[soac-mapo] Revised draft Charter Terms of Reference for your review

["Caroline Greer" <cgreer@xxxxxxxxx>]

I believe we ought to remove the word 'preliminary'. We need to put a push on 
this and try to wrap up for the Board retreat. I agree with Stéphane that one 
tends to fill the space one has and we are already on a downward track if we 
accept that the 13th is not really a drop dead date of any sort. It's a 
challenging timeline but so be it - this issue has unfortunately landed very 
late in the day. If we for whatever reason do not come up with something 
conclusive within that timeframe, in my opinion we need some guidance from the 
Board (via staff) as to what time is available to us and how they view this 
whole issue. 

Assuming that we are close to concluding the ToR for this WG and with the 
target date of 13th September in mind for a report, I would like to try and 
move the discussion on a little to our work plans for the remaining two weeks 
that we have (BTW does that leave us with just two calls to go or should we be 
thinking about increasing that to two calls a week?). Perhaps this was 
discussed on Monday's call, which I unfortunately had to miss, but I did not 
read anything about it in the chat email that Liz circulated.

How do we plan to tackle the terminology / procedure review - will this just be 
a discussion on our understanding / interpretation or do we have a more 
definite plan of attack? With such little time available to us, we need to keep 
this tight.

Thanks,

Caroline.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Avri Doria
Sent: 25 August 2010 14:57
To: soac-mapo
Subject: Re: [soac-mapo] Revised draft Charter Terms of Reference for your 
review


Hi,

In which case, and if others agree with this position, we should declare in the 
ToR that it is planned to end with the Sept 13 report.  My issue was that the 
question was left dangling.  So it was not a question of it running over, but 
rather a question of not stating what the intention was for post Sept 13. 
Though, it seemed to me, the original intent of the ToR was that it not end on 
Sept 13 - hence the call for a preliminary report.

There are good reasons to say Sept 13 and it is over.  And I think there are 
good reasons to say Sept 13 is preliminary (whether we call it that or not) and 
that we expect to continue. And I think there is a good reason to say that 
after Sept 13, the group will review  and decide what comes next.  I think we 
should say something. My recommendation was a compromise between the original 
intent expressed in the word preliminary and what seem to be your implicit 
suggestion that the group terminate with the Sept 13 report.  

What I really object to is the indefinite way in which the ToR ends without a 
sentence of some sort.  From my experience in ICANN WGs and WTs and work 
gatherings of all sorts, when a ToR or a charter leaves people uncertain as to 
what comes next, they tend to enter an existential  wilderness and spend a lot 
of time figuring out whether they even have a basis to continue talking.  My 
recommendation was meant to try and forestall that possibility.

So I believe that either the word 'preliminary' should stay in as was the 
original intent, or that some sentence be included, my suggestion or some other 
formulation, indicating what happens next if the report is not just 
'preliminary.'

a.