[council] Meetings in LA

[Richard Lindsay <richard@interq.ad.jp>]

Greetings everyone.

I trust you all survived the long flights back from Santiago.  I
am sorry I was not able to attend in person, but look forward
to seeing you all in Los Angeles.

I would like to share with you all some of the perspectives from
the remote participants who were both watching and listening
in via Real Audio, and commenting via IRC.  Overall the impression
was very bad.  We appeared extremely disorganized, and I would
be hard pressed to argue that this was just appearance, and actually
things are just great.  I definitely think we need to seriously
discuss how future meetings will be handled, and agree on some
procedures.

With this in mind I have a couple proposals:

1.  An additional day of meeting in LA for discussion solely of
procedural issues, perhaps focussing on the efforts of Committee
D.  The ICANN meetings start on Tuesday, so I would suggest
at least having all of Monday to hash out how we will get our
work done.  The meeting can be open to prevent claims of
"closed" procedures, but I think it should be an environment
where we can actually discuss things (rather than going
over and over rewording motions and counter motions.)

I also think we should spend some time just amongst the
Names Council members to try to get to know each other
a little better - it is very important that we learn to work
together.  There is also a good chance that there will be
many new members (and some of us will be off the hook)
which will make this even more important.

2.  IF we decide we are going to use parliamentary rules such
as Robert's Rules of Order, than I strongly urge that we consider
Theresa's proposal to bring in a parliamentarian to help us
with our process.  Even if we spend a day and decide to use
these types of rules (which I am not altogether in favor of)
then we will need assistance in actually running the meeting.
I know Michael Schneider was opposed to having a parliamentarian
sit in on a meeting of the Names Council, but I think it would
be an excellent idea.

I have to admit, I felt embarrassed, and I wasn't even in the room.
I felt that we all appeared disorganized and foolish, and I am neither
a disorganized nor foolish person (at least I would like to hope so!)
I believe the current preliminary Names Council represents a
collection of some extremely talented and gifted individuals, each
with a valuable contribution to make - lets all make that contribution
in an organized and intelligent fashion.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Best regards,
Richard
--
_/_/_/interQ Incorporated
_/_/_/System Division
_/_/_/Director and General Manager
_/_/_/Richard A. S. Lindsay