Re: [council] upcoming teleconference thursday september 21

[Michael Schneider <sastre@anwalt.de>]

Ken,

In principle I agree with you that it makes sense to postpone the 
conference call for a week. Unfortunately, I'm leaving on Friday for a 
two-week vacation, so that I won't be able to take part (my last extended 
vacation was just a year ago, when we spent days electing the DNSO Board 
members, and ever since my wife's been somewhat allergic to NC calls ;-) My 
proxy goes to Hiro Hotta, or, if he's not present, to Tony Harris. In case 
Tony's not there, then it goes to you.

I have just a couple of comments on the proposed agenda.

 > 1. Current financial status

We've made some progress now in the ISP Constituency, and we've found a 
solution to the problem that members feel they need an invoice for their 
subscriptions (most people aren’t really happy with it, admittedly, but 
nevertheless it is a solution). I've asked a partner in my law firm to 
collect the money in a trust account and issue invoices. The first 
oustanding sum is now being transferred, and the second will follow soon. 
We now have commitments for most of the amount, although we're still 
missing a couple of thousand USD. I'd be quite happy to have the law firm 
advance the money (as we did with the first 5K), but only when we have the 
entire amount virtually in the bag.

 > 2. Plans for November ICANN meeting (rooms, webcast, finances etc)

It would certainly be a good idea for us to discuss the question again 
after the NC mission. This doesn't have to be at the public meeting ­ and 
certainly not in the unfortunate way that we did it last time ­ but the 
issue is important to me. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get 
on your nerves with this, but I (and, I believe, my constituency as well) 
would like to be clear about what we see as our task.

Currently, a majority seem to feel that we simply pass on questions from 
the Board to working groups and committees, then establish if and on what 
points a consensus has been reached, and report back to the Board on this. 
This wasn't exactly how I understood it originally, but if this is the 
general view, then that's how it is. However, we do need to get the message 
across very clearly to the outside.

My reading of section 2 of the ICANN Bylaws was different. For me, "the NC 
is responsible for the management of the consensus building process of the 
DNSO" in section 2b suggests a significantly more active role than that of 
a mere catalyst. Again, "Constituencies or GA participants may propose that 
the NC consider domain name policies or recommendations" in 2c meant for me 
­ as I explained very clearly at the last NC meeting ­ that we concern 
ourselves with policy issues of substance if a Constituency feels this is 
necessary.

The key question, as became evident at the last NC meeting, is how we deal 
with complex issues where recommendations are needed in an iterative 
process. Do we just answer the first question and leave everything else to 
the Board ? Surely this can't be the purpose of the exercise.

 > 6. Potential future individual constituency involvement

I haven't entirely understood this point. Is this about the involvement of 
the individual constituencies in the work of the NC or a rerun of the 
Individual Domain Name Owners constituency, which has already been 
discussed a number of times ?

All the best with the next telephone conference !

Michael