Can anyone point URL that lists the attendees at the January 22 meeting? It would be interesting to compare that list with the one posted in the notes of Antony Couvering from the closed meeting the day before, to ascertain what organizations and which individuals were denied participation. Jon Englund, the organizer, said he answered some of my questions about the January 21 meeting in a posting to this list. Perhaps someone can direct me to that message, as I must have missed it. I do see his comments on January 24, directed to another person. Apparently, Mr.Englund found it safer to respond to an someone whose unauthenticated identity has been the subject of extensive debate, than directly to me, whose commitment to the open discussion of these issues can be traced to published writing (a 645-page book on domain name issues) and a 50+ page website. So a group of sponsoring organizations and others met by invitation-only to "better structure" Friday's meeting. Now that I have seen the full attendee list from January 21, it is clear that this was a high level meeting which included major decision makers. It is reasonable to assume that an important convergence of ideas occurred on that date, and that it was the meeting where the real work occurred. I thank Antony Van Couvering for posting the minutes of January 21 and shining some light on this "profound and revolutionary" (Mr. Englund's words) gathering. He wrote that many attendees, in retrospect, felt that the meeting should have been opened to others. As my young son would say, "Well, duh." Mr. Englund's January 24 post includes this coment: >We wholeheartedly agree with the goals of an open, democratic and >transparent domain names supporting organization, and hope that we are >contributing in a small way to that end result. Holding an invitation-only meeting belies these important goals. It was exclusionary. It was an insult to the process and to the ideals which he and others espouse. What it did is contribute to the distrust with which many view these proceedings. Some months ago, Esther Dyson told the Internet community to "trust us", referring to the new board members who came to these important new roles through a process hidden from public view. Trust, like openness, works in both directions. My take on matters today is that many organizations who have a lot at stake in how things unfold here are afraid of the unpredictability of open meetings and afraid of democracy, afraid to trust the small universe of individuals who are deeply concerned about this new structure. They want to tilt their odds by convening privately and, perhaps, making quid pro quo arrangements. I am sorely disheartened over the closed DNSO meeting and the closed ICANN board meetings, of veiled and/or indirect responses to reasonable, well-articulated questions. Mr. Englund personally thanked me for putting together the side-by-side comparisons of the various DNSO proposals and encouraged me to keep it as current as possible. My domainhandbook.com website gets more than 11,000 hits a week, and it's clear that others outside this small circle are interested in the developing mechanisms for DNS administration. But now I am asking myself, why should I contribute more time and more pro bono effort to a process that has let me down yet again? Ellen Rony Co-author The Domain Name Handbook http://www.domainhandbook.com ================================ // =================================== ISBN 0879305150 *=" ____ / +1 (415) 435-5010 [EMAIL PROTECTED] \ ) Tiburon, CA // \\ "Carpe canine" __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
