GNSO Town Hall

To encourage GNSO community engagement with the GNSO Council, we would like to invite you to attend the first ever GNSO Town Hall meeting which is planned for Sunday 12 March from 16.30 – 17.30 local time. The Council has been considering how to facilitate engagement and collaboration with the GNSO community which has resulted in this first ever GNSO Town Hall meeting. The objective is to have an open and frank discussion with the GNSO Community during which any topics or questions can be raised.

One particular topic that the Council would like to draw your attention to is the recent Council Strategic Planning session and the strategic priorities that came out of that meeting (see meeting report):

• Develop and implement improvements that ensure that policy recommendations are “Board ready” when these are considered for adoption by the GNSO Council.
• Ensure timely input into the Board’s consideration of the SubPro ODP and related policy recommendations, as well as keeping a close eye on dependencies that are within the Council’s remit to address with the aim of getting the Board into a position to be able to agree and announce a next round date before the end of this Council session / year. 
• Engage in further conversations with the ICANN Board as well as the GNSO community concerning how ODP type input and assessment can be developed prior to GNSO Council consideration of policy recommendations.
• Consider how to create further transparency in small team deliberations. 
• Consider how to ensure enhanced uptake and use of the techniques of the Consensus Playbook with a specific focus on scoping and chartering, learning from approaches applied in efforts such as the facilitated dialogue on Closed Generics. 
• Exploring incentives for compromising and promoting opportunities for mutual gain. 

The Council would welcome your ideas/suggestions for how to ensure that the Council is able to meet these strategic priorities.

The Council also welcomes your feedback after this session on whether this is a welcome approach to encourage such engagement or whether alternative paths should be explored. If you would like to submit any topics or questions in advance of the meeting, please submit these to gnso-secs@icann.org with “GNSO Town Hall” as the subject.    

We look forward to welcoming you on Sunday 12 March!

Slides: ICANN76 GNSO Council Working Session .pdf