter.  Just for a bit of change
of pace, what -- this is a scary thing to do at an ICANN meeting, I know.

What I'd like you to do is just to have a little conversation with the
person next to you or the little group of people where you are.  If
there was one thing that we should be doing, if there was one thing
that we should be doing to address the concerns that we've talked about
this afternoon, what in your view would that one thing be?

So what -- if we're going to move forward, if we're going to not live
in the frustration, if we're actually going to try to do something
constructive, what's the thing we should be doing?  And I'm going to
come around to the people around the table and get each of you to give
me a response to that in a moment as well.

So quick conversation where you are, with the people sitting next to
you.  What's the most important thing for us to be doing to address all
of this.  If you don't know their name, you can shake their hand.  They
have a nametag.

Okay.  Now you all have some ideas in your heads.  Let's just see what
our learned friends around the table have to say.  Because I know I can
trust her to be happy to speak first, I'm going to start with Lesley.

[Laughter]

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  Thank you so much.

We desperately agree on prioritization because normally when you do a
plan, you kind of work out if you have the capacity to do it.

I don't think we do that in an ICANN context.  I don't think we say,
"Has the staff got capacity?"  But importantly, "Has the community got
the capacity to do all of the stuff we've agreed we're going to try to
do?"

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Terrific.  Thank you.  Now, Doug, you're nodding
there.  Do you want to go --

>>DOUG BRENT:  Lesley and I are in total agreement on this.

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  Usually.

>>DOUG BRENT:  Lesley and I, we had such a warm moment of agreement on
this prioritization that we couldn't say anything more.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's great.  Thank you.  Patrick.

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  Yes.  Well, that I think if we want to manage
this overload, what we need first and foremost is strong coffee.

[Laughter]

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  But -- that would help.

Jokes aside, I think that what we need is more communication and even
more communication than what we have right now.  We have loads of
documents.  We have loads of meetings, and somehow information gets
lost along the way.

So what I would suggest -- I was talking about that with my neighbor --
is that there could be more direct meetings between SOs, ACs, and the
board, for example.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Patrick, can I just get you to talk a little bit
about what you mean by "direct meeting" there?

>>PATRICK VANDE WALLE:  Well, we already have, along this week, face-
to-face meetings with the board.  We know that the board does have a
very heavy agenda and it's not always possible, but still I think that
these meetings will generally last half an hour, one hour, if
everything goes well.

Part of the board should be maybe longer.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh.  Okay.  Thanks, Patrick.  Hawa?  No?

>>JOSE SALGUEIRO:  As a matter of fact, with my conversation with
Beau, our conclusion was the first it was said:  Prioritization. 
Prioritize.  Because that's the key.  We have to be very clear that in
two days or in five days, we are not going to change the world in a
meeting here we have in Sydney or anywhere else, and when we are clear
on that, on which is the priority, the mission of ICANN in its
competencies, then we will know what we have to do and then we will
know how to prioritize.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Jose.  Beau?

>>BEAU BRENDLER:  With great respect to all of the chairmen of working
groups I've been on, none of whose jobs I would have ever wanted, bring
in some professional or better facilitators or training or identify
some bright minds to help facilitate pushing policymaking forward
faster and more effectively.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you.  Heather?

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  Thank you.  I would agree that prioritization would
be very helpful.  When Yrjö and I discussed this, Yrjö suggested that
thinking of the GAC in particular, that it -- more exposure to other
parts of the community would actually be helpful to us.  And if I add
on to that, I'm always learning new things in those meetings, even
though I've been coming to ICANN meetings for a couple of years.

So that suggests that that is beneficial.  And Yrjö, you might want to
add to that.

>>YRJÖ LÄNSIPURO:  Yeah.  Just briefly that the -- basically to
increase the contact surface of the GAC with other participants of the
community, and to do it in a way that somehow would differentiate, you
know, different levels.  That is to say, sometimes we just might be
able to give our input to the discussion.  It's not necessarily every
time that it's the governmental advice which comes with it.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Yrjö.  Michael.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Thank you.  I guess our discussion was that the
strength of the ICANN trust chain is determined by its weakest link,
and right now that weakest link continues to be the final decision-
making link.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you.  Ramesh?

>>RAMESH NADARAJAH:  Yeah.  The black box issue.

So I think something needs to be done about at least communicating why
certain decisions were made.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Good.  Thank you.  Vivek.

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  Well, as I reiterated, that the
internationalization of the structure and process is going to be a very
immediate challenge which we are not thinking now.  As they say, that
if you don't shape events, you start chasing them.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Thank you.  Bertrand?

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  I think the -- the main recommendation I
would make is, in one word:  Systematizing at the very early stages of
all the processes the AC/SO interaction in whatever format.  Not
necessarily large rooms like this, but multiply workshops, small
discussions, very early in the processes, especially in the working
group model over and over and over again.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  So is that -- just so that I can check,
Heather and Yrjö, you were talking about -- you talked about increasing
the contact surface.

Is it that sort of thing that you were talking about?  That --

>>YRJÖ LÄNSIPURO:  Yeah, pretty much so, yes.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Yep?  And Heather?

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  I would be looking for a focused effort.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Uh-huh.

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  Rather than looking at many -- many working groups
and so on.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Right.  So it ties into the prioritization thing as
well, yeah?

>>HEATHER DRYDEN:  Yes, yes.  Absolutely.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Good.  Let's come back here.  Olga.

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you very much.  I would like to change the
perspective a little bit and I would change to Spanish right now.

I would like to change the concept of "frustration" to something
called "challenge."

I think ICANN has a big challenge right now in its growth, constant
growth, of converting really into an organization -- a global
organization, and using the (inaudible) words some minutes ago that
really active participation of all the regions in the world and all of
the countries, which is not easy.  I was talking in GNSO with some
colleagues and very truthfully they tell me, "Well, there are not many
people -- expert people in countries -- in all countries."

So I see two challenges.  One on the part of ICANN to become global,
more global, and I want to thank the aperture of this organization that
opened me its doors and myself, because of being from South America and
a woman, many organizations have closed their doors.  However, ICANN
has been so generous to allow me to work in this organization, and
really I'm very grateful.

The next step is for ICANN to become more global and it's also a
responsibility for the community, a responsibility of us in our
countries to take our voice -- the voice to different young people,
many people.  I am a university teacher, and my students know about
this.  We have done some -- some training with my students.  I would
change the word "frustration" to "challenge," to increase the effort of
ICANN towards the community.  Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Olga.  Ray?

>>RAY PLZAK:  I'll take this a step further and probably alienate most
of the room with what I'm about to say.

[Laughter]

>>RAY PLZAK:  For the last hour and a half, we have not been
discussing a problem at all.  We've been discussing a manifestation of
a problem, symptoms of a problem, but it's like having a headache and
not knowing what's caused the headache.

And so now we are talking about solutions to the headache and we
really don't know what's caused the headache.

So to begin with -- and Chris was not far off by saying "start with a
whiteboard."  What really has to be done is you take all these symptoms
and you use some rigorous method, such as perhaps fault tree analysis
or something like that, and you try and find what are the one or
several root causes and I'll guarantee you there's more than one.

And once you have that and you can trace back to what these root
causes are, where the interaction points are, at that point in time
then you can constructively come up with solutions that are problems. 
At this point in time, the only solution is to really analyze what's
really going on here and stop trying to fix the headache when you don't
know what's caused the headache.  Did I drop a book on my foot or hit
my head against the wall?  I don't know at this point

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Ray.  Louie?

>>LOUIE LEE:  I'm not sure I can follow that very well.  Perhaps
finding ways to prioritize with a goal to be more effective but in what
Ray said, prioritize how is what we need to determine in order to
correct the problems that we're still trying to identify here.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay, good.  Thanks, Louie.  Chris?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  It pretty much has been covered.  It seems to me
that the board has a very heavy agenda.  The board has a lot to do. 
Meeting structure should be changed because the board needs this and
the board needs that.  It is all true probably but the point is that
shows as a real problem.  The clarity of purpose and prioritization at
that level would be a start because the organization shouldn't being
run on the basis that the board doesn't have enough time to do this and
is under huge pressure.  That's now it should work at all.  These
people are all volunteers.

Prioritization and the trust thing massively, massively important.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Chris.  Robin?

>>ROBIN GROSS:  I think the one thing we really should work towards is
transparency.  I think a lot of the things we talked about could be
better solved if there were more transparency.  Just to pick up on
Ray's point about we don't know what the problem is, a lot of that is
because things go into a black box, we don't know what happens and
things come out.  And if we had transparency in the process, if we
could see documents going in, if we could participate in conversations,
we would be in a much better position to know what the problems are and
then be able to fix them.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks.  Bertrand, you want to respond to that?

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  One point.  I'm witnessing Ray's
frustration, that apparently something was wrong for him in the
discussion we had and I would like to ask him maybe to express a little
bit more what he means by that because I'm not sure I understood.

The second point I want to raise is I'm not absolutely sure that apart
from him -- I'm very happy he is on the panel, is there any member from
the board in the room?  Okay.  That's all.

>> Liaisons are here.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Janis.

>>RAY PLZAK:  Bertrand, I regret to inform you I'm not frustrated at
all, not one iota.  What I was expressing was the fact that the group
has been discussing symptoms and are not proposing solutions to
symptoms.  That's all I said.  And the fact is there has been no
determination of a root problem.  So awful these things that are listed
up here as solutions may be valuable solutions to a problem that you
haven't identified yet.

So I'm not frustrated one iota.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  If I may respond to that, I'm incredibly
happy that we're finished on that note because that's one point that I
wanted to raise in the beginning and I skipped for the sake of time. 
The main problem -- and I think one of the root problems of many
processes within ICANN is that we rush into trying to find the solution
without spending enough time at the beginning of the process correctly
identifying what the issue is, what are the dimensions of the issue,
what we want to solve and what is the goal.

In this, I 100% agree with you.  And if we could do that in the
process of reforming the working groups, we would end the situation
where at the end of a five-year process we suddenly realize that there
is one major issue that we didn't address and that is re-emerging in
the end.  I'm glad you said that because it allows to finish on this
note which for me is one of the most important things, early stage
issue scoping.

>>RAY PLZAK:  I'm glad I helped to relieve your frustration, sir.

[laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Ray.  Any other comments on that part of
it?  Okay.

What would this look like -- this ICANN thing, the policy parts of it,
the interactions at various levels, what would it look like if it was
really working well?

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  It would be real boring and nobody would be here.

[laughter]

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  What sort of "boring," Michael?  Not that I'm
saying you are an expert on boring.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Controversy.  I'm expert in that.  I always think
back to Stuart Lynn and one of the things that Stuart always talked
about is a noisy ICANN is a healthy ICANN.  I do believe that.  We do
have to have a certain amount of noise, and if people did stop coming,
then we would have a problem.

So noise is good.  And I think this goes back to what Mark was saying.
We have an organization where we can, shall we say, criticize it.  It
is our organization.  So I think that is positive.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's good.  Thank you.  Lesley?  Very quickly,
Josh.

>> JOSH ROWE:  Josh Rowe from AUDA.  Just a note what boring is, in
Australia we had a problem that many years ago we had very restrictive
domain name policy.  Registrants could only get one domain name per
entity and everyone was screaming about it.  Back then we had a lot of
participation in our annual general meetings, forming of AUDA, et
cetera.  

These days it is actually a real struggle to get people together and
to enthuse them to get involved.  If you want to aim for boring, that's
a state when you get to where you suddenly have -- you have got to
almost kind of coax or encourage people to participate.  So it's
certainly a state to aim for.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Thanks, Josh.  Lesley?

>>LESLEY COWLEY:  I would like to follow both of those points.  Noise
is good but the noise should be about policy issues, not how we do
policy.  I agree with Josh.

There is a real danger if everything worked really, really well, then
you will be much more subject to capture and that's where participation
and making participation easier and broader really comes in to effect.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  And the internationalization piece that several of
our speakers have mentioned.  Doug?

>>DOUG BRENT:  I think this accessibility point for me is a very
important point, that is that the policy work that's done has to be
available -- not just reames of documents, not just hundreds and
thousands of pages but find some way to make it more accessible to
people.  I think that's, one.  The accountability of how decisions are
made and that people would be confident that the decisions were made in
a way that they understood whether they agreed or not would be
characteristics of a well-run process.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  If you would like to make a comment, just indicate
and we will try to get a microphone to you.  One more thing, if you are
going to speak, please announce your name first so the scribes can
catch that.

>> JUONG-IM KIM:  My name is Juong-Im Kim from University of Hawaii,
and this is my second meeting at ICANN.  I just want to echo earlier a
comment about -- earlier I was scared when the word "reform" was thrown
around and I was very glad another member pointed out that this is an
excellent organization and it has done a great job.  Of course, no
organization of this age, only ten years old, is perfect.  And no
organization will ever be perfect to all of us.  

So having said that, I think the word "prioritization" is a good one
and the word "challenge" is a good one.  But I want to add to that.

We are dealing with issues and problems focused on the phenomena
called the Internet which is constantly, incredibly changing.  So the
word "reform" assumes that there is a perfect, some static thing to
achieve.  That's not there, right?

So we just have to keep that in mind.  I think in terms of the concept
of challenge, a task or a challenge for ICANN seems to be building a
mechanism that can constantly monitor itself.  I know it sounds like
utopia here but let's try to achieve it, constantly monitor and assess
and evaluate so that we can improve constantly.  No reform.  I just
don't like that concept.  Thank you.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Perfect.  Thank you.  A reply there from Michael.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  So just to talk a little bit more about reform, I
discussed this concept of reform rather in detail in my submission to
the -- in my NOI submission to the NTIA on the pending expiration of
the JPA.  There is a lot of acronyms in that sentence.

What I would like to discuss, this was a topic that was actually
raised yesterday during the GAC session on new gTLDs where they were
talking about issues regarding the UPU and what is the nature of its
relationship with ICANN as an IGO.  There was also talk about city
TLDs, are city TLD in which the government is involved in sponsoring
that, is that more like a ccNSO -- a ccTLD or a gTLD?

I've also discussed over the years the issue of some of the legacy
gTLDs, dot int, dot mil, dot gov.  Those TLDs do not fit neatly into
the .COM box.  What I think has to happen much like what happened in
the first reform process is we need to look at how ICANN is dealing
with these contracting parties. and I think the issue needs to be not
so much a G or a C, but is it a private entity or is it a public entity.

In this situation where ICANN is dealing with a public entity, ICANN
needs to defer to that entity a broader degree of trust in how it is
operated.  When it is dealing with a private entity, ICANN has a
greater role to ensure that the registrants within that TLD are
protected.

So that to me when I talk about, you know, if you will, reform, that's
one of the areas of reform that needs to happen.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay.  Thanks, Michael.  

Another comment from the floor down here.  Please let us know who you
are.

>> KARLENE FRANCIS:  My name is Karlene Francis from Jamaica.  And I
have been listening to the panelists, and I must say I agree that
prioritizing is important.  But I also think that we have to get back
to what is the product, what is the mission, what is the strategy of
ICANN.  We have to think also about what is the role.  We have
different constituencies here that require a lot of consultation.  But
at the end of the day, we must produce something.  In my mind, this is
up for discussion and it must result in some form of a policy.

Now, based on what I've been hearing, there is some frustration in
terms of the policy cycle and the fact that we have been working on a
number of policies for a very long time.  And so in terms of
efficiency, there must be some balance between the level of
consultation and the target in terms of the delivery of a workable
policy that is beneficial to the constituents.

And I think that is something that we may need to look at in terms of
the simplification of the process rather than an entire reform because
it is really very difficult to follow all the tracks, to follow all the
documentation and sometimes halfway through reading the document you
have to go back to the top because they are lost.

So it's important to simplify so that we have some sort of quick wins
and we're able to implement in an effective time frame.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Lovely.  Thank you.  We've got a few minutes left. 
Sorry, one quick comment, Vivek.

>>VIVEK VIVEKANDAN:  I do remember one of the quotes from a professor -
- It's Lynn Stone, I think from Portland University.  He said we were
approaching the 21st technologies with 20th century governing process
and 19th century governance structures.  And this is the issue when you
talk about technology.  I roughly equate law with governance and other
things as we are doing now.

It is also another quote which comes from my own country.  In a
marriage, the husband walks and then the wife walks seven steps behind
him.  So always technology, one of my preferences is to tell technology
is the husband and governance and law is the wife, which is always
seven steps.  So to an extent we all understand it is not perfect.

But the point, the seven steps should not become 17 or 70 steps.  That
is the biggest challenge what we are really talking.  If you really
look at -- if you could put the whole thing down here, the question is
as somebody commented to me in the morning, as I'm participating, they
said, This happened last time also.  And so the best thing is that
after -- What will happen?  I said the meeting will end.  The meeting
will end.  The exercise will end.  It seems to be a nice new exercise
which is attracting a lot of participants.  So I do hope this doesn't
end this way or probably what will be commented is somewhere summarized
and then it goes to the board, it goes to ACs, SOs and we do read it
and see probably the next meeting some of these things will move forward.

Anything -- a little movement further is what you call it? 
Frustration goes out, even if there is a little movement forward.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Vivek.  That was just about what I was to
say to try and bring us to a close.  We've spoken for nearly two hours
about some of these things around the table here and some great
comments from people on the floor.

What is it that we need to do to stop this just having been a pleasant
afternoon together?  One of the things that we will do is, as we said
at the beginning, produce a summary and get that out to the SOs and ACs
but around the table and around the floor we have the chairs of the SOs
and ACs, we have a senior member of staff.

What's the stuff we need to do next?  I will go to you, Chris, and
then there might be other comments as well.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  I think we should bear in mind that perhaps the
problems we have been talking as far as people being very busy, and so
on, then more strain is not necessary.  However, I would suggest that
one thing we could do and we could do this relatively easily is to
request a meeting with the board, between the board and the chairs of
the Supporting Organizations.  And I don't think that's ever happened,
as far as I can remember.  I'm not aware that there has been a meeting
of all the chairs and the board, at which we can start to address the
issues that we've heard about today.  So that would be my suggestion.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good, Chris.  Doug?

>>DOUG BRENT:  So I've taken a bunch of notes that I will take back
with me and both Robin and Mike said some specific things that I will
just push back in the organization.

But to me the real opportunity seems, there is a process going on in
the GNSO right now around PDP processes.  And think about Sebastien
talking about simply it is, making this stuff accessible, considering
up front as Bertrand said, considering the issues upfront, really sort
of winning the game by defining the problem up front, that there is a
logical place for that to go which is into this GNSO PDP process and
somehow to ensure that those inputs are reflected and that people take
seriously that process and ensure that what comes out of that is
something that the community can feel confident will produce effective
policy in a reasonable amount of time.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good.  Thanks, Doug.

Bertrand?

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:  Very Quick segue to what Doug was saying. 
At the moment, there are many reform processes underway within ICANN. 
There is board reform.  There is the ALAC reform.  They are reviews. 
The NomCom reform, the GNSO structure, the PDP and so on.  And I spend
a lot of time involved in those working groups.

There's also the PSC process regarding another type of reform on
institutional evolution.  This is why we titled this session
"Institutional Improvements."  This is about institutional evolution of
ICANN.  I would support what has been said and what Chris proposed.

Maybe suggest that after this session before having the meeting with
the board, there's a SO/AC chairs, or maybe extended, debrief, not open
if you want but not a new session, so that the interface may be with
the board -- Structural Improvement Committee can be organized further.

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you.  We've got a comment here from Kieren.

>>KIEREN McCARTHY:  With regard to how do we make sure that this is
not just a nice chat, I think the document that you and I will be
drawing up which will basically be a summary of this, to put it out to
comment and to encourage all of you in this room to put in extra
thoughts and to build extra ideas.  And then for the next SO/AC
meeting, bring in those topics and say, What did we do?  What did we
get at the start of the session?  And we will probably have new
additional topics.  But say, This is what we discussed last time.  What
changes have we made?  What advancement have we made?

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Kieren.  One other thing because I can't
help but put in a word from our sponsor, several people on the way
through have talked about prioritization and some people, Mark McFadden
included, had the good grace to say one of the ways you could do that
is through the strategic planning process.  

One of the things that's about to start is our six monthly strategic
planning process.  We are actually kicking off something with the ccNSO
tomorrow, and there will be other activities coming up.

It is a really valid and valuable way for the members of the community
to shape the future of the organization through the strategic plan. 
Yes, Mark, wherever you may be, it is hardly likely that we will still
come up with a document that's interesting in the way that you
mentioned before because strategic plans are really an exciting piece
of literature.

But if what we can produce is something that is the honest sense of
prioritization of the members of the community, I think that would be a
huge step forward.

Now, Adam, I have to let you speak briefly to that red flag. We need
to get you up a little bit.

>> ADAM PEAKE:  If the goal should be simplification and
prioritization, I think it is the nature of ICANN's processes that a
strategic planning process and operational planning process will never
do that because we are consensus driven.  We take each others' opinions
into consideration.  By that very nature, that complicates and expands
and goes on for an extremely long time.  

Look at review processes.  We should actually be in the second round
of the GNSO review by now, according to the bylaws.  I would suggest we
should be going back to what Ray was suggesting, What is the problem? 
Why do we have a headache?

>>PATRICK SHARRY:  Okay, that's fine.  I don't think those two things
are necessarily mutually exclusive, and we can proceed with both of
them and maybe even weave them in together.

We're just about out of time.  So I would like to say thank you very
much to our panelists for their contribution this afternoon.

[Applause]

To the members of the audience, members of the community, you made
comments and waved pieces of paper.  Thank you.  To our interpreters
who always do a wonderful job.

[Applause]

And to our scribes who continue to be nothing short of miraculous.

[Applause]

Thank you, everyone.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  To Patrick.

[Applause]