[At-Large] Good idea - but, let's allow for a comment period first..

[Robert Guerra]

Vittorio:


On 7-Jul-07, at 10:00 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> Robert Guerra ha scritto:
>> Vittorio:
>> The agenda for the upcoming ALAC conference call seems pretty  
>> packed  as it is. Adding a completely new item at this late stage,  
>> I do not  think, gives either the broader at-large community nor  
>> the ALAC  sufficient time to comment on and/or revise the text you  
>> propose.
>
> I didn't mean that we go line by line or approve anything in the  
> call - just briefly discuss whether this is useful and how to deal  
> with its development, as some people in San Juan suggested that  
> this could be a good idea.
>
> Also, about the agenda, I'm all with you for establishing some  
> advance deadline for proposing issues for the call. However, this  
> is not how we have been working - for example, good part of the  
> last call (the June one) was occupied by an agenda item that was  
> raised just two hours before the call. This is quite typical at  
> ICANN - for example, Board members often get additional items and  
> supporting 50-page documents less than 24 hours in advance of the  
> meeting. Since May, the Board is asking the staff to submit  
> whatever issue and document at least seven days in advance of the  
> meeting, or else defer it to the next one; we might want to adopt  
> the same principle.

Many persons at the recent San Juan meeting  commented  that need to  
improve the time management so as to be more productive as a  
committee and focus more on "advising" the board instead of spending  
way too much of our very valuable and scarce time together on  minutiæ .

A lesson  learned from  the recent meeting in San Juan is that one  
can easily be frustrated and complain. That can lead to all sorts of  
negative consequences. We should avoid that...

A far more constructive approach is to  focus on the underlying  
issues  and suggest specific recommendations and working methods that  
can be adopted to help us work better and in a more open and  
transparent fashion that distributes the workload among us and  
engages the users - both at a regional level, as well as the larger  
unaffiliated community.

Time allocation and project management techniques I think should be  
used. Not sure if that has been the case in the past. If it hasn't  
been the case, the i really recommend we implement them going  
forward. I think we'll be far more productive,  and far less grumpy  
if we do .

regards

Robert