[NCUC-EC] NCUC Appointments to be Made by the EC

[William Drake]

Hi

At our meeting in DC the EC will need fill a couple appointments to various external and internal positions.  As some require a fair amount of ICANN experience and knowledge in order to effectively advance NCUC’s interest, it seems they’ve historically been filled through targeted outreach to members known to be ready to be ‘plug and play’.   Moreover, some of the positions have incumbents in them who may wish to serve another term.  Nevertheless, there’s no reason not to do an open call for expressions of interest in order to broaden engagement and the pool of names the EC draws on, so I did that last year and will again.   So if anyone is interested in being considered for any of the following, or has suggestions of others who’d be interested, please send a note.   

External to the EC

2 NCUC Reps. to the NCSG Executive Committee   
https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Committees-2015
http://gnso.icann.org/en/about/stakeholders-constituencies/ncsg <http://gnso.icann.org/en/about/stakeholders-constituencies/ncsg>  
[websites out of date]

The EC does admin type stuff, particularly handling new member applications (typically held up for months by NPOC).  Until last year's NCSG election, Robin Gross was NCSG Chair and Milton Mueller and Rafik were our two reps.   As Rafik was switching to Chair at the end of the BA meeting and we needed continuity and representation, the EC appointed Robin to Rafik’s old slot to serve alongside Milton.  So in one configuration or another, these three folks have been NCUC representation since 2012.  If Robin and Milton wish to continue for another year ok great (in which case they should say so), but other members should be able to throw their hats in the ring too.   


1 NCUC Rep. to the Public Interest Registry
 http://pir.org/about-us/get-to-know-us/advisory-council/ <http://pir.org/about-us/get-to-know-us/advisory-council/>

PIR manages .org etc. and is a long time financial and political supporter of NCUC.  We appoint a rep to its .org Advisory Council; Carlos Affonso is currently in this position, but was not active and has now left the EC.    I understand this has not involved a lot of work.  Our bylaws specify that the EC is to appoint the rep by majority vote, with at least four members voting.  I tend to think it should be an EC member, but guess others could do it too as long as the effectively represent and stay in touch with us.  Anyone interested?


2 NCUC Reps. to the GNSO’s Standing Committee on Improvements
https://community.icann.org/display/gnsosci/3.+Members <https://community.icann.org/display/gnsosci/3.+Members>

The SCI is a fairly unique committee in that it is 1) a standing committee, 2) run on a full consensus model and 3) deals with procedural and structural, rather than substantive, issues. The NCUC has two representative positions, both a primary and an alternate slot.  NCUC appointees would be expected to attend SCI calls (usually monthly) and participate in mailing list deliberations. Only one appointee, primary or alternate, may take part in each consensus call. Coordination between both appointees, and with the other noncommercial representatives, is an essential component of the positions. In 2014 we had Amr and David as an alternate, both Councilors. Again, if they wish to stay fine, but we should invite others.  


Intra-EC

Treasurer  
Our bylaws say we are to have a Secretary Treasurer who must be approved by a majority vote of the EC with at least three members voting.  Milton’s always been the Treasurer because he has NCUC’s bank account, but he’s not been doing the ‘Secretary’ piece and it could be helpful to separate and fill it.  I proposed this last year but nobody wanted to do it…would entail drafting minutes of our few meetings, not much else.  Might anyone be interested?

Teams  http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/

As I explained in my 2012 candidate statement http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/2012-November/010875.html <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/2012-November/010875.html> I proposed these as ways of getting the EC to work with regular members on a volunteer basis to handle key administrative tasks and broaden engagement.  In principle, the construct does provide a platform for interested members to work with the EC on moving us forward on non-policy organizational matters, but they do require coordination and member engagement to stay vital.  We’ll see in the new year if there’s interest in using these, I can only suggest and not force.  The original suggestion was that EC members or seriously committed regular members would serve as coordinator of a group with specific functional tasks like:
o   In-reach and engagement of existing members, updating of the membership list
o   outreach to potential new members (it’d also be nice if each regional representative could bring on a few folks from their regions per year)
o   e-platform improvement and updating
o   external communications/publicity
o   finance (dealing with the ICANN budget process, external fundraising for initiatives, etc.)

Here’s what’s happened.  Two have functioned, but one of them can probably drop off for now.

The E-platform Team has been a success, there’s a handful of people working together to keep our mail lists, website and data base together, now with the additional support of Maryam, who’s a part time staffer paid by ICANN.  The group doesn’t seem to need a coordinator too much, it’s a self-starting group of people, but Stefi is in that role.

The Event Team worked ok in organizing workshops for the Beijing meeting. For the Singapore conference it ended up that I took most of the work on as programming required extensive back and forth with senior staff and reps of other ICANN SOs, ACs, SGs, Cs that would have been hard to handle with a large-n internal coordination process under the time constraints.  Stefi lent invaluable web support for that one. I have proposed that NCSG and the CSG organize a conference for BA, which we’ll discuss in DC, but if that happens it’ll be organized at the SG level with NPOC.  So basically this team is in the deep freeze for now and can probably be removed from the website.

Two did not function, but I’d like to see them reborn in the new year.

Membership Affairs Team.   In 2013 we had an EC member offer to coordinate an In-reach Team and an Outreach Team but they never got going. Then they were folded into a single Membership Affairs Team, same person and result.  This languished, so we took it off the website, but now we have a real prospect of doing something.  A bunch of people recently discussed their desire on the members list for some sort of mechanism to help newbies and others find their way and get engaged, and Walid Al-Saqaf has kindly offered to serve as coordinator.  So I am hoping we can approve him in this role and reconstitute the MA Team in the new year with new people.

Bylaws Revision Team.  Similar story. In 2013 we had an EC member offer to coordinate it but then it was dropped when it became clear we couldn’t get new bylaws approved by the Board in time for the annual NCUC election to vote on them.  In 2014 we had another EC member offer to coordinate it who did nothing.  I then wrote to a several veterans who were involved in drafting the old bylaw and said would you help revise, and they were not so interested in putting time into this.  In the meanwhile, some of us have harbored the fantasy that maybe we could get the Board SIC to allow us to move toward an integrated SG and abolish constituencies, in which case why rewrite bylaws anyway. I intend to raise this with board people again this year, but don’t expect they’d agree to do anything soon with a GNSO Review underway etc.  And meanwhile I have Avri screaming at me about how this is somehow my sole and sacred responsibility to make happen, which is….Anyway, I guess I’d like to try again to see if we can get a group together to work revising the bylaws, which really are out of synch with who we are.  They can be pretty minimalist, really, since mostly we now do policy work via the NCSG.  I’d love to find a volunteer to coordinate this who will take it seriously and see it through….I don’t think it’s right that everything defaults to my lap, but if that happens I’ll deal with it.

Two others were a bust.

The Budgetary Team basically didn’t find a distinctive purpose so we shut it down.  There’s really not so much activity here that the EC can’t handle it.  I have successfully submitted a series of annual budget requests to ICANN in 2013 and 2014 and will try again in 2015.  EC members can help with that if they like. I also wrote to PIR to get an annual contribution toward our coffers, which again doesn’t require a team. Carlos Affonso was supposed to handle this with CGI.br <http://cgi.br/>, which used to give us annual support, but for some internal reason it hasn’t happened, at least not yet.  He doesn’t reply to email so maybe I’ll just write to Hartmut and inquire.

The External Communications/Publicity Team never happened. The person who’d said she could lead it lost in the 2013 election by one vote, to a member who then largely disappeared due to home work commitments.  If someone wanted to reboot this that’d be great.


So that’s internal teams.  

——————

Lastly, just to have on your radars for the future, there are some appointments that happen off our annual cycle. We’ll have to deal with these late in 2015.

1 NCUC Rep. to the ICANN Nominating Committee  
http://www.icann.org/en/groups/nomcom <http://www.icann.org/en/groups/nomcom>  
The NomCom appoints people to positions in the ICANN board, the GNSO Council, and other parts of the org.  Brenden Keurbis was reappointed to a second term a few months ago as the NomCom work cycle begins with the annual autumn meeting.


2 NCUC Reps. to the NCSG Policy Committee
https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Committees-2013 <https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Committees-2013>
The PC is the vehicle for our policy engagement in the GNSO Council, alongside NPOC in NCSG.  In 2014 our reps were Marilia and Stephanie, both of whom recently were elected to the GNSO Council.  They were replaced with Matt Shears of CDT and Joy Liddicoat, formerly of APC.

You may also note at the above website, there’s also supposed to be a NCSG Financial Committee with a NCUC rep, but as far as I know it’s been dormant, as funds are raised at the constituency level instead.  Should it ever be needed (like if we folded NCUC and transferred its assets to NCSG), presumably our Treasurer should be the rep to it.

——————

So, Main action point for our DC Meeting: 

1. Appoint NCUC Reps. to the NCSG Executive Committee 
2. Appoint NCUC Rep. to the Public Interest Registry
3. Appoint NCUC Reps. to the GNSO’s Standing Committee on Improvements
4. Appoint Walid for Membership Affairs 
5. See if anyone is willing to take on the Bylaws Revision Team
6. See if anyone is willing to take on a Secretary role.
7. See if anyone thinks we should have a External Communications/Publicity Team


Thanks,

Bill

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