GNSO Working Session 28 October 07 ICANN Los Angeles Meeting >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Good morning. Welcome to our second day of open meetings before the meeting starts. This morning basically our agenda includes several things. The first hour and a half will be dedicated to the GNSO reform discussion, and basically a discussion of the latest proposal. Roberto Gaetano has come in, perhaps some other members of the working group. I'm not sure. We'll find out in a second, because I will do the go around and introduce yourself first, but first, while everybody was still settling down, wanted to basically go through the agenda for the morning. After that, we basically have a coffee break scheduled. And then Doug Brent will be coming in to talk about the strategic plan. Immediately after the strategic plan, we'll have a final prep meeting on the Monday workshop, new gTLD recommendations. As always, it's an open meeting. This meeting will really be detailed about the presentation and what people will do in it, so if you don't want to stay, feel free not to. If you do want to stay, that's okay, too. We have a lunch break again 12:30 to 2:00, scheduled, although that final prep will be going on from 12:00 to 13:00, so we'll probably work through that lunch break, or at least those of us working on the recommendations. After lunch, basically the two things we've got are any other business, and after lunch, I'll figure out -- you know, we could talk about what needs to be in that "any other business" bucket, and then we have a period where we'll talk about our preparations for the GAC meeting this afternoon, break, and then we go into the joint meeting with the GAC. I'd like to start, as we did yesterday with going around the room and basically introducing ourselves. Name, affiliation, council, et cetera. Twice yesterday I started with Norbert, so today, Dirk, I'd like to start with you. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yeah. Thanks, Avri. >>AVRI DORIA: You knew that. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: My name is Dirk Krischenowski. I'm from the dot Berlin initiative, and I'm also a member of the business constituency and here as observer. >>ELMAR KNIPP: My name is Elmar Knipp. I'm from Germany, and I'm with CORE, Council of Registrars, and I'm also an observer. >>DAVID MAHER: David Maher, chair of the registry constituency, publicinterestregistry.org, here as an observer. >>PAUL LECOULTIE: Paul Lecoultie from CORE Switzerland, member of the registrar constituency. >>WERNER STAUB: Werner Staub from CORE. >>LIZ GASSTER: Liz Gasster, ICANN policy staff. >>JORDI IPARRAGUIRRE: Jordi Iparraguirre, dot cat registry. >>STEVE Del BIANCO: Steve DelBianco, Netchoice and the business constituency. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Jeff Neuman, NeuStar, gTLD registries constituency. >>ROSS RADER: Ross Rader, GNSO Council member from the registrar constituency for North America. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Kristina Rosette, IPC council. >>UTE DECKER: Ute Decker, council member for the intellectual property constituency. >>DENISE MICHEL: Denise Michel, ICANN vice president for policy. >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: Susan Crawford, ICANN board and member of the working group. >>CHUCK GOMES: Chuck Gomes, gTLD registries, on the council. >>AVRI DORIA: Avri Doria, NomCom appointee to the council and currently chair. >>CARY KARP: Cary Karp, registries council. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Roberto Gaetano, ICANN board and chair of the working group. >>GREG RUTH: Greg Ruth, ISPCP council. >>OLOF NORDLING: Olof Nordling, ICANN staff. >>OLIVIER MUNON: Olivier Munon, France Telecom, ISPCP constituency. >>TONY HOLMES: Tony Holmes, ISPCP and council. >>MARILYN CADE: Marilyn Cade. I'm a member of the business community and a member of the business constituency. >>NEAL BLAIR: Neal Blair, Capital Strategies, member of the BC, and I'm here as an observer. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Alan Greenberg, liaison to the council from the ALAC. >>JON BING: Jon Bing, NomCom appointee to the council. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Mike Rodenbaugh, councillor from the business constituency. >>MILTON MUELLER: Milton Mueller, chair of the noncommercial users constituency. >>BILAL BEIRAM: Bilal Beiram, BC councillor. >>NORBERT KLEIN: Norbert Kline, member of the GNSO Council from the noncommercial users constituency. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Now starting in the back. >>JOHN SCHALL: John Schall representing InterContinental Hotels Group. >>LYNN GOODENDORF: Lynn Goodendorf from InterContinental Hotels Group. >>CLAUDIO DiGANGI: Claudio DiGangi from the International Trademark Association and intellectual property constituency. >>KAREN LENTZ: Karen Lentz, ICANN staff. >>CRAIG SCHWARTZ: Craig Schwartz, ICANN staff. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBSEN: Wolf-Ulrich Knobsen, Deutsche Telekom. >>ILIYA BAZLVANKOV: Iliya Bazlvankov, Association Uninet. >>MARTHA JOHNSTON: Martha Johnston, Go Daddy. >>KHALIL RASHEED: Khalil Rasheed, ICANN staff. >>CONSTANCE BROWN: Constance Brown, ICANN staff. >>DAN HALLORAN: Dan Halloran, ICANN staff. >>STACY BURNETTE: Good morning, Stacy Burnette, ICANN staff. >>MATTHIEU CREDON: Good morning, Matthieu Credon, dot bzh project, here as an observer. >>MARCUS FAURE: Marcus Faure, Council of Registrars. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Do we have anybody on the telephone line remotely? >>RITA RODIN: Yes, Avri and everyone. Good morning. It's Rita Rodin, ICANN board and member of the working group. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Rita. Anyone else on the phone? Okay. Thank you all. Now, basically we did not set a manner of going through this between Roberto and I, basically. We knew the report was coming out, invited Roberto to join us to talk about it. There's no presentation for it. You've all seen it. You've all -- I don't know, Roberto. Would you like to say some initial words about where the process is at and -- and what's going on? And then perhaps we could just start with sort of questions and issues, or -- is that -- or would you prefer to go about it some other way? >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Well, I don't think that it would be necessary to have a long introduction from my part to explain what the report says, because I would assume that, you know, people have read it, and I would like to dedicate more time to questions and to have the answers. There's going to be also a public forum on this, but I think that it's important to have this meeting with the council before we go to the public forum. I -- I don't know. I'll leave it to you. I can say just a couple of things of what -- how we think that the process will go forward, because that was not in the distributed material, but then I think that the points -- the qualifying points of the report will come up from the discussion. Or do you -- if you want, I can give a very quick summary. So it's up to you. >>AVRI DORIA: Actually, I guess it's up to the people that are here in the room. Does anyone have a feeling of whether we should -- I can always put the report up on the screen, so anytime somebody wants to refer to a section, we can go to it, that's useful. But say what's useful. So I have Marilyn and Chuck. And did anyone else want to comment on that? No. Okay. Marilyn, please. >>MARILYN CADE: With all respect for the fact that there are people here from a wide variety of backgrounds and diversity, all of whom are very busy from the community as well as the board, but also from the community who may not have a depth of experience in interacting with ICANN, I think it would be helpful, Roberto, to have a quick walk-through, as well as to have a -- to hear from you and the working group what your proposed approach is to a time line, et cetera. While I've read it a number of times, I'm -- I think that just a lot of people in the room are new or newer, perhaps, to the -- to these processes. >>CHUCK GOMES: And Roberto -- [Microphone feedback] >>RITA RODIN: Hello? >>CHUCK GOMES: Our chair did that. >>RITA RODIN: Hello? >>CHUCK GOMES: Let me. >>RITA RODIN: Hello. >>CHUCK GOMES: We're supposed to talk, I can't right at the moment, but what I was going to is to suggest as to take a couple of minutes to talk about next steps, how this thing will proceed forward because I think everybody will be interested in that. >>ROSS RADER: Actually -- >>DENISE MICHEL: Can you hang on just a second here can catch up. >>SCRIBE: Well, the people on the phone can't hear you right now either. >>DENISE MICHEL: Hang on just a second. Let's see if we can get the mics sorted out. Try it again. [Microphone feedback] >>DENISE MICHEL: No. Now try it. >>RITA RODIN: Avri. >>DENISE MICHEL: Will the remote mic work? So we can get going? >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Testing. Hello. Is that working. >>SCRIBE: Yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: Couldn't prove it by me. Okay. -- oh, now I can tell. All right. Now, what -- I'll repeat my suggestion. I do believe a couple minutes on next steps, how this will proceed forward, is very helpful for everyone. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Did -- okay. Ross, I guess we're passing around a mic now. Is that the -- >>ROSS RADER: I guess so. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>DENISE MICHEL: Let us know when we can try it again. >>ROSS RADER: I'll be economic with my question or my comment. I would just -- I would just hope that we'd keep the executive summary to a minimum, although sensitive to the needs of the newcomers. I don't -- I would like to see us move into a direction where we assume that people have read the documents and then answer questions based on that, so... >>AVRI DORIA: Anyone else with a comment? >>RITA RODIN: Hello? >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Well, so, first of all -- >>DENISE MICHEL: Can you try your other mic now? [Microphone feedback] >>RITA RODIN: Hello? Hello? >>DENISE MICHEL: Is it working? Too much feedback? Okay. Sorry about this, guys. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: This works. Yeah. Okay. So, first of all, the time line. We have produced now this -- what is already a second draft. The first one has been discussed in San Juan, so this is the second draft, and this version that is going to be presented to the public forum. We're going to -- to have this public forum and then we have a period of comments that is already open. At the end of this period of comments, we are going to get the input from the community and come to a final draft that will go through the board governance committee, and present it to the board for approval. We expect the board to be on the agenda of the board for discussion before the end of the year, so roughly in the December teleconference. Although that will depend pretty much on the amount -- the extent to which we need to rework, following the public comment period. If we have extensive rework to do, well, that -- that might entail additional work for the - - for the working group, and so a slippage from December to January, something like this. But I would like to have -- to go into the Delhi meeting with all of -- with a document already approved from the board. This, you will see in the document that it -- it also calls for a period of implementation, and I think that there's relevant work that has to be done in the moment that -- to put those that are concepts into practice, and I think that that will be the focus of our discussion in Delhi, where I would foresee, although I haven't discussed that extensively, I would foresee a public forum that will focus on implementation issues, that are related to the GNSO review report. Having considered -- so achieve the -- the -- what we want to do and go to a phase in which we discuss the "how" we are going to do it. At -- about the concepts that we are pushing in the report, I would say the first important thing that we are trying to do is to put the working group in the center of the stage, so the policy development is going to be done in adopting a working group model, flexible working group model that is inclusive and that works by consensus. And then to have the council to have a role that is more, first of all, strategic in the sense that it has to discuss the broad lines and the priorities, and then also has to monitor and manage the process. But the discussion will happen more, is expected to be more in the working groups than in the council itself. When the council, we are going to achieve a synthesis of what has been done in the -- in the working groups, and -- and the general, I would say, governance of the process. The second element is that the PDP process itself has to be modified in -- by adapting to this process where the working group is in center stage. That will need also a kind of support from ICANN in order to make the policy development process more effective. The -- another point -- I don't know if I'm going in the order -- is the reorganization of the -- restructuring of the GNSO Council. I think that we want to move from a model that is the -- essentially the constituency model to a model by which we have broad stakeholder groups. The rationale for this is that we have seen that over the years, the constituency model, with the possible exception of the elimination -- it is not the right word, but -- of the ccNSO constituency because it originated, spawned a separate supporting organization, but other than that, the model that was adopted in the initial ICANN was a model that was based on constituencies with the idea that new constituencies could be formed when new interests and new stakeholder groups were brought into the picture. And what happened is that even one constituency of the seven that was initially thought, which is the -- a constituency for individual users, has not come to creation and we have seen that the constituency model tends to be -- tends to be ossified in the current composition and it is very difficult to bring to the table new groups, new interests, and, therefore, we think that by having kind of broader interest groups, and what we propose is a supplier side and a demand side which incidentally was one of the ideas that was circulated back in '98, '99, in the formation -- initial formation of ICANN. That was another hypothesis. And then we ended up in this constituency -- supposedly flexible constituency model. So we are kind of going back to that initial idea and trying to develop it and exploit it in a different way. So from the supplier side, we have identified two broad groups, which are the registries and the registrars. I could call them this way, by naming the constituencies. But, in fact, it is basically the people who are managing the back office, the databases that are at the heart of the DNS, which is the registries, and the services that are related to this. And the second group, which is registrars, but is basically the interface with the -- the consumers. And where, for instance, we cannot exclude to have new people and new groups that are going to participate, the moment that we have new services that are provided to the customers. One of the issues that were -- in the debate was what are we going to do with domainers, for instance. Is there room for the constituency or for having this interest group, having their voice in the process. On the consumer side, we have identified the commercial users and the noncommercial uses. The issue of individuals is, you have individuals that can be commercial in the sense that use the DNS for their own commercial purposes, even being individuals and not being an organization, and you have users who might be the majority who are noncommercial who are consumers, I would say, of the Domain Name System. So this is -- this is the idea, and I think that since there's going to be probably a lot of questions on this, I'll skip any further comments in the introduction. So these constituencies will not disappear in this model. Although the council is going to be formed also in terms of the representation of the different interest groups to the council not directly using the constituency model, the constituencies will remain, I would say, as organizations who are homogeneous and who are, I would say, the place where the issues of this homogeneous group will be discussed. A constituency of the registrars, I see that very much like a professional guild of people who are in the business of registering domain names. And so forth for other constituencies. The issue that we touch in the report in terms of the -- of the constituencies is to make sure that we favor the internal processes of the constituencies, that we support it, and that we take actions that are aiming at reaching out to a greater public and I would say to enhance the representivity and the transparency of the work of the constituencies. That is a general objective. And then there's going to be an overarching need, which is the support that ICANN has to provide in order to allow this change that is both a cultural change and a structural change to take place. So we need to -- there are -- I'm just, for instance, making one example that came up earlier this morning at the meeting with constituency leaders. It was the -- for instance, the fact that since we have a bigger role for working group chairs and the working group is becoming the central element in this new vision, there's going to be, for instance, support from ICANN also in order to provide the necessary knowledge and skills to people who are becoming working group chairs. So these kind of things that -- all the things that ICANN will have to provide and that will, of course, have an influence also on the budget of ICANN in order to support this mechanism. I think that's basically what I -- what I wanted to -- >>AVRI DORIA: Do we have mics? We have mics but we still have feedback. Okay. Thank you. I guess the next step would be -- and it will involve passing around the microphone, but the -- starting with questions, now, I have put up the text here, so -- of the whole report, so if anybody wants to, you know, refer to a particular section while we're talking, feel free to tell me what it is and I'll put it up, and I guess in the meantime I should start taking a first queue on people -- >>CHUCK GOMES: I want to make a suggestion on logistics because if we have to move the -- is it okay? Okay. I wanted to make a suggestion on logistics because if we have to pass the mic all the way around the room every time, I wonder if we could locate it kind of at one location and people who want to come and go to that location. Just a suggestion. Because if we have to walk all the way around every time with the mic, we're going to waste a lot of time. >>AVRI DORIA: Sure. And then it's easy. No one's got to -- huh? So if we're doing that, I guess we could start building a queue. >>CHUCK GOMES: We could also -- Tim suggested we could have -- >>AVRI DORIA: Stand in the middle and just go back -- [Speaker is off microphone] >>AVRI DORIA: Anyway, as opposed to arguing over it, perhaps I'll go in the middle with the microphone and walk around to people. Or something like that. Okay. We're did trying an experiment. >>DENISE MICHEL: So we're getting more hand mics. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. [Microphone feedback] >>AVRI DORIA: No. Unplugging the projector doesn't do it. I didn't understand how that was possible, but, hey! [Laughter] >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So I'll take a queue then like normal and I guess you'll walk around to the person. >>MARILYN VERNON: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So of course I don't have a microphone while I'm doing a queue. I've got Alan. So the people remote will not hear me calling the queue, but -- >>ROBERTO GAETANO: And they will not hear your work either so... [Marilyn Vernon [ >>ALAN GREENBERG: I've got to run out -- is this working. I've got to run to another meeting shortly so I appreciate being put on the queue quickly. There is no mention at all of liaisons in this report, any liaisons, and the one place that you think it would be logical in relationships with other -- with other groups within ICANN, it talks only about the chairs of those groups interacting with the GNSO. Are you excluding the concept of liaison or is it just not mentioned anywhere? Well, okay. You don't have to -- >>ROBERTO GAETANO: I'll everything at the end. >>ALAN GREENBERG: That was the first point. The second thing in relation, when at-large is mentioned, what you said before, that users may have business interests or may simply be users, the users of the Domain Name System, that's not what the report says. The report says users can align themselves either with the nonbusiness or the business or nonbusiness constituencies, depending on how they view their registrations, which says the only users are registrants and the other billion or so users don't exist. So what you said was much better. It's not what's in the report, however, and I think the whole issue has to be addressed a little bit. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Do you want to answer questions? >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Do you mind if we take more questions? >>ALAN GREENBERG: I have to leave in 15 minutes, so... >>JON BING: I won't be 15 minutes at least. It just occurred to me, as you set out, the consensus model for the working groups still is the main model of how the working groups are going to operate. At the same time, the GNSO itself will be more strategic, determine broad lines giving priorities and supervise the development of the working groups. I'm sure that you have given thoughts to the alternative model or the working groups being charged with bringing out sharp alternatives explaining the difference between -- or the arguments behind the alternatives to the GNSO and the GNSO choosing between this in a more conventional manner than the consensus, for instance, by voting. That has disadvantages and advantages, and I'm not going to argue that apart from saying, perhaps, it would open up the process a bit more for seeing what's behind the scenes, at least as I have experienced it in some of the limited work I have taken part in. Thank you. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Okay. The first question was about liaisons. No, it's not mentioned because I don't see substantial changes from what we have now. If you are talking about the liaisons from the other parts of the house to the GNSO Council, that will remain the same and the same thing will be for the NomCom-appointed people representative to the GNSO with just one differentiation, and I think it is mentioned somewhere in the report that for what is the appointees from the NomCom, there is a NomCom review pending and so we expect that to say some words. But, no, I think the role of the liaison is if you get to the spirit of the GNSO, the view is even more important because there are other points in the document where we talk about enhanced communication between the GNSO and the other parts of the house. And I think that the liaisons, the bidirectional liaisons into the GNSO Council and going out from the GNSO Council, are very important in order to improve the way the ICANN community is working. The other issue about users, yes, I think that you touch a good point. There is a difficulty that is inherent in the fact that we have some users that are using the -- okay, that we have different two categories of users, of consumers of the domain name system: Those who are, quote-unquote, part of the domain name system because they own a name even if that is not for commercial purposes. And those who use the domain system as a whole for in their activity, personal, professional, whatever. There has been debate on this, but it is true that the letter of the document, the language in the document addresses more the group of them because they are involved in much heavier -- much more heavily in the process because of their specific interests as registrants. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't foresee a role for the users that are not registrants. But there was also a consideration that we had in the early discussion of the working group that we were trying to better define the scope that, as we say in Italy, Rome has not been built in one day which is -- it can be translated in the worse enemy of the good is the better. And I think we want to achieve certain results. The basic issue about users in the broad sense, I think it has to be in connection with the role of ALAC. And the role of ALAC that is cutting across the different parts of the organization of ICANN as an organization is itself under revision. And I think that the issue about users -- general users of the Internet, since those users are not going to be specifically users of the domain name system more than they are users of the address -- I.P. address system, more than they are users of the ccNSO -- ccTLD system. That kind of global view of the user. The different parts of ICANN has to be achieved, in my opinion, by the ALAC. And so we demand this to the ALAC. And that's the reason why it doesn't appear in the report, but it is in the spirit of the report. For the working groups, I'm not sure that I have understood the exact -- the last question. What I would -- then you tell me if I have interpreted well the question. What we are -- the change is in the fact that we don't want -- we don't see the working group as a replicate, small scale of the council where in the working group we have the same interests represented by the different constituencies in the council that is duplicated in the working group so that we have a kind of preliminary model for the working group. I think that this has to be rejected and this is the concept of consensus of policy development by consensus is to -- the fact of having for the working group a model that is more open, more inclusive where you have not only the participation of experts on specific topics but generally speaking of the working group that is open to every different point of view, participation from different point of view. And that is the change that we are proposing in the working group. Whereas, for the council, we see a role that is manager of the global process. Does this answer the question? >>AVRI DORIA: I was asked to try again. Alan, you had -- you wanted to have a quick follow-up and then what I have, I have Tim, Mike, Ute, and I will ask because I won't be saying that if I am passing the microphone -- so when you start talking give your name so that the transcribers got it. So first to Alan. I will add a quick follow-up. Sorry about this. You guys can hear me. >>ALAN GREENBERG: The person I am following up to is talking. Roberto, I wasn't trying to advocate that you individually have a better place on the council or fit here. I was commenting on the term -- on the wording in the document which says individuals may find a home depending on how they view their registration and I was commenting on the fact that all users do not have registrations and the way you read this document, it implied they do and the rest of the billion users don't count at all. I wasn't trying to advocate at-large should be on the council or not. That's a separate discussion. >>TIM RUIZ: My question is more process-related. I apologize if I missed it this morning if it has already been covered because I got in a little bit late. In regard to next steps, I know we are waiting for the public comment period to close and the -- this will be presented to the board and the board will vote. What's the process and, therefore, for the GNSO to gather its thoughts and comments to present those to the governance committee before this is presented to the board? Will there be an opportunity for that? Can we -- do we yet have time to influence any of this at all? >>AVRI DORIA: I actually don't know where that fits in. I was just thinking about that this morning and thinking that at some point we needed to have a discussion. Probably won't have it until Thursday about the GNSO, basically, putting together a response. So Thursday we can certainly talk about how we want to go about it and then we can work out with the committee how that fits in in terms of being in place before the board does its vote. If that makes sense -- I was just thinking about it this morning but hadn't gotten to anything. >>TIM RUIZ: It was on the board's agenda for Friday but not to be voted on. Is that right? >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Let's have another block of questions. >>AVRI DORIA: I have Mike and then Ute. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I'm sorry. I was looking at my computer. This is Mike Rodenbaugh. My question is -- I have done some calculations on this proposal and, obviously, a lot of thought went into it in many respects, and I'm sure as to the numbers that were proposed as well and the voting power numbers in particular. What's painfully obvious to those of us on the business constituency, IPC and ISPs probably is that our votes go from 1/3 down to .21% essentially. Right now we have 1/3 of the votes on the council and we have three times of the votes of the noncommercial users. Under the new proposal, those will go into the balance so the commercial users and the noncommercial users essentially have equal voting power. I'm wondering, what was the rationale for that specifically? >>ROSS RADER: You mean 21, not .21. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: 21%, yes. It just feels like .21. [ Laughter ] >>UTE DECKER: My name is Ute Decker, and I'm from the IPC. I need to make a fairly obvious point, and I apologize. I noticed that the groups as we cast them and restructuring the registries, registrars and registrants. Otherwise, we are talking about users. It seems to me blatantly obvious in a way that there is a business constituency impact that has had this great impact on the work of ICANN so far and also from the intellectual property constituency that has never looked at itself in a way as a user-only or certainly not as a registrant-only but where companies like Microsoft and Yahoo and Google have participated because they are involved in creating the Internet marketplace because they are concerned with the implementation of ICANN decisions. I just want to know whether there is any place where there is refined recognition. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Okay. First of all, on the process, yes, I didn't mention that and it's not formalized but I was expecting the GNSO Council to discuss this report, and I would expect as it happened in the past because in previous rounds we had comments from the constituencies that are different from the comments that we got in the public comment period. And I'm just expecting this to happen, that the council will discuss and if it reaches a common position on a document, that will go to the Board Governance Committee together with all other comments and comments from the constituencies as well are welcome. I think that, you know, whatever can be produced in order to put the BGC in condition to evaluate all the different aspects and all the different points of view is highly welcome. And the document from a GNSO Council are kind of a consensus document and this would be very welcome. So I see this as to come in the early stage and so the reason why I'm saying it should be obvious to the BGC and not to the board is because I expect the BGC to do already a first synthesis of all these comments so that when the proposal goes to the board, it is already well-formed and has already taken into account the different -- but that doesn't mean -- excuse me? >>AVRI DORIA: When would that happen? >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Well, in the same period that we have the open forum for public comment. So I would expect this to go on for the next month or so. I'm not expecting the BGC to make a summary of this before, I would say, the end of December, something like this. So the proposal can go to the board for December. Obviously, I don't want to have this being an open-ended process. But if there is any reason for having to stop for a couple of weeks and think more following the comments that we receive, we will obviously do that. This is a serious moment in the development of our organization that I don't think, you know, adding a couple of weeks to a process that has already lasted a couple of years is going to be detrimental. The voting weight -- the percentage of voting, I don't know how, you know, people have probably different ways of looking at the figures than we had at the working group. As I explained also earlier this morning, if we take the current voting power, quote- unquote, what we have is for the registrars, since there is weighted voting, we have six votes. For the registries, six votes again. And for commercial and noncommercial users altogether, 12 votes, which makes 24. Plus three votes of the NomCom up to 27. So what we have reproduced here is, basically, the same scheme with a supplier side that has a certain number of votes that are not 12 but 8 but could be 12. And the consumer side that has an equal weight of the supplier side. So we have supplier and consumer that are equal, plus the NomCom. For the NomCom, the issue, as I said, will be probably solved with a review of the NomCom but we have to consider those not part of a specific group that is either supplier or consumer because that's not the principle that is guiding the NomCom appointments. Now, we see roughly the supplier side -- we see that split in two even parts, so equal weight for the registrars and the registries but as a first shot because that's, basically, what the situation is now. On the consumer side we say why don't we start splitting the commercial and noncommercial into equal parts. But there is a point that is very clear in the document that says that the council can propose a different setting of those percentages. And that would be discussed. And, of course, there is the sentence that the board -- the final word is with the board, but that's kind of an obvious thing that goes without saying. So there is an opening there for balancing the commercial and noncommercial participation -- user participation, and that is a link into the next question. I would like to comment on the fact that we in the working group saw that there was a kind of incorrect balance between what was the commercial interests and the noncommercial interests and the ratio currently is 3 to 1. There is a huge part that is missing which is the individual users who are by their name to a large extent noncommercial so they are considered in the analysis and there was one consensus that has been always missing. So there is -- we didn't feel like re-proposing the current 3 to 1 ratio as a fair point. We don't know if the 1 to 1 ratio is equally fair. That is for further discussion, but one thing that I would like to stress is that exactly the point that was raised. When we talk about commercial constituency, we have two different roles. We have a commercial organization that has an interest for the simple fact that they are registrants of a certain name that is often the brand -- related to the brand, related to intellectual property interest and that is one thing. And there is another role that they have in the fact that they are providing an added value to the Internet community by the fact that they are developing part of the -- part of the infrastructure in the case of the ISPs and part of the added value services in case of the commercial constituency. We see this the way it is reflected in the current constituency structure as a big problem because how are we going to make sure that in the ISPs or in the business constituency, those two roles can be expressed. I'm not really sure this happens in the current constituency. But, personally, I don't see any problem since this is going to be a flexible model to have a role for commercial organizations and for ISPs that comes from the fact that they are providing essential part of the panorama here of the landscape to organize themselves in the supplier side -- in the supplier side because the ISPs in terms of providing connectivity, they are on the supplier side of the chain. And I see this as the opening that we can give to a more flexible way to have the points of views taken into account in the policy-making process and not related to the organization. In other words, you were mentioning Microsoft. I don't see Microsoft as one point of view. I see Microsoft as a set of different points of views. Microsoft as the owner of Microsoft.com as having an intellectual property issue about the brand name Microsoft and the other brand names that they have. And then I see Microsoft as -- I don't know -- maybe tomorrow as a registrar or provider of, for instance, Internet browsers or whatever, whatever is in the infrastructure. Now within Microsoft, I would expect different people to take different roles because one is more expression of Microsoft. I would expect a lawyer to be linked with the intellectual property that is connected with Microsoft. That's completely different from the developer who is developing and who is enhancing the browser. I'm sure they will have very, very different points of view on how the domain name system should work. And if they come to the council, they will express different priorities. And I think that the flexible model like having broad interest groups will allow Microsoft to have four voices in the process if we take this but located in the different parts of the interest groups that will really reflect what are the interests. So, in other words, what is important is to make the distinction between Microsoft as an organization from the point of view that different parts of this organization can build and can contribute to the process and we do strongly believe that the new model that we propose is more flexible and adapted to have a better view expression of this interest and point of views. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. You can keep your microphone. We have gotten a couple extra microphones. I have got Kristina and Tony on the list. I got Milton. Milton, you had been on the list. I thought you had scratched. You are still there? So I got Milton. >>MILTON MUELLER: I am scratched but I'm back. >>AVRI DORIA: You're back. I got you after Tony. I have Kristina, Tony and Milton. You can, basically, keep a microphone and answer after each one and we will try to hopscotch the microphones around. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Kristina Rosette, IPC. I have two questions, is that at a certain point in the report when it is talking about the configuration of the four stakeholder groups, it indicates that there is flexibility to propose an alternative configuration of the stakeholder groups that comprise the demand side and goes on to talk about how any deviation would need to be approved. I read that to say that any discussion, configuration on the supply side is off the table and I would be interested in knowing what the rationale is for that. The other thing is if I go back to -- as I was reading it, I kept saying proposed action item, council, six months. At the back, when you see this extraordinary long list of to-do items whether it is possible to do all of them simultaneously, it seems to me at least if, in fact, the council is going to have to do everything that's laid out in the time frame that's laid out, that it will do so at the exclusion of all other work. And I'm wondering if that's the intent or not and, if so, why. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Okay. First question, yes, there is a flexibility on the consumer side because that has been perceived as being a real problem and has been anticipated as being a real problem by the working group and so we wanted to make it clear that this model is open. We didn't use the same formulation for the supplier side because the current -- the transition from the current structure seemed to us pretty obvious, at least in first place. So the migration of the two constituencies on the supplier side into those two broad stakeholder groups was straightforward. But probably it is not explicit enough in the document, but we see this as a fairly flexible model that has flexibility also on the supplier side. There has been, for instance, one discussion specifically -- I don't know if it's still in place. Denise might be more precise. But I think that we left that -- in the document, the consideration about the domainer and what is their role and do they have a place in the discussion. That was part of the discussion of the working group will it made it into is the final report or not. That is not the issue. But it is something that we kept in mind. There are new actors that have been created, but it is an extremely dynamic market over the years from the moment that we created the initial constituencies that we cannot think that any part of this organization can be really carved in stone and say this is not manageable to be changed. So, yes, we have flexibility also on the supplier side. That is not explicitly in the report because at least in the initial part of the transition, we don't see -- we don't see any problem in, I would say, mapping registries and registrars in those two initial groups. But there is definitely -- the openness of the model would be amenable to changes. The time line. I would like to point out that one -- in the report, we have identified the fact that -- we wanted to focus the discussion on the "what," and because I think that that will be -- will give us sufficient argument for debate in the next days, and I think that we are going to have plenty of debates in the next days already on the "what." Now, for the "how," we have like drafted an initial plan and we have given figures. We kept those figures short, small, because we didn't want to give the impression that we are going to open a debate that is going to last in the next decade. But we are sure that there are going to be some difficulties in doing things in a hurry. My personal opinion is that we shouldn't -- we shouldn't sleep on it but we shouldn't also -- we should also avoid to have non-reasonable targets. What the report says is that we are going to have kind of an implementation working group. In other words, once we have come to an agreement on the "what," which I hope is going to happen between now and December when the thing is going to be presented to the board, in parallel with this we are going to put in place an implementation working group that the first thing that it has to do is to look at the "what" we need to do and to put together a more detailed and more, I would say, reliable project plan with more detailed deadlines and more accurate evaluation of the resources that are needed. I'm sorry, I'm -- by training and by job, by daytime job, I'm a software developer, and what we do in software development is at the beginning we collect the user requirements and we have a broad picture of what has to be done in the application that we are going to deliver, and once we have a basic understanding from the stakeholders, from the potential customers and so on, of what has to be done, then we start another phase. Then we say, "Okay, what exactly do we need to have in order to put together a plan that will achieve those results, and what is the reasonable time line, what are the resources?" In the initial phase, we only have a broad sense. Now, it might well be that when we detail the plan, we find out that the GNSO Council cannot achieve this in six months. It will take more. We -- we will -- but, you know, it's in any case not going to be an open- ended process, but I think that the task that the implementation working group will have, the first task that it will have, is to kind of revise those figures and to come to something that is -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: More realistic. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: More realistic, yes, exactly. Thank you for the correct wording. >>TONY HOLMES: Okay. Roberto, it's a bone of contention with the ISPs that despite the word that we even have providers inside of our constituency, we're always called consumers, and it seems to be artificial terms that have come about and been put on the table that basically means registries and registrars. It doesn't mean anything more than that, because if you're going to use suppliers, as you mentioned, ISPs are suppliers. And one of the things you mentioned that isn't in the report is this able to stand back and take a broader view of that, and I just want clarification that what you're actually saying is that what's actually put forward here in terms of the groupings of suppliers and consumers isn't written in stone, because if you read the words of the document, it actually mentions the creation of new constituencies. It doesn't mention that existing constituencies could actually maybe change from one group into another and I gather from what you said that that issue was something that was open. So that's one point I want to make. I've got three main points so I'll just give the other two. You also mentioned that it would be possible for council to come back and give some recommendation in terms of the groupings and the voting arrangements that could differ from what's in the report. I think that's absolute naivety, because as soon as you get into a situation where you get winners and losers, you're never going to get any agreement in council to change anything because there will always be winners and losers. So we're never going to get agreement on that in council. You need to take feedback on that point from the constituencies. And the third point is just something I mentioned earlier today, but I will just say in this broader audience, I think the time frame that's set out in this document is incredibly ambitious, particularly some of those things that are aimed to be completed in the longer term in six months are very dependent and have relationships back to some of the earlier items which have been scheduled for three months, and I do support the phased approach. I think it's important that we do have a hard stop date that we have to get this done by, but currently this three months and six months window, you're not going to achieve the quality of the result if that's -- if that's adhered to. So I would just urge some caution there. Thank you. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Yeah. I will take them in the order. First of all, for the ISPs, you are right. The ISPs are on the supplier side. We had looked at the current situation and we were trying to set up the target, but also to have some sort of suggestion for transition. And the current situation is -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that there is a strong link between three of the six constituencies that are somehow already coordinating very much in the cross-constituency. This fact was kind of suggesting that a migration that was keeping this in mind was going to be somehow easier than to start rediscussing the -- for instance, the role of the ISPs. This very question came up in one teleconference where I have asked the working group the hard question: What has been strictly related to management of domain name issues, the contribution of the ISPs? And none of us had a clear idea in the sense that it's something that varies in order to decide the collocation, in order to decide, you know, where they do belong, in fact, and we have those conflicting messages that we receive from the fact that -- I'm saying -- I saw Marilyn is shaking her head so I'm -- you are going to answer to this, but there is one of the many perceptions, one of the views on the elephant is that there is a link between those three constituencies that is there to stay in terms of collaboration, and so that at least in the initial phase that is going to be the likely migration. On the other hand, there's another perceived role, which is, you know, ISPs as providers of the infrastructure, and, in fact, I think that the complete name -- at least as it was in the beginning -- was a provider of infrastructure. [Speaker is off microphone ] >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Still is. Thank you. So now how this can be more effectively played, this role of provider of the infrastructure, in the GNSO, that, to be very blunt, is not my problem, it's your problem. So what we will provide, what we are trying to provide, is a framework where it will be possible to have a better localization of the different interests of the different point of view. So if we have a structure that is inherently flexible, that will give the possibility to the ISPs, and, for instance, let me take one example. BT is an obvious service provider, but is also, as in the case of Microsoft, has brand names, has names that are registered, is a lot of other things, and I'm very sure that within BT, as well as what I said about Microsoft will repeat exactly, changing minor things, for BT. BT will -- how can you say is BT an ISP or is BT -- has IP interests? Have they a registrant's interest? It's a little bit of everything. And what we want is not one unique voice of BT that is sclerotized and built and hard- wired in the process. What we want is to have the possibility for BT to come even with different point of view, and debate inside ICANN, debate inside the GNSO, where what is important is the point -- the different point of view that BT, like any other organization, like any group of interests, will have. So again, the attempt is whether we have reached this target or not. That will come out in this week of discussion. But the idea is to provide a more flexible container where those elements can develop much better than in a rigid constituency scheme. >>TONY HOLMES: Just one very quick comment, if I may on that. You have to clearly -- thank you. You have to clearly separate out the difference between a company perspective and a grouping within the ICANN family. So we have to view the role of ISPs, on one hand, how they fit within the community, how as a company any company participates in any of the relevant groups, where they have a widespread interest, should be down to that company to decide, not for the ICANN structure. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: I mean, you're absolutely right, but I will repeat what I said before, and the way -- what I said for the ISPs, the way BT chooses to participate in that process is not my problem. It's BT's problem. So if they want to have -- to present a unique perspective and to come in ICANN and act as one company, they have to choose where to be. If they choose to have different decisions or different groups within BT come into ICANN with different positions or with different problems, different perspective on the problems that have to be solved, we need to provide a framework that is flexible enough in order to cater for this kind of possibility but then it's obviously Microsoft choice, BT choice or whoever's choice. This is completely flexible. And I think in my opinion, that's the beauty of the model versus -- versus a more rigid. The voting ballot -- yeah. The balance of voting was the fact that we have -- it's very difficult to change. I don't have -- you know, I don't have a solution. I think that we can debate this before the implementation if a different, I would say, subdivision of the voting power. This is, again -- it is something that to me is much more related to the implementation than to the concept. The concept is that we have a flexible structure, and then we trim out the details when going on. If there is the need to rediscuss this balance of voting, for instance, within the consumer side, we will do that. We will do that in the next month. If the -- if a different proposal comes, fine. But, you know, the problem that it's difficult to -- that situations are difficult to change, that is true everywhere, and it is difficult to change, for instance, from this constituency structure to a different model. It's difficult. But I think that we have to -- you know, we have -- you know, to roll up our sleeves and to do this with goodwill and find the solution that is the best one. I don't think that change is impossible. The same way I think that it is possible to move from the present structure to a different structure, I think that it will be possible to change to the new structure, the voting power within the new structure, but I have to say that I'm much more confident that putting the accent in the working groups and the consensus of the working groups and the policy development process as focused within the working groups, that will somehow, over time, take a little bit of heat away from the issue of voting power and make it less relevant in the successful implementation of policy. And so therefore, some of the heat will -- of the interests will also go away from this. Although in the initial case -- in the beginning, that's the reality that we have to live with. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thanks can I -- you needed to go on? Because I wanted -- we had very few minutes -- okay. We had very few minutes and I wanted to get some more questions in. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Just one sentence. In terms of quality, you are absolutely right. I think that our first target is to have good quality, and the second target is to have it done on time. I prefer to put a little bit more time, a little bit more time -- not ten times more -- to achieve better quality. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thanks. At the moment, I've got three more comments and that will be it for the queue unless I've missed somebody. I've got Milton, Marilyn, and Ross. And I'd like to ask for both comments to be succinct and hopefully the answer, because we don't have that much time. So thank you. >>MILTON MUELLER: Okay. Is this on? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>MILTON MUELLER: Okay. Yes. I'd just like to say from the standpoint of the noncommercial users constituency that we do believe that you've achieved a good balance between voting and consensus processes here, and just to follow up on the issue we were just discussing, you do have a flexible container here because at the working group level BT or various intellectual property interests can enter into these working groups in a variety of roles. There's no restriction on how many of them participate. And all of these are well-organized, well-financed industrial interests that can afford to put three or four people, or five or even ten, into the ICANN process. However, at the GNSO level you still need this substrate of representational balance, and if you look at the critical decisions made by the council, you have basically three: The launching of a working group and the defining of its mandate; appointing a chair, which is very important; and reviewing and verifying the working group reports, okay? Now, presumably all of those would take place with an evolvement I want to make one point here and then ask a question to Roberto. The point is, I think that the four constituency structure that you've established at the GNSO level is very fair, very stable, very broad and flexible, and you can't mess with it very much without, you know, getting into a lot of thorny issues. I mean, this idea that there are commercial users and there are noncommercial users and there are supplier interests which are divided into registries and registrars is very basic to the way ICANN is constructed, and I agree with Mike but I think it's a feature rather than a bug that it will be very difficult to change that structure once it's put into place, but I think that that structure is fair. Now, the question is: When this council -- again, you solve a lot of problems by devolving the policy work to the working group. When this council makes those decisions, however, it will need to vote. So the first question is: Would you agree to make the rhetoric of this report a little less tendentious about how bad voting is and how great consensus is, and talk more in terms of exploiting the complementarities between the two. And secondly, have you defined specifically what the voting structure would be? For example, maybe the barrier for launching a working group would be lower than for approving a report. What would be the consensus -- or voting level required to appoint a chair? Those are the kinds of questions, very specific questions. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: I didn't get the second one. What -- the second question, I didn't understand. >>MILTON MUELLER: What are the different voting levels associated with creating a working group, appointing a chair, and verifying and supporting a working group report. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. What I'd like to do at the moment is pass the microphone to Marilyn, get her question, then get Ross' question, and then let Roberto sort of finish up by answering all three of them. >>MARILYN CADE: Roberto, I'm not going to address in detail the points you raised earlier but I will quickly and then go on to my question. The cross-constituency was created originally by me when I was in the BC purely for the purpose of being able to interact with board members and staff as a group to take information. We opened every meeting by saying, "We do not coordinate on decisions; this is merely for informational purposes." We did that because we couldn't get appointments with the senior staff or the board individually as constituencies because they had too many constituencies to meet with. They had to meet with the registries and the registrars and the NCUC and then the ALAC and in respect for that, we created the cross-constituency. Now, we can talk later about whether or not, as a result of taking information, you also develop then information -- an issue about which you do share a perspective. But I have a bigger point to raise. I am -- I'm heartened to hear that there is openness to considering information that can influence the recommendations that are in this report. Because I think that while most of us would support the need for a variety of changes and we support the fact that much of the content in this report is actually built on a cry, a demand for change that has been coming from the council and the constituencies for some time in terms of the PDP, in terms of additional staff support, et cetera, so there's a lot in there that I think you will find a lot of support for. I think Milton identified an area that we should talk more about, and that is if we're going to implement major change in an organization, we need to draw in parties from that organization who can help to inform how the change happens. And right now, we haven't -- we haven't bridged that gap yet, and I -- that's a concern to me. I think it's really important to be able to -- for people on the working group to step back and hear and engage in the kind of outreach you're doing right now, but it's going to have to go deeper than just an exchange here. If you're really going to be able to understand the implications and perhaps unintended consequences and also maybe take advantage of good ideas about how to affect outcomes as opposed to just dictate what an outcome should be. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And Ross? >>ROSS RADER: It's already on. This is actually almost a subpoint to the earlier interchange. You know, I think we can all take roles as suppliers and consumers, depending on what it is that we're supplying and what it is that we're consuming. For instance, I would happily call myself a user of network services. [Speaker is off microphone] >>ROSS RADER: I would happily call myself in my organization a user of network services. I don't think that qualifies me for participation within the user community as it relates to DNS and administration services. So I think that if we're looking at perhaps drawing lines around our interest groups, that we use the scope of ICANN as perhaps the starting point for that, and not necessarily of other related but very tangential services such as network services. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. You've got the final word on it. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Well, I think that -- >>AVRI DORIA: For now. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: -- Marilyn and Milton are saying basically the same thing, and the two questions are -- [Laughter] >>ROBERTO GAETANO: Sorry to make this remark that will upset both of you. [Laughter] >>MARILYN CADE: Or cheer the room. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: But what you're basically saying is that we need to have -- we need to have interaction in the next days not only for trimming details, but also to discuss the issues. You know, that -- I'm completely -- I completely agree with this. I think that that's the good thing about having the ICANN meetings that last a week, and our physical meetings, is because, you know, what cannot be done in a teleconference can be done by using a different time of day at different locations, not excluding the bar, to trim out the details and to have a better understanding. The report, you know -- what the working group has done is has agreed on certain basic ideas, and I think that since -- you know, just make a one-page with a bullet point list with some basic ideas will not bring us very far. We need to put some meat behind and to put some things -- own to make a thick report, because that looks much nicer than a bullet point list. But of course in the next days, we can have substantial integration to this report with consideration about the difference of different type of voting as Milton was suggesting or to have more detailed communication and information from the different constituencies to enhance this report. I don't think that there's any preclusion on this. This is not a take- it-or-leave-it type of document. This is a living document that is in draft form that is out for public comment, so the next phase is to get those comments and to make sure that we understand what is behind those comments, and we can make a -- come up with a better version next. Of course what will not happen is that everybody in this room and outside this room will be 100% happy with what happens, but that's -- that's the beauty of the process because if everybody -- you know, people that are 100% happy tends to be less productive and so this is something that we don't want to have. [Laughter] >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. >>DENISE MICHEL: Just a quick point on public comments. After -- at the end -- towards the end of the L.A. meeting, the working group will determine their exact process for finalizing the recommendations going to the board governance committee and we'll make sure that all of you in the public, of course, is aware of what the specific time line is. Currently an end date was not issued in soliciting comments on this latest draft of the report. I think there was an error when Kieren mentioned November 10th on the public participation Web page, but we will make sure when the time line is set by the working group and the BCG that you're all informed and continued public comments are welcomed. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I want to thank you for coming in and discussing it. I want to encourage all of us to participate in the -- I guess it's tomorrow, a workshop on it, and we'll talk about it as a council more on Thursday as to how we're going to proceed with any comment that would actually come from the council in addition to any that's coming from the constituencies. Again, thank you and to all the committee for coming and discussing. Break time. [Applause] >>AVRI DORIA: And thank everybody for working so nicely with the hand-held microphones and dealing with it. I appreciate it. [Break] >>AVRI DORIA: Hello, hello, we've got microphones again and I'd like to start so people, please find your seats. Okay, that was one time. Hello? We're going to start the session now on strategic plan so everyone that's interested in that particular session, please find a comfortable seat. The microphones are working again. They've replaced the whole system so that's really good. I babble on a bit until I find that people have actually gotten to their seats so it is just, basically, the talking that seems to motivate things. Anyhow, Doug Brent has come in to, basically, speak to us about the strategic plan overview and to give us an opportunity to comment on it. And we've, basically, dedicated the next hour to this topic. So, Doug, I invite you to start. >>DOUG BRENT: Thank you. Can everyone hear me okay? I use my deep radio voice here to try to reach out. Craig told me that I had to inject big energy into this because you have had a couple -- two tough hours. I will say I also think it was bad to start Sunday of an ICANN meeting a little tired, so I will do my best. Just quickly introduce myself. I am chief operating officer of ICANN. I have been at ICANN a little less than a year and often I think people say, Well, feels like five. It feels like four months to me. It has just been an intense time of deep learning. And this is my third ICANN meeting. It is my first time through this strategic planning process. Sitting behind me and to my right shoulder -- I don't know if that positioning is symbolic -- is Patrick Sharry. Patrick is a consultant who has worked with ICANN over many months on a bunch of different projects and has been heavily involved in the past in the strategic plan process. This year he and I have sort of run it together, and I will probably be taking a bigger lead going forward in running the strategic plan process. So with that intro, I will just dive in. So what my hope would be through this next hour, and I would guess the presentation I have will take about 25, 30 minutes if I don't get too discursive and really looking for your feedback. But if I had to say anything in terms of what my goal would be, would be to spark your interest on behalf of you all, the constituencies you represent, is to read the plan, get your feedback and there is still time to get feedback. So I may say this a few times. My personal goal would be that people do get an opportunity to read the plan. It is posted. The draft is posted right now. So we'll definitely take direct feedback. I have asked Patrick if he can scribe down notes as we get it from you. Additionally, many of you know that there are several consultations planned in person for this week -- so obviously we're meeting now with you now, GNSO Council -- SSAC, registries, registrars, NCUCs, ISPs this week are all set up as well. And so I think probably many of you -- I was going to use Kurt Pritz's six-month arrow chart but if I show the full planning cycle and use that, I have to pay Kurt a royalty. So I chose not to use that chart this time, but I think you are all quite aware that ICANN goes through these two six-month planning cycles. First, the strategic plan cycle. We are in that right now. Starting January 1 we will be in the an operating plan cycle and these things feed into each other. We are currently finishing off on the strategic part. In San Juan, consultations began on this strategic plan, multiple languages, posted comments and that happened in the early summer months, early summer in northern hemisphere months. The responses were put into an issues paper. That issues paper was posted in September. We actually reached out to some constituencies. This is off the top of my head. I'm looking at David. I think we talked -- wherever he is. I think we talked with the registries and registrars at that time. That's my recollection. But, anyway, we did do several telephone consultations. Posted a draft of the strategic plan on October 19th in six languages simultaneously and seeking comment now as some of the forms already mentioned to you. In addition, there will be a multilingual session on Wednesday. Just so you know sort of how it fits into the process, on the 10th of November we will close input on the plan. That means if, for example, constituencies still wanted to hold a teleconference -- I think people would be pretty tired -- but if people wanted to hold a teleconference after the ICANN meeting before November 10th, we could certainly do that or take any of your individual comments before that time. A final plan will be prepared and presented for approval to the board in December, in the December board meeting. So, again, with my focus to be sparking your interest to actually read the plan, why should you care? This is a little bit of a bottom-up view. At least my experience at ICANN so far has been that -- I'll say at a staff level, at a community level, board level, I think at many different levels, people are looking for greater clarity about what ICANN is committing to do and what we actually get done. It seems like sort of basic goals, but I think that's very important to the community. I will claim, although I don't think you will have seen a lot of this yet that we're building on past good work. We are making a lot of progress there. That sort of basic accountability of promising to get things done and then actually getting them done at an individual or a functional level is really tied up to this idea of an operating plan that we agreed to as a community. And that operating plan is driven by the strategic plan. I would like to think that the strategic plan could become a community roadmap for ICANN that would be driving the operating plan, individual, community, constituency and staff action. I'll tell you, I have never been involved in my life in a strategic plan process that wasn't top-down. So I think a big challenge that ICANN faces is how you adequately represent community interests and input. I think I read in some of the GNSO improvement work people are considering how a GNSO strategic plan would fit in with an ICANN strategic plan. And I think an interesting question is, what's the right place to start there? Is it to start with an overall ICANN strategic plan or to use a GNSO plan to inform the overall ICANN plan? But, I guess, I'm saying the reason why we should care is ultimately -- and we will get better at this every single year -- that this strategic plan should be our roadmap that will be driving our work. The format of this plan looks very much like previous plans and let me just sort of lay it out for you so you can have that in mind as you read it. It is, first of all, looking at sort of the core mission vision values of ICANN. Somebody said it looked a little bit to them like a Soviet five-year plan where you were giving fealty to the party. I actually think it is important to include those mission, vision values as an important part of how you get started in forming the plan. The second looks at environmental and organizational challenges. So you will see a section in there on that. That's been there. This year we've put a new emphasis -- in fact, I think the ISP constituency gave us this very clear feedback, to really see if we could really put priorities in the plan and have made an attempt to do so. You will see a section in there on priorities. Then what I almost like to consider connective tissue in the plan which is some specific operational deliverables that you could look back at those priorities and say, These priorities shouldn't be just a seance or shouldn't be a tea leaf reading to figure out what these priorities mean in terms of actual action. So starting with the strategic plan context, the environmental and organizational challenges that are identified are much the same as last year. I don't think that should be a dramatic surprise. I think the thematic difference you will see this year and -- certainly, this has been feedback from everyone I have talked to about the strategic plan -- is the impact of new IDNs and the new gTLD process. You know, given that I am a man, this is maybe not the exact right comment to make, but my wife went through this experience of when we were having our first child, all the focus was on labor and deliver. Then you realize you have a child that you will have for the rest of your life to take care of -- and I don't want to say that was the easy part but that was the more deterministic part. The next 18 years are a little bit harder. I think as a community we have been looking at this new gTLD process. And, obviously, the people in the role have played a great role of leadership there. It is very, very hard to get that done. In this three-year time frame, we are really looking beyond that to where this will be implemented and the challenges of making this a routine process for really working for the community, same goes for IDNs. Within this -- I think an interesting sort of context piece is within this strategic plan time frame, we'll be moving away from planning for these things. These will be an operational reality and the impact it will have on ICANN community from a multilingual port of view, from a scope and scale point of view, from an efficiency point of view in terms of achieving a goal where -- I think I've heard Bruce Tonkin say hours would be an appropriate time frame for getting a new TLD operational and approved. I would like to say maybe days or some kind of reasonable target in this time frame. In terms of the plan priorities, I will go through these in a little bit more detail and then again go towards discussion. Bruce, did I misspeak? >>BRUCE TONKIN: Keep going. That's fine. [ Laughter ] >>DOUG BRENT: Thank you. So strategic priorities, number one is this idea of implementing IDNs and new TLDs. Hopefully, that's a way from planning for or planning the process of but during a three-year time frame implementing them. This idea of continuing to improve core operations is essential. And I think that certainly all the people I talked to about ICANN want to see us be a well-run, efficient operating organization and I'd like to see that up there. You can also check my mail status as I talk. This is sort of what I wake up concerned about every day in terms of my day-to-day work. Strengthening the multi-stakeholder model. I think one of the challenges again will be demand is increasing on work. I saw an interesting comment not -- it wasn't on the strategic plan but on the management operating principals by the Canadian government officials saying, I see additional transparency and accountability in the ICANN model but there is just too much work. We as a community can't focus on all of the work. We need priorities. I don't think I have ever talked with someone associated with ICANN who felt like they weren't busy enough. So I think this -- strengthening the multi-stakeholder model in a way that can handle the scale of work ahead is important. I think security and stability we have here as the fourth item in this list, again, I would say in terms of the individual consultations I have been involved with, the number one that comes up is new TLDs and IDNs. Number two is security. And then, finally, the areas of accountability and governance. And as I said, this sort of strategic priorities I think is two pages long, pages 10 and 11 maybe to be -- is my recollection. So if you didn't want to read anything else, I would go back and read page 10 and 11 and give us your comments based on that. The remainder of the plan are these sort of bullet points -- operationally oriented bullet points just so you can sort of tie those strategic priorities to something more real. I'm going to click through just one level into each of these top-level bullet points implementing IDNs and new TLDs. I don't think there is anything that I can say to anyone in this room about the challenges there. I think you're all well ahead of me on that. But the basic points are to support the necessary policy development implementation. I think that it would be great if we could state a community goal around these implementations so it is more than implement. The words we use so far is rootinize the new TLD and IDN process. Make that part of our normal course of business and so it is not a major ad hoc piece of work to get something done. The policy development implementation. Have processes internally to support that so when you think about even simple things like would we have an application. I say "simple." It is on Craig's list. What would be the application process look like? How could we enable that to be fast and efficient? Sort of the day-to-day processes necessary to support these things, the computer resources and people. Obviously, resolving remaining technical issues and questions. And in the context of what could be -- I know there is different views all over the map, much greater scale and certainly a challenge of the multilingual Internet. I am personally excited to see these dot test strings in the root. I think we have already gotten good feedback and some really good test results out of that. I think it is particularly interesting that even with a lot of checking and lot of thought ahead of time there was debate about how to spell "dot test" in Arabic. I think that's just emblematic of the fact of the challenges ahead of us. And I'm so glad I am sitting next to Cary with what I say, I think that's so important. I do. This idea of continuing to focus on core operations. It is the candidates that you would expect to see. Internally, it is IANA, registry, registrar and contractual compliance. Again, what I think you'd hope to see from ICANN there are ever-more defined sort of goals for processing times for the kinds of requests, more rootinized requests, more automated systems to support those things in the context of growing scale and scope. This third priority in terms of strengthening the stakeholder model, there is a bunch of elements. Obviously, the GNSO Council right now is heavily involved in this review process. Probably participation is number one. And who our community is is likely changing during this three-year time frame as well. So as we get more and more multilingual, I know the ccNSO this week is going to be talking about outreach they did around IDNs, which cc's were interested in what kind of response. I have seen some preview of these results and it is striking the difference in sort of intensity among the English sort of ASCII world and the non-English, non-ASCII world in terms of the importance of IDNs. I think our community is going to be changing. How we get the right participation from that -- those new groups is going to be very important. An item on the strategic plan that's been there for many years is capacity building but through local partnership. Obviously, ICANN is not going to be in the business of building fibers, which is capacity buildout. But the idea that still ICANN has contributed through the regional liaison network to government interactions as well as -- government interactions as well as supporting CCs and training and other activities. Looking at organizational systems internally within ICANN, how can we be more efficient. One of the -- I.T. is part of my responsibility to ICANN and we have a long way to go. One of the questions I always ask is what could we being do better in terms of simple things like setting up conference calls for GNSO Council meetings or more broad outreach with technology and technology systems. And then organizational capability which I think starts with better organizational capability within ICANN staff, but I think that there is some interesting connection points beyond the staff into the community for how we could develop an overall community organizational capability. Security and stability. I'd say this is an interesting one because I think it is within the first few words of ICANN's core mission that we're about the security and stability of the DNS. It is also true, I think, of all the consultations I did, this came up within the first few words as a key area. I think where there's not, you know, an uniform view within the community is what exactly ICANN's role should be. And I think that certainly during the time frame of this strategic plan over the next three years, the threat environment is changing. I think also it is very important for us as a community to decide what ICANN's role is and what we should be doing when. The easy ones are -- certainly the first three letters of DNSsec are DNS. This is a critical capability for ICANN to implement and provide some leadership in. I don't think there is a lot of debate around that. You know, we have this -- just announced this week that the "L" root -- the multi-cast implementation of "L" root was accomplished and ICANN has done some additional work there. Really good question whether ICANN should continue to grow that or not, but that is another obvious step of where we are in becoming an adequate and capable root server operator. I think there is an opportunity for analytical work in looking at data from root server operation and other areas in terms of examining issues of DNS, stability and resilience. And playing a role -- again, my feedback in talking to several people in the community in these consultations is, again, not clear yet what that role should be in terms of the IPv4 to IPv6 transition. It is definitely in conjunction with the RIRs to reach some kind of view on that and within this strategic time frame This notion of accountability and governance, again, as a guy that has been involved with ICANN for less and year, I have certainly heard the word "accountability" probably more times in this last year than in my entire commercial life. I think it is a key element of what we're trying to do internally and I think as a community. We have a March midterm review of ICANN's JPA arrangement with the U.S. government. That will be an important checkpoint and I think an opportunity to review again public accountability. But I don't think -- this will be -- this is what I call a hygienic engagement. It is something that will never end for ICANN. We will always be looking to get better in terms of transparency and accountability. And again in the plan it identifies as many areas of possible focus. An ongoing question being what is ICANN's appropriate global nature and role and how do we play that? So just a couple of observations. I will say this is -- maybe falls more in the category of personal observation than necessarily representing a community view. But some personal observations in my interaction with people on the strategic plan is -- I think people are recognizing that there is going to be a far-reaching impact of both new gTLDs and IDNs and probably in ways that we haven't even thought of. It is both -- scale in everything we do. One of the things I note is how many delegations get done through the ICANN board per year and you start to think about the kinds of activity levels we're going to need to really enable new gTLDs. It will be significant. I think I've mentioned this already, but the security and stability concerns are on the forefront and determining ICANN's appropriate role is of significant interest and concern to the community. How we interact with the non-English speaking world in terms of contracts, complaints, compliance will be a major issue. And I think it is just clear, you know -- I will say taking one part of ICANN that I think is pretty undebatable, IANA has clearly improved its operational performance to the point where one of their objectives for this -- for this meeting is to roll out a beta version of an online root zone management tool. And it has been very difficult to get country code operators to sign up for the beta of this tool because, basically, their view is it is working pretty well right now. So the demand for the tool was dysfunction. And at this point, it is functioning well enough that it is hard to get people to sign up. I would like to make that true for all areas of ICANN, that we're seeing that kind of improvement in our operational performance. Just some high-level feedback. There is quite a bit posted on the Web site already. Some of it has come from the constituencies of the GNSO, some from outside. And I expect we will see more. I think this idea of priorities is very important that ICANN needs to identify priorities. Wants and evolution toward accountability globally beyond the current U.S. engagement with the U.S. government and as a California corporation. There is a rapid pace of domain market changes and will ICANN be able to respond in a timely way to those changes. And then I think that there is an overall question, you know, that one of the comments online was the plan is not a plan. How do you evaluate a plan like this? And I think ultimately how we measure the success of the strategic plan -- I think the operating plan is a little easier. The operating plan says we're going to get it done by this time, and that's easier to measure. How we judge success within the community of the strategic plan itself is a good topic for discussion. So that was about my half-hour. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Basically I'd like to start taking a queue now on people that have questions, comments. Where would I like to start? I see Marilyn. Anyone else? Okay. Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Thanks, Doug, and I should say also thanks, Kurt. For some of us we've come a very long way since the first meeting in Amsterdam when the community received the first strategic plan after I think it had made it to Version 19 before we saw consultation and outreach and we've come a very far way to the point where this is an instantiated process and there are a number of iterations and opportunities for the community to provide input. So I want to start out as I hope I always do by thanking all of you for significantly strengthening and improving the process by which we can provide input. I do want to make a comment about a couple of things in the strategic plan that I am concerned about. Looking across all of ICANN as a member of the business community -- not as a member of the business constituency, but a member of the business community, one of the things that I think we haven't properly done yet as a community is to incorporate into our active work and thinking assessing what's in here, what it means about changing and guiding ICANN's directions and really making sure that we are then participating actively in responding and developing input on programs. There's lots of shifts and changes, and all good directional changes that are reflected in the strategic plan, but we as constituencies or as participants haven't fully yet incorporated your process into our time cycle, so I say this because I think it's something for all of us to be aware of, and then to think ourselves about how we can better contribute. There's a call for increased participation with other stakeholder groups. Many of the participants in ICANN have a lot to contribute in terms of helping to identify who to do outreach with or who to draw into participation, and that's something that I think, you know, we have to take seriously and think about how we can contribute to that. On the question of ICANN's proper legitimate and pragmatic contribution to the larger question of CIIP and cybersecurity, that's another area that I think takes further thought by all of us, not necessarily within this room, by the way, but more broadly. And it's a question that's being debated right now by business generally everywhere: What is the role of business? How do we deal with bot net attacks, how do we deal with the significant growth in the placement of malware through on line advertising? All of those things. How do we deal with fast flux? So I'm hoping that perhaps for something like this, which is not yet defined, you might be thinking about a specific in-depth forum at which that topic could be scheduled and it would be possible for many of us to then reach into our companies and bring the chief security officer or the CTO or, you know, a broader group of parties who have specific interests and expertise and heavy involvement already in that area, because I do think it's going to be important to figure out where ICANN participates and how it participates, realizing that it will have a very limited but very critical contribution, and a lot of it is going to be then done through a circle of friends, and participating with a circle of friends. >>AVRI DORIA: Please do. >>DOUG BRENT: Can I just respond? So thanks very much. You know, for those comments. Just two quick responses. One which I forgot to mention that if you look at the posted comments on the strategic plan that are on the Web site posting right now, there are several specifically related to security and security more broadly, so that may be -- you know, that may be something to point people's attention to as well. And while -- well, Marilyn this is not exactly on point with what you said. I think this whole idea of how the community gets engaged early in all of these processes is really important. Concretely in terms of the budget and operating plan in this next cycle, we're going to do the budget and the operating plan, at least thematically at the same time. So what's happened previously is we've done an operating plan, then done a budget, then approved it. The goal is that by the -- by the time we hit our February meeting, to have a high-level view, a thematic view of operating plan and budget, to get -- so the community can have more time to review that. If we can think of other ways -- we've really, I think, made a lot of effort, you know, work that others have done -- not that I've done, but made a lot of effort to get this early input into the plan. Still, I think the reality is, until the community sees a written plan, they don't feel like they have much to react to and feels time-crunched at the end. So if somebody has some -- you know, I would love to get great ideas on what we could do better in terms of that input, but anyway, I just want to provide those two comments. Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Are there any other comments? Questions? Issues that people would like to address at this point? Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Sorry. I have one comment that is specific to the GNSO that I think does have budget implications, and that is, for some time now the -- it's my view that the GNSO is significantly under-resourced and there's been a lot of -- there's been a lot of effort to change that, but I'm just going to give you an analogy. I think somewhere around 70 plus percent of the revenue to ICANN comes through the GNSO. I don't believe -- [Speaker is off microphone] >>MARILYN CADE: I would have thought it was more like 90 as well, but I was -- [Speaker is off microphone] >>MARILYN CADE: Okay. So it's more like 90. Okay. Well, I'm even more worried. There's a lot of improvements in strengthening the participation in the GNSO that need to come around, including more expense in budget, and that includes, I think, creating a stable travel fund for participation by representatives from the stakeholder community within the GNSO to the face-to-face meetings and to intersessional meetings. I think it includes establishing a dedicated legal support team to the development of the GNSO's work. You know, not just drawing on resources that are there, but really looking at if -- if this is a business unit, if I were running a business and if 90% of my revenue came from one of -- one business unit, every day the thing that would worry me is the structural support that's needed in order to help my business unit perform at an optimal level. So, you know, I don't -- and we've talked for a long time about the need for a travel budget, et cetera. I don't know if it you need more work from us to define what that would look like and what the policy would look like or if it can come the other way, but I think it does have budget implications and I think, you know, we've all benefitted from the support you've already provided, the fact we have realtime transcription is a major contribution to helping the GNSO reach not only our English-speaking participants who can't come in person, but non-English-speaking. There's a lot of support you're already providing. But establishing a travel budget and a stable travel budget and providing the kind of stable, perhaps centralized, support to -- that's proposed in some of the GNSO review clearly has budget implications and perhaps the question is: You know, do you need more work from the GNSO community or do you want to come at it with a proposal that comes the other way? >>DOUG BRENT: Yes. So I think the answer to that is: We'd love to work with probably not everyone at the same time but some subset of the GNSO as we get to putting the budget together for next period. So the sort of short, easy answer to that question is: Yes, Marilyn, I think that's a great idea. I think that the specific answer to that question -- again, probably everyone here has more ICANN history than I do, but my sort of understanding of history is, ICANN didn't have my money so it was really he easy to answer the question, who should -- what should ICANN pay for? Well, we don't have any money, so it's an easy answer. I think that, you know, now that ICANN has greater financial resources, I think it's going to be important for us to have well-thought-out answers to the question of who ICANN pays travel, under what circumstances, and how, and that's a bigger question than -- it certainly it's very important for the GNSO but I'd say that's, you know, broadly an important question. Just within the last week, we updated and refined an internal staff expense policy, and it's my personal goal -- although I think this is reaching high -- that in the next couple of months, we get that for the board and for all constituency groups and be able to answer the question in a -- not an ad hoc way, but in a principled sort of parametric answer to who travels when. Obviously that's not a -- that's not a staff decree. I'm just saying I think we need to collect that and make that clear. But we're -- but we'd love to work with you on budget for next year, too. And I think the -- I don't know who the appropriate -- I mean, I guess the right sort of senior staff contact for that would be Kurt. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. And certainly as a GNSO we'll talk about coming up with a small group of people -- >>DOUG BRENT: Yeah, that would be great. >>AVRI DORIA: -- you know, that could do that with you, as opposed to trying to talk to all of us about it at the same time. Are there any other questions or comments for Doug at this point? Okay. How many of us have read the strategic report at any time? [Show of hands] >>AVRI DORIA: That's really good. I mean, you can't always have read the latest version of it, but... [Laughter] >>AVRI DORIA: That's what I meant. Not that you read it in any year, but -- >>MARILYN CADE: [inaudible] >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, so it's getting easier. >>DOUG BRENT: Just read Pages 10 and 11. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. That's a good start. And so if there are no other questions or comments at this point, and there aren't, I thank you for coming and talking to us, and I'm hoping that people will follow up with comments and so on. Thank you. >>DOUG BRENT: Great. Thank you very much. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. [Applause] >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. We've finished that a bit early, which is good. Now the next thing we had on the agenda -- and I don't know if we're ready for it or whether we should -- because some of the people aren't here yet, is working on the preparation for the discussion. But one of the things that I do have on the schedule for later, and that I perhaps -- while people are sitting here -- would like to take an opportunity to look at, is I did have that blank "any other business" chunk of time. Now, I don't want to start on those issues now, because people may be planning to come here for that then, but I basically wanted to see what issues there were that people would like to spend some time on in that time slot. Now, one of the things we do need to do is go through the slides that I've been preparing for the GAC joint meeting, and I've reserved a half hour for that. Now, one of the things that is in those slides, at least that I'm proposing putting in those slides, is our -- a summary of responses to the ccNSO GAC board questions about IDN ccTLDs, so it occurs to me that it might be worth spending a little bit of time in that "any other business" looking at the work that the group went away to do some wordsmithing on, and see if the general group is comfortable with that wordsmithing. I understand that it's just been sent around to the members of the council, so that will be one chance to basically look at that. We might want to talk about GNSO reform a little. Not so much the specific issues, but how we want to start thinking about approaching a response. Certainly the constituencies will be responding in their own way, in their own manner, but whether there is something that the council as a whole wants to try and produce a response on, and how we want to go about doing that. For example, it may not be on particulars, such as voting balances and such as that, because that might be tough to do in the council at large, but certainly we might have something to say about how a transition plan might be set up, and how all of that sort of not getting into the details of the "what" but starting to look at sort of the "how." We could certainly talk some more about, you know, whether we want to or how we want to set up a small group to deal with strategic plan issues. Do people have other -- any other business issues that they think we should try and at least touch on in today's meeting? We can certainly talk a little bit about some of the things that are going to be on the issue Wednesday, just to make sure that we know what we're up to. Any suggestions from others? >>CHUCK GOMES: I can pop up the executive summary, maybe. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. We could actually pop up the executive summary and look at it now, since we're sitting here and have 20 minutes until our next thing and it's not we had lots of spare time for getting things done. I'm really grateful to the people that went off and actually spent time outside of this meeting, given that we've spent so much time inside this meeting, doing the wordsmithing. Yeah. [Speaker is off microphone] >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, you were just waving to Chris. Okay. So that -- because Chris was the last person we were waiting for? >>CHUCK GOMES: Uh-huh. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So before moving to talking about the session on new gTLDs and letting everybody that's not interested in that and have a nice long lunch, are there any other items that people would like me to put on the "any other business" topic. I mean I'll bring it up again when we're opening that section of the meeting at 2:00, but in the meantime, also what I'd like to do, if it's okay with people, is I'd like to sort of switch around and since I'm including some of the things on the slides, at 2:00 start with the GAC GNSO slides, because that may bring up some issues because the things that we've got on the agenda there are status on domain tasting, status on IGO domain names, status on WHOIS, and then open discussion about IDN ccTLDs. So perhaps in just going through the slide set that I first created, it will bring up issues that are kind of like any other business issues. If that's okay with people. Does anybody object to my shifting around the agenda that way? Cool. In which case, if there are no other things to add to the "any other business," I'd like to end this part of the meeting. I'd like to thank the transcribers who have been with us for the day and a half but won't be with us starting with the next set of meetings. And stop long enough to regroup and then start our -- that wasn't me. [Laughter] >>AVRI DORIA: Really, it wasn't. And then start our preparations for the workshop. >>CHUCK GOMES: And just a comment in that regard. I certainly would appreciate it if all the councillors at least stayed for the preparation session. Obviously, the panel members are really important, but all of us, as councillors, it's important that we're all on the same page in terms of the -- how the workshop comes off on Monday afternoon, so if you can, anyone else is welcome, so don't feel like it just has to be restricted to those, but panelists, first priority, and all the council members certainly would be encouraged to attend. >>AVRI DORIA: And he's chairing that meeting. So in which case, thank you, and those that are going for lunch, bon appetit.