[Membership] Re: [anr-talk 529] Re: My impression on MAC meeting - some lessons

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 10:23 PM 5/26/99 +0800, tommi wrote:
> >With fully aware of the developing countries, Asian people
> >in mind, we need to be very careful.
>
>Cultural problem?  If ICANN is serious about truly being global ( I hear
>that many Asians are skeptical of this), they must make a real effort to
>accommodate the Asian way of working rather than expect Asians to work the
>Western way.  It just will not work.


Izumi-san,

If I read your note  correctly, the primary problem that you described was 
that the chair of your committee rescheduled the meeting time, without 
consulting most of the committee.

Forgive me, but I believe that this is not really a cultural problem.

The action and circumstances you describe are inappropriate for Americans, 
too.

You traveled half way around the world for this committee meeting and, 
probably more importantly, this is supposed to be a fully collaborative 
process.  Hence, a proposal to move the meeting time should have been 
reviewed by, and approved by, the entire committee.  Given the history of 
the DNSO activity, I can imagine that moving the meeting time for MAC would 
be a reasonable proposal and that the committe might have agreed to the 
change..  The procedure should have been to convene the afternoon MAC 
meeting as planned and immediately consider the proposal to change the 
time.  This could have taken no more than 5-10 minutes.

I suspect that the important cultural difference is the extreme discomfort 
forced on you by needing to fix the problem, and get the meeting 
started.  I believe many Americans would have done the same as 
you.  However, many of us wouldn't have felt uncomfortable about it.  Just 
angry...

d/




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