ICANN-Wellington continues
Although it was hard to see over all the heads of the people in front of me, I believe that Vint Cerf participated this evening in some kind of warrior ritual involving (not by him) shouting, stamping, and waving spears. Gentlemanly as always, he was very game. (He also gave a very good telco policy talk earlier on tonight.)
Someone came up to me tonight and said that all ICANN Board members should be required to blog. Hmm. It does seem to me that the Board should communicate openly (trying out ideas, keeping lines of communication open, discussing things), but getting everyone to blog seems unlikely at the moment. But we can hope.
ICANNWiki has a link to a “consensus polling” tool here. There's a meeting tomorrow at 9:00 am to talk about the tool.
Tomorrow is the first part of the Public Forum. It starts at 1pm here in Wellington on Wednesday. That's 8pm on Tuesday in New York. It will be webcast (and if you stay up until 1am you'll be able to watch the whole thing).
Predictions: a very striking and stern communique from the Government Advisory Committee with respect to .xxx; concerns about communication patterns within/organization of ICANN; strong suggestions about the need for new gTLDs; many concerns about the VeriSign settlement. There will be long lines at the mike, and there will not be enough time - there's a second part of the Public Forum on Thursday morning as well, but it's shorter than the Wednesday session and part of the time will be taken up with committee reports.
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7 Responses to “ICANN-Wellington continues”
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A snippet of video from the ceremony you mentioned is here: http://blog.lextext.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/28/1845910.html
Since I couldn't afford to fly to Wellington to line up at the mike, and there is no means of remote participation, I've asked the ALAC to relay my concerns. But that's no substitute for genuine openness, a genuinely public forum, or proper notice of what the Board is going to consider on Friday. If I were able to line up at the mike, or if there were a means of remote participation, I'd ask about my unanswered questions to the Board and pending requests for Board action.
Ed — I just asked staff about remote participation and was told that there is an email address for comments:
wellington@icann.org
Comments will be read by Vint — interwoven into the proceedings. He's pretty good about doing this.
If you helped get these posted just now, thank you.
The “wellington@icann.org” e-mail address and an agenda for the Friday Board meeting were added to the ICANN Web site for the first time between my comment and yours above, less than an hour before the start of the public forum, and only after my message complaining about their absence was posted on the ALAC public forum.
Unless people are checking the Web site hourly for changes, they would have no way to know that at the last minute, in response to my complaint, a mechanism for submissions would be provided. It's certainly not adequate time to prepare comments on the newly-posted agenda. And it still doesn't satisfy the requirement of the Bylaws for posting of the agenda 7 days before the meeting, or address the exclusion of disfavored journalists from the press conference, the lying to me by ICANN staff and p.r. contractors about the press conference, the lack of the mandated manager or public participation, or the failure to implement the independent review Bylaw.
I don't know on what you base your claim that Dr. Cerf is “pretty good” about reading the comments. Without having all the comments posted (which has never happened), it's impossible to tell how what fraction of those received are read. I received copies of several comments submitted to “argentina@icann.org” that were never read, acknowledged, or posted. There's no way for anyone reviewing the record on the ICANN Web site even to know they exist.
Susan, Consensus Polling is a social process that can be carried out on a wiki by hand for small groups of participants (<100). For larger groups, some minimal automation is necessary.
Dear Edward,
I apologize. I know that's not good enough, but it's all I can do. I don't understand why an email address wasn't posted; why there wasn't an agenda; why email comments aren't posted.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. I'm new on the job, but we're having a lot of discussions about communications and I'll make sure we discuss this.
Susan
You say, “it's all I can do.” That's not true. You are a member of the Board. You can raise a point of order, at the start of the “meeting” of the Board, that the meeting is *not* in order because notice of the agenda was not given 7 days in advance, as required by the Bylaws. If Board members continue merely to complain about non-compliance with the Bylaws on posting of notices, aganda, and minutes — but don't take any action to *require* compliance with those Bylaws — nothing will change. And there is nothing affected community members can do about it: Reconsideration requests are ignored (mine from May 2005 hasn't even been posted on the ICANN Web site) and there are no valid or publicly disclosed procedures for independent review. Dr. Cerf claimed yesterday that they were established by Resolution 04.33. But — aside from the fact that that resolution was not adopted in according with the procedures in the Bylaws for a policy development process, as I've explained in detail — Dr. Cerf and Mr. Jeffrey have refused my repeated requests for a copy of the ICANN-ICDR agreement authorized by that resolution. So it would be impossible for me to do what they claim to think I'm supposed to do for independent review. In reality, they are still stalling, because they don't want to admit the defects that resolution, and don't want to start a public policy development process on independent review. (And they hope I will give up and go away, and stop getting the public interested in what ICANN does, even while they claim to want more public participation.) If members of the Board don't comply with the Bylaws, the only actual oversight remaining is the power of the state of California to revoke the corporate charter, and the power of the DOC to revoke the MOU.