I spent the first 90 minutes or so going over the proposed changes to the Registrar Constituency Bylaws. These are sorely deficient in their current form and we really need to improve these underlying structures. All too often, our bad rules lead to bad process and bad feelings. The constituency really needs to get beyond this poisonous dynamic.
Louis Touton joined us for a few minutes to answer some niggly questions that the members have about various processes etc. Some interesting bits - most of it is pretty inside track stuff, but the highlights are;
- the constituency can't interfere with a member appointing the representative of their choice
- council reps must be able to think freely and vote freely in order to preserve the GNSO Council's capability to achieve consensus. If these reps feet are bound in concrete, then they won't be able to negotiate on key issues. Article 10 of the bylaws provides the backdrops to these rules.
- There is no requirement for constituencies to implement geographic diversity requirements. My feeling is that we should include a statement of principles that we believe in. In a constituency like ours, it is difficult to implement conditions like this, but that doesn't mean that we can't support the principles and show that things like this actually matter to us as a group - even if we can't implement them for very practical reasons.
- It is unclear whether or not constituency bylaws amendments always need to be approved by the board. This round is being forced by the work of the ERC, hence the requirement.
We also talked briefly about BulkWhois. Two camps on this issue - those registrars that are primarily registrars and those registrars that deal mostly with patent, trademark and copyright clients. I'll leave it to you to guess which one wants the BulkWhois provisions preserved.
Just before lunch, Paul Twomey, incoming CEO of ICANN joined us for a few minutes. He gave us a quick briefing of his CV, (and very skilfully distanced himself from his sentence tenure as the chair of the GAC) and outlined his priorities for the next few years. These included taking care of ICANN's September deliverables to the Department of Commerce, fixing the IANA function in a meaningful way (he has some great ideas here) and taking a few months to figure out what is really important to the community.
The most interesting thing that he said was that he is a strong believer in the value of process and management by metric and that he fully intends to apply this regimen to ICANN and IANA. This is good news in my books - it will lead to predictability, accountability and efficiencies that aren't currently found in the process.
I asked him how he felt about ICANN's credibility affecting the depth of the available talent pool within ICANN. In other words, if no one wants to participate in ICANN because there is a perception that ICANN has no credibility, then how is ICANN, the community, going to expand the depth and breadth of its communities. He replied that he intended on spending a significant portion of time in the relevant arena's describing what ICANN is and clearing up some of the misconceptions spread by the Persistant Critics (my words, not his).
Then, on to lunch. Three cappucino's and a Coke have done wonders for my budding head cold.
Stuffy and wired.