And then Andy drops some bombshells, CEO M. Stuart Lynn announced he will retire within a year and JDRP lawyer Joe Sims announced he will cease acting for ICANN within a similar time period. That might lead to some wild conjecture (did they jump or were they putsched?). Andy promises more info, including more photos (postcards from the edgy?), will appear on his site in the next few days. Following is the full text of the post..."

To: icann-europe@lists.fitug.de
Subject: [icann-europe] news from the icann board retreat
From: Andy Mueller-Maguhn andy@ccc.de
Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 06:06:20 +0200

Hi,

just a few notices from my flight from jfk, coming from the board retreat near NYC in garden city, long island.

Disclaimer: nothing officially has been decided, this is a list of my notes of informal discussions.

The retreat in a way was making sense because of it was an open discussion about what "icann II" should be, what the outcome of the process be etc. We had a less confrontative, quiete constructive discussion, just interrupted by more or less a few struggles.

But (just the most important points):

no atlarge election of directors to be expected

for "technical" reasons (don´t know how) the majority of the board agreed to not make any direct elections with this year. on the direct questions, if any directors would say "no direct at-large-elections under no circumstances whatsoever" 5 directors outed themself: stuart (lynn), vint (cerf), hans (kraijenbrink), rob (blokzijl), helmut (schink)

the majority of the board agreed to the idee of a nomination committee (s)electing board members. status of the discussion is to keep 18 board members + ceo (to be discussed if allowed to vote) and some rought guidelines for setting up the nomination committee (including seats for advisory committees in the nomcom, that means gov´s included). but on the other hand side the board agreed to the fact, that the empowering/selection of board members by governments is not an realistic approach (at least for now)

some important questions like the jurisdiction of the organization and the involvement of staff following or developing policys where raised but not answered. this means: we should watch the limit of the acting people even those acting with best attitutes..

in the discussion about the principles of the corporation it was accepted that the outcome must be a balance of interests when making policy. freedom of speech was at least accepted by a majority to possibly be affected when following intellectual property ideas. so i do think, there is chances to involve NGO´s acting in the area of freedom of speech in a "freedom of speech constituency" or however to put something on the other side of the intellectual property people

this means: setting up of the nomcom is the critical issue now. taking balance of interests as the goal, identifying all actors in the game and their interests and impacts on the game is the job for the NGO community in my eyes.

Stuart Lynn announced to retire in March of 2003

Joe Sims as Jones & Days announced to step out of acting for ICANN soon. He did not mention a precise date/time when, questioned by Vint said something like "in the next month or similar to Stuarts retirement"

Andrew McLaughlin announced to be changing his involvement to half time by 1st of July

Rob came with an official (?!) paper from the european commission (gordon.lennox@cec.eu.int) from May 21st. I will scan this and put on my website tuesday night CET as well as:

"ICANN II - Issues to be resolved" paper from Christopher Wilkinson, May 2002

CENTR paper "ccTLD Requierements for International Coordination of the Domain Name System) from Marianne Wolfsgruber, gm@centr.org worth reading (online?)

regards,
A.

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Andy Mueller-Maguhn, andy@ccc.de, Key ID 331F978,http://www.ccc.de/~andy

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NOTE: ccTLD Requirements for International Coordination of the Domain Name System, edited by CENTR General Manager Marianne Wolfsgruber, seems to be online here. -g