Minutes of EC Meeting 2/2014
Location: ICANN Singapore meeting
Saturday 22 March 2014

Participants:

William Drake (NCUC Chair)
Carlos Affonso Pereira da Souza (Latin America/Caribbean representative)
Roy Balleste (North America representative)
Stefania Milan (Europe representative)
Grace Githaiga (Africa representative)
Pranesh Prakash (Asia/Australia/Pacific representative)

Agenda:

1.  Introduction to the NCUC Work Cycle
2.  Internal Working Methods
3.  Teams
4.  Financial

The meeting was held as part of a day-long “retreat” for the new EC that had the following schedule:

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10:00-11:00 Introductions, overview of NCUC <=> NCSG <=> GNSO <=> ICANN
Overview of the Week Ahead

11:00-11:50 Overview of GNSO/Council: Institutional & Procedural Aspects, with Rob Hoggarth (staff);
afterward move to GNSO Council, Sofia Room

12:00-13:00   Council open and substantial strategic discussion

13:00-14:00  Lunch

14:00-15:00   NCUC Executive Committee Meeting & Annual Planning
afterward return to GNSO Council, Sofia Room

15:15-16:00  Council Discussion with CEO Fadi Chehadé;
afterward return to Moor room

16:15-17:00 Overview of GNSO/Council: Substantive Issues, with Mary Wong (staff, former NCUC)

17:00-17:30 Next Steps, Wrap Up

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The Chair opened the meeting, participants were introduced, and the agenda was created and approved.

1.  Introduction to the NCUC Work Cycle

Bill Drake provided background on NCUC’s quarter-by-quarter work cycle, and on GNSO council terms.

• Bylaws: The tortured history of efforts to revise these was reviewed.   It was explained by ICANN staff that it takes a half year to get any changes approved by the Board.  So in order to have a stable text that would be ready for a vote during the NCUC regular election, revisions would have to happen in the first quarter or soon thereafter, when the EC is new and just getting up to speed.  It might be difficult to do this in time for the 2014 election, but we could try, or let it wait until the 2015 election.  Carlos offered to lead a team that would take charge of the revision process.

• Policy: Since the stakeholder group framework was implemented, NCUC has focused its GNSO-oriented work in the NCSG PC.  The NCUC Policy Committee called for in the bylaws does not exist, and has not for some time.  As such, NCUC really has no formalized process for adopting policy statements, and has tended to settle for informal polling of member sentiment and identification of rough consensus on the members mail list.  This is not an ideal approach, and in any bylaws revision it would be sensible to formalize a method, recognizing that with the GNSO work being done at the SG level we may not have all that many occasions to use it.

2.  Internal Working Methods

• We need to ensure more effective and responsive communications within the EC.  The early signs on the mail list suggest a need for stronger engagement.  Grace suggests it would be helpful to assemble volunteers to prepare a beginner’s guide to the NCUC EC.

3.  Teams

Bill tried to establish these last year as means to bring together EC members with regular members to handle particular managerial tasks.  EC members would serve as facilitators, and hopefully there’d evolve greater buy-in to the work.  In the end, the record in 2013 was rather mixed.

• The e-Platforms Team: This has been reasonably successful, volunteers have collaborated to maintain the data base, mail lists, and web site.  It would be good to improve the website, e.g. by including member blog posts.

• The Events Team: This was intended to formalize the ad hoc group that successfully organized the workshops at the Beijing meeting and the policy conferences in Toronto and San Francisco.  For various reasons—-especially the very compressed time frame after ICANN budget approval and need for extensive interaction with staff and other community members—it proved more difficult to follow this model in organizing the Singapore Conference, ICANN & Global Internet Governance: The Road to São Paulo & Beyond http://singapore49.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-ncuc-ig.  As such, Bill Drake did most of the work, and hence the EC agreed that this should be under conditions akin to the agreements NCUC had with Robin for previous conferences, to be agreed later online.

• The Membership Team: This folded together two separate groupings that failed to launch (the Inreach Team and the Outreach Team).  This one has fared no better, and nobody seems willing to lead it.  Even if the person(s) leading this is not from the EC, that would be fine.

4.  Financial

• Travel requests:  The EC’s travel funding situation was discussed.  Several members are able to raise their own funds to attend ICANN meetings, which makes it easier to use the ICANN-provided slots for others, or for regular members who need to be at a particular meeting.

• CROPP Funding Program: This gives each constituency up to five travel grants within their region. It is on a rolling basis. Pranesh and Bill will coordinate this within the NCUC.

• NCUC Resources: Milton Mueller is our treasurer, and operates the NCUC bank account with Solvay Bank in Syracuse.   We have an outstanding pledge of USD $5,000 from ISOC, and Pranesh will follow up on this.

• NCUC Expenditures: The EC approved an extra night’s stay at the Swissotel or similar in Singapore for: Avri Doria, Marilia Maciel, Joana Varon, Satish Babu, and David Cake so that they could participate in the NCUC conference.  For Robin Gross, the EC approved reimbursements of travel and lodging expenses, pending submission of reimburesement claims.

• Travel Policy: The EC discussed the idea of making travel support funds available for application by members.  Possible criteria for evaluating requests include whether the person is engaged in NCUC work, has a pressing need to be at a particular meeting, and lacks alternative sources of funding.

• ICANN Budget requests:  The deadline for FY 15 budget proposals to ICANN for this year ended earlier in March.  Bill put in a support proposal for the IGF in Istanbul.  For FY 14 year he had requested and received budget allocations for the IGF in Bali, the Singapore policy conference, the Singapore EC retreat, print materials.  Next year we might want to do more.

• Staff support:  There’s an ongoing discussion about them providing us with part-time support.  Priorities would seem to be database management, elections, compiling list of policy WGs, deadlines, etc.