Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] REVISED Proposal-support poll -- consensus around "atoms"

["Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

i agree with Tim that many of the issues in our charter are too profound to be 
addressed in this first-pass scramble to Brussels.  that's why i'm forever 
using phrases like "find things we can agree on in time to moderate the 
Board/DAG baseline" when i describe what this Super Speedy first-pass PDP is 
about.  we don't (and never did) have the time to develop the underpinnings for 
many of the proposals -- eg. economic research, probing the validity of various 
types of harm, regulatory systems that are appropriate, etc.  our goal up to 
now has been to find topics that a) we can agree on and b) are modest enough in 
scope that they can be proposed without rigorous underpinnings.  anything 
falling outside of that gets deferred for the second-pass PDP.  it may just 
turn out that *everything* gets deferred to that PDP.  :-)

i also agree that positions are hardening as we draw down to the end of the 
deal-making time.  part of the reason we've been holding the pressure on is 
because a bunch of folks have asked us to do that in order to keep people at 
the negotiating table.  another reason we're letting this run so late is 
because folks asked us to do that when we burst through the first two deadlines 
without finding agreement.  i agree, we're definitely running out of time and 
there comes a point where we have to say "enough!  we've reached the limit of 
where this time-limited exercise can take us."  i'm just not **quite** there 
yet.  i'd like to see the result of the final face-to-face meeting in Brussels 
before making that call.  i have no appetite at all for extending the 
first-pass deal-making scramble much beyond Brussels (unless we've either 
really close-to/ arrived-at a deal, in which case we'll walk that deal through 
the rest of the PDP process so that it can go to the Board and into the DAG).

to pull the thread back onto one track, i'm inclined to put together one last 
Doodle poll to test agreement on the headings in Kathy's matrix (using Avri's 
definitions for the choices) in preparation for Brussels.  Eric, i took another 
look at your poll and lean toward a simpler Doodle poll for a couple of 
reasons.  mostly, i like Doodle's ability to see other people's answers and the 
capability to re-enter the poll and change your own answers.  i have some ideas 
about a "perfect" polling system -- it would be great to get the security and 
flexibility of SurveyMonkey combined with Doodle's ability to see everybody's 
responses and change your own.  in a perfect world with more time, i'd like to 
work on revising your poll, but i'd like to just run with the Doodle thing if 
that's OK.  i'm pretty confident that i can manage the responses and possible 
gaming.

thoughts?

  
On Jun 13, 2010, at 9:24 AM, Tim Ruiz wrote:

> Mikey,
>  
> Actually, I think your approach will only harden the positions further. But 
> more importanlym, this attempt to put even more pressure on everyone to 
> *hurry up* and come to some consensus is completely off base. We're not 
> talking about picking wine for dinner, or whether to lease or buy, we're 
> talking about market regulation that affects the livelihoods of hundreds of 
> thousands of people one way or another. You cannot hurry that up!
> 
> Tim
>  
>  
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] REVISED Proposal-support poll -- consensus
> around "atoms"
> From: "Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sun, June 13, 2010 8:18 am
> To: Gnso-vi-feb10@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> 
> my first reply to Roberto's note was composed in a hurry as i was heading 
> down the road towards a Saturday-evening off the 'net -- i didn't want to 
> leave the impression that the two of us were battling over the poll... now 
> that i am not in "panic mode" let me respond to what i think is Roberto's 
> primary point -- the need to focus on finding some small pieces of middle 
> ground -- the "atoms" he talks about. i completely agree with Roberto on that 
> point. the poll is just to find out a) where people are and b) where there is 
> "wiggle room." 
> 
> i'm also with Roberto in that we seem to be focusing on the proposal beauty 
> contest rather than identifying "atoms" of agreement. on reflection, it may 
> be that we polled on the wrong dimension -- that we should have polled on the 
> headings in Kathy's table, rather than the proposals. those headings are the 
> "atoms" and understanding how people feel about them is probably the path to 
> consensus. by polling on the proposals we may have amplified the 
> beauty-contest and i also share Roberto's view that there's less flexibility 
> in people's positions than i had hoped. 
> 
> part of this hardening of positions may be caused by the recent conversation 
> which implied that we might draft a report which contains several options, 
> with a level of support for each. this might be viewed as a way to throw the 
> choice to the Council (which is *not* consensus-based) and that this poll 
> will be used to describe support for those options. on reflection i realize 
> that i may have introduced this confusion into the conversation, so let me 
> remove it. we will only submit a report WHEN we find consensus (or have 
> decided that we can't). until then, we update the community on our progress 
> and continue our work. if we get to consensus in time for gTLD-rollout, 
> great. otherwise, the rollout proceeds without our input. i asked Margie for 
> details on how to generate an Interim Report so that we could avoid 
> schedule-slip IF we have a consensus position to put forward, NOT to open the 
> door to a multi-option report that throws the choice to the Council.
> 
> the approach we've been following is that the WG goes through the PDP cycle 
> twice... 
> 
> -- the first time (this time) we urgently try to find things we can agree on 
> in time to moderate the Board/DAG baseline in time to meet the gTLD rollout 
> schedule. if we can't find consensus around any of those things then we won't 
> forward a report and we'll move on to the second time through the PDP 
> process. we are rapidly coming to the end of the runway for this iteration -- 
> basically, if we can't arrive at consensus on some "atoms" during Brussels, 
> we'll be done. if we do arrive at an agreement in Brussels, we're still on 
> track to very quickly publish an Interim Report with those items and complete 
> the first PDP cycle.
> 
> -- the second time through the process we do the deeper analysis of economic 
> impact, harms, regulatory approaches and so forth that our charter calls for 
> and then see if we can come to a consensus around those larger issues. it 
> would be great if we could get through that broader work before the new gTLD 
> train leaves the station but the odds are that we won't, since that process 
> is likely to take the standard 12-15 months of a "normal" PDP and might even 
> run a little longer given the complexity of the research that we need to do.
> 
> at any rate, the pressure is still on. we are not at consensus yet and we 
> need to get there quickly if we are to influence the Applicant Guidebook. 
> back to work! :-)
> 
> mikey
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 12, 2010, at 4:36 PM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Mikey,
> > 
> >> as your co-chair and scribe, i don't have any objection to 
> >> others taking the poll. but it would make my life a lot 
> >> easier if they indicated that they are not WG members when 
> >> they fill out their entry so i can tell who is who when i 
> >> summarize the poll. i admit, i worry a little bit about 
> >> craziness and pranks, but i'm willing to wait and cross that 
> >> bridge if we come to it.
> >> 
> >> Roberto? you have any thoughts either way on this?
> > 
> > I confess that I am seriously puzzled by the exchanges I see in the last
> > couple of days wrt the poll.
> > Personally, I have no objections whatsoever to "non-members" taking the
> > poll, for two reasons, and with a caveat.
> > The first reason, is that you cannot prevent it. Although this might not
> > seem a good reason per se, it simply means that I see no point in putting an
> > additional burden in terms of control, count, identity check, aso. for
> > something that is not a vote, but a poll.
> > The second one, maybe more substantial, is that I do believe that there are
> > people who did not subscribe to the WG because they knew that they could not
> > afford the commitment of tons of emails, need for quick responses to issues,
> > two weekly teleconferences (maybe at impossible hours from their time
> > zones), but that would like to express an opinion anyway. And I believe that
> > their opinion is useful to the co-chairs in assessing the situation.
> > The caveat is, surprise surprise, the same one that Mikey has expressed: a
> > way to identify them as "external contributors" to the poll, not WG members.
> > Anyway, the reactions I have read, like the reasons for not allowing
> > external folks to participate to the poll (as they could "stuff the ballot
> > box") is IMHO disproportionate. And the reason is that this is not a "ballot
> > box", but a "poll". When the co-chairs will count the preferences, assuming
> > that we will do it in a formal way, it will not be with the spirit of
> > declaring a "winner", not even a "majority candidate" that will be in a sort
> > of pole position for a compromise solution. Nothing at all of this. I cannot
> > speak for my colleague co-chair, but personally what I was looking for was
> > not the first choice of you folks, which I probably could have easily
> > guessed without having to go through a poll, but which are the grey areas
> > (actually, the "yellow" areas). What are the possibilities to create a
> > common ground, even limited.
> > 
> > What I see, is a dicomforting scenario. What is upsetting to me is not so
> > much the clear cut in two opposite camps (those who favour RACK+ are against
> > JN+2 or FreeTrade, and viceversa), but other things. For most, actually
> > close to all, members the opinions on the highest ranking proposals are
> > either green or red, with very little yellow margin. But that was
> > predictable. What is upsetting is that members of the WG are starting
> > saying: "But xyz did not vote, did he have the chance to vote, it would have
> > been +1 for proposal abc". Folks, for the nth time, this is not a "vote". I
> > do not care if proposal P1 or P2 is liked by a few people more than proposal
> > P3 or P4. What I care is what are the elements of proposals P1, P2, P3 or P4
> > that are not acceptable to some, in order to go to a next phase in which we
> > can see what we can do to smoothen some aspects of the proposals in order to
> > reduce the concern and make them consider less "risky".
> > But I see that in spite of the work done so far, we are still in
> > beauty-contest mode. We are not here, to repeat a metaphore used a few weeks
> > ago, to choose the best molecule, but to break the molecules into atoms,
> > pick the atoms that are acceptable (or at least not violently opposed), and
> > build with them the molecule of consensus.
> > To explain better the way I see things, let me make an example.
> > One question is not whether we should have or not VI, but under what
> > circumstances, and with which safeguards, the opponents of VI would feel
> > sufficiently protected from the risks they see in VI to accept a limited
> > test. Another question is not whether small TLDs should be obliged to have
> > ICANN accredited Registrars or not, but rather under which circumstances
> > could an exception be made, and what are the conditions and risks that we
> > need to take into account before defining which is the extent of the
> > exception.
> > Analysing the result of the poll so far, I see that among the people who
> > state they cannot live with the status quo (Board Motion and/or DAGv4) we
> > have friends of proposal abc and foes of proposal xyz, and friends of
> > proposal xyz and foes of proposal abc. Knowing that if we cannot come to a
> > consensus, you will not get the proposal you like, but the status quo you
> > don't like, I count on you to come together and forget about your favourite
> > proposal, and help crafting a "new thing" (a "bossa nova", as the Brazilians
> > would say) that you and others can live with. To replace the status quo you
> > cannot live with.
> > 
> > It is too late to get something done in this direction before Brussels. But
> > I count very much on the F2F in Brussels (meeting on Saturday and bar
> > anytime) to narrow the gap we have as of today.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Roberto
> 
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