[council] DNSO meetings in Yokohama

["Andrew McLaughlin" <mclaughlin@pobox.com>]

To the Names Council:

This email is to outline the scheduling constraints for the Yokohama
meetings, and to make a few suggestions on how to handle them.

1.  It would be extremely helpful for the NC to designate a single contact
person for Yokohama scheduling and rooms purposes.


2.  The meeting spaces for the ICANN meetings are generously being organized
by JPNIC, in the same location as the follow week's INET 2000 conference.
In order to accommodate various Director schedules, the ICANN Board has
scheduled its public forum for July 15 (Saturday) and its meeting for July
16 (Sunday).  The JPNIC/INET 2000 organizers have been able to secure
meeting spaces for July 14 (Friday) to July 17 (Monday), including a variety
of room sizes and arrangements.  This means, however, that the ICANN Public
Forum and Board meetings will fall on days 2 and 3 of the 4-day meeting
sequence, rather than on days 3 and 4.

There is an important practical consequence to this particular schedule:
The DNSO NC, GA, and constituencies are free to meet prior to July 14
(Friday), but ICANN and the local organizers will *not* be able to provide
meeting spaces for free.  Thus, if any of those groups wants to meet outside
the July 14 to 17 window, you must make your own arrangements with your own
meeting venues (perhaps a local hotel in Yokohama).


3.  In light of the foregoing, let me make the following scheduling
suggestion:

July 14 (Friday):
         - DNSO GA (morning)
         - DNSO Names Council (afternoon)

July 15 (Saturday):
         - ICANN Public Forum

July 16 (Sunday):
        - ICANN Board (morning)
        - DNSO Constituencies (afternoon;  morning also?)

July 17 (Monday)
        - DNSO Names Council (morning)
        - DNSO Constituencies (afternoon, if needed)
        - DNSO Working Groups (afternoon, if needed)

The foregoing is *only* a suggestion, and is designed to respond to the
often-expressed opinion that it would be good for the Names Council and
Constituencies to have more than just a single meeting in each meeting
sequence -- in other words, a chance to go back and forth a little.  Thus, I
contemplate that the NC will meet before the Board meetings, to work on any
matters that require input to the Board;  and then to meet again after the
Board meeting, in order to work on future matters.  In addition, I provide
time for the constituencies to meet on Sunday afternoon, and again on Monday
afternoon if needed.

Dennis has informed me that the ccTLD constituency needs two days of solid
working time.  Accordingly, further ccTLD constituency meeting time could be
scheduled on July 18 (Tuesday), if needed.


4.  I have copied Masa Maruyama and Yumi Ohashi of JPNIC on this email.
Rather than flood our kind and generous local hosts with numerous (possibly
conflicting) requests for meeting space, let me again urge that the Names
Council appoint a single person to serve as a central point of contact for
DNSO scheduling (times and numbers).


Best regards,

--Andrew