The meeting was actually in two parts. The early part included some discussion and meeting policy discussions. JW was mentioned in passing. We agreed not to spend much bandwidth discussing JW. He was NOT in attendance. Thanks to: Michael Krieger for providing the meeting place and the excellent food. Arnold supplied the vino, including a very interesting chili-pepper wine (we're going to try it in some recipes). Attendees: Roeland Meyer, Patrick Greenwell, Wes Monroe, David Steele, Ellen Rony, Sheri Lynn Falco, Arnold Gehring, Bronwyn Harris, Thomas Ackermann, William Sommers, Brian Ried, Michael Krieger, Karl Auerbach. This first part included ground-rules and approach. We established the base-line of things we would discuss. We all had many questions and had to fit them into the time available. The discussion was rather free-form. The consensus was that we make an attempt not to be offensive and place Esther in a defensive position. IMHO, we succeeded in this. For the most part, we are all able to now put faces to the email names <grin>. The base-line was established at getting a feel of what the ICANN is about, for real, and to surface some of the issues regarding ASO, DNSO, and PSO. Attendance at the latter part included: Esther Dyson, Andrew Boer, Justin Newton, and some others whose names I regret fully didn't catch (mostly the ISP/C contingent). Esther arrived at about 4:45p. Karl had a time conflict so we let him go first. He iterated some of the issues of first principles and a statement regarding the moral authority of the ICANN. Esther replied that the "BoD didn't know what they signed up for". That the original Bylaws were what was agreed to and the new changes (last Nov) were substantially different. That they are adjusting to them. She also made the interesting statement that many on the BoD were not used to the open-ness requirements, either in their own countries or previous organizations. (to me, it conveyed a certain resentment, of some BoD members, towards this requirement). Patrick brought up the issue of trust in the ICANN BoD, which evolved to dealing with issues of process. The perception that ICANN staff can set policy without review is troubling. I think we successfully brought home the point that the BoD needs to visibly approve staff recommendations on policy changes. David was very up on the issues and probably better prepared than all of us. In this discussion, the matter of IRAC, and accreditation guide-lines came up as an example of procedural issues. As regards formal policies, Esther made the oft-used example, that more formal processes need to be emplaced, by comparing the growth of the Internet to the growth of a company. That, as a company grows, it has to replace ad hoc processes with definitive policies. That not all of those policies will be well received by those used to the more informal ad hoc process. As regards trust, David Steele made the very important point that, those policies need to be made visible and consistent, before they can be accepted and effective. As regards the further public participation of the BoD in these discussions, Esther was very clear, and exposed some frustration, that although she has been advocating such participation, the BoD members *are* independent entities and she can not "control" them. Implied is that, if the individuals chose NOT to participate in this way, there is not much that she can do about it. The best that we, as a community, can do is to encourage such participation by the use of directed individual questions. Final bomb-shell, the ICANN is searching for a search-firm that will select a new CEO. Two search-firms have thus far, declined to participate in that effort. There is a bunch more, but I was there with another agenda, which I will report on separately, to my staff, and therefore was not tracking some of the other issues. I expect that others will also give their report. CONCLUSION: For me, this meeting met its goals and I came away with what I wanted. Considering that many important decisions were already made at the Singapore meeting, the debates were somewhat limited. IMHO, this was a good thing. We measured each other and Esther, I feel we know each other better, all of us who were there. However, since each of us were there for different reasons and had diverse expectations, the feeling of accomplishment may not be shared by all. ___________________________________________________ Roeland M.J. Meyer - e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet phone: hawk.lvrmr.mhsc.com Personal web pages: http://staff.mhsc.com/~rmeyer Company web-site: http://www.mhsc.com ___________________________________________________ KISS ... gotta love it!
