[NCUC-DISCUSS] Intercessional

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Oct 24 12:30, Mueller, Milton L (milton at gatech.edu) wrote:

> Thanks for the information but I have to point out that you still
> have not made a reasonable case for having an intersessional meeting
> at all.

True. As NCSG Chair, I don't think I should be making a case for or
against it, especially not on NCUC's list.

I am helping to organize the meeting because NCUC and NPOC
asked for it, not for my own sake. I certainly travel more
than enough as it is.

> If it is "already decided" to have one as you claim, then I have to
> insist that our leadership bring to the ICANN staff the objections
> of a substantial number of our members.

It was in effect decided by NCSG EC in the spring when special budget
request for it was made, with NCUC representatives' agreement.

After that at least Rafik has been involved in the planning process,
never to my knowledge questioning the need for the meeting or
proposing it should be cancelled.

I don't really see that ICANN staff is to blame.

Of course NCUC and its leadership are at liberty to change their minds
at any time and decide to express objections to anyone they choose, or
to not participate, or to ask for the meeting to be cancelled.
I'll leave it up to NCUC EC to judge how substantial the number of
NCUC members who are objecting is and what to do about it.

But I'm responsible to NCSG, both of its constituencies as well
as individual members. I will follow the decisions of NCSG EC.
Of course NCSG EC can also reverse its decisions, and you can
always ask NCUC's representatives there to act to that effect.

I will also listen to NCSG members' views and consider taking issues
to NCSG EC on my own initiative or acting on my own power as
appropriate. But in general I won't do that with input from one
constituency only - this is NCUC's list after all.

</chair>

Now, dropping my Chair's hat and speaking as a member of NCUC only:

> These meetings are a costly expenditure of time and money that
> cannot be justified based on the outcomes of. The travel time often
> exceeds the meeting time, and these gigantic holes in our calendars
> distract us from the actual policy development work the community is
> supposed to be doing. There may indeed be people in the NCSG who
> view ICANN as a free travel club, but I am not one of them, and
> neither are a lot of others here. We need to move away from that
> attitude. ICANN's GNSO exists for policy development, full stop.

You make a strong argument and I find myself much in agreement
with it.

Yet face-to-face meetings can often stimulate action in a way that
teleconferences and mailing lists cannot. Whether that is the case
here, or in regular ICANN meetings (maybe we should have only one per
year?), various working group meetings &c, I'm not sure. I do think
we should not try to make do without any physical meetings at all,
though.

In any event it is good to talk about it, perhaps try to develop
metrics to evaluate how useful various meetings are, or just try
to find consensus on how many meetings we think are useful.

As David put it: "It's generally the case that short term practical
discussion of the achievable will get mixed in with long term
discussion of the desirable."

Yes. And that is not a bad thing in itself. Indeed it can be good if
the short term practicalities get us talking about long term goals we
might otherwise forget. But we should not forget about short term
realities either. And I think this train has already left the station,
it would not be a good idea to ask for the meeting to be cancelled
this late, after we requested and got funding for it and when other
constituencies are moving on with their preparations for it.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen