OSC Communications Team Meeting Notes

02 September 2009 See Transcript and MP3

Action Items:
Tasks 1 and 2: Website "design scrum" (Steve, Chris, Ken, and Scott)
--The sub team is looking at the structure of a new GNSO website
Task 3: Soliciting Meaningful Feedback (Helen and Zbynek)
--Work Team members should review the from Zbynek. Julie circulated the ICANN policy translation procedures and notes from the meeting with Christina Rodriguez.
Task 4: Improve Coordination with ICANN Structures (Mason)
--Mason will complete his analysis of what is being done already in ICANN and what needs to be done. Mason will draft an outline/template document for output.

Summary:
Tasks 1 and 2: Chris reported that the sub team is meeting in Marina del Rey to look at the structure of a new GNSO web site. Scott noted that he will be leveraging information of surveys for 230 ICANN web site users, may of whom are new to the ICANN world.
Task 3: Zbynek asked for Work Team feedback on his draft recommendations. Steve noted that it would be useful to have information on the current procedure for translation ICANN policy documents and Zbynek added it would be good to have notes and the recording of the call with Christina Rodriguez. Julie circulated the current translation procedures document and her notes from the call, but unfortunately the call was not recorded.
Task 4: Mason has been engaged in identifying problems, determining what is already being done in ICANN, and what needs to be done. In addition to the recommendations Mason is developing, he also will consider codes of conduct for ICANN blogs/public forums and better communications at meetings.
Output Format: Mason agreed to set up a document template.

19 August 2009 1900 UTC See MP3 and Transcript

Action Items:
Tasks 1 and 2: Website requirements and document management (Steve, Chris, Ken, and Scott)
--The team will look at how the new web site will be organized, including taxonomy and menu structure
--Scott will continue surveys of GNSO power users and gather information from other surveys
--The team will move ahead on the task of tagging
Task 3: Soliciting Meaningful Feedback (Helen and Zbynek)
--The subteam will expand initial proposals to include specific details and processes
Task 4: Improve Coordination with ICANN Structures (Mason)
--Mason will complete his analysis of what is being done already in ICANN and what needs to be done. Mason will draft an outline/template document for output.

Summary:
Tasks 1 and 2: Chris reported that the subteam is looking at how the new web site will be organized now that all data has been migrated. The next step is to look at taxonomy and new menu structure and organize the material while considering what we have/don't have. Scott noted that there is a wealth of data from the ICANN web site survey that he will consider along with the information he has gathered from the 8 interviews he has conducted of GNSO web site powers. He noted he will probably do two more interviews. Ken added that another operation was tagging all data in the new architecture with the taxonomy and he thought that might happen next week.
Task 3: Mason agreed to contact Zbynek and Helen to see if they can expand the initial recommendations Zbynek provided to the team.
Task 4: Mason has been engaged in identifying problems, determining what is already being done in ICANN, and what needs to be done. In addition to the recommendations Mason is developing, he also will consider codes of conduct for ICANN blogs/public forums and better communications at meetings.
Output Format: Mason agreed to set up a document template.

05 August 2009 1900 UTC See MP3 and Transcript

Action Items:
Tasks 1 and 2: Website requirements and document management (Steve, Chris, Ken, and Scott)
--Scott will continue interviewing website "power users" and organize responses.
Task 3: Soliciting Meaningful Feedback (Helen and Zbynek)
--The subteam will expand initial proposals to include specific details and processes
Task 4: Improve Coordination with ICANN Structures (Mason)
--Mason will complete his analysis of what is being done already in ICANN and what needs to be done.
Output Format: Julie will contact Chuck Gomes to see if the OSC has any specifications for the format the Work Team should use for output. Mason will draft an outline/template document.

Summary:
Tasks 1 and 2: Scott reported that he is still sending out invitations to GNSO “power users” to be interviewed re: GNSO user experience. He has three interviews scheduled for this week and next and more are coming in and he is still aiming at one dozen user interviews in order to have a real-world basis for our design decisions. He will compile the responses to determine whether these result in additional recommendations. Steve noted that these would build on the Business Requirements document, rather than resulting in changes to it. For other types of users, Scott will consult with Kieren concerning the responses he received from the survey of users of the ICANN website. Scott reported that the status of the migration is that the WebDev team has written the script we envisioned, has made the test migration several times with increasingly good results, and the migration to change the DNS from test to live is scheduled for Friday, 14 August. Scott also noted that he, Ken, and Marc Salvatierra reviewed the taxonomy in detail and that it is complete.
Task 3: Mason agreed to contact Zbynek and Helen to see if they can expand the initial recommendations Zbynek provided to the team.
Task 4: Mason has been engaged in identifying problems, determining what is already being done in ICANN, and what needs to be done. In addition to the recommendations Mason is developing, he also will consider codes of conduct for ICANN blogs/public forums and better communications at meetings.
Output Format: The group discussed how to orient their final output. Julie agreed to check with Chuck Gomes to see if the OSC has any specific requirements. Mason agreed to set up a document template.

22 July 2009, 1900 UTC See Transcript and MP3

Action Items:
Tasks 1 and 2: Website requirements and document management (Steve, Chris, Ken, and Scott)
--Scott and Ken will coordinate with ICANN Website staff to migrate the GNSO website to a dynamic/database site and look at the taxonomy (July); tag content and interview website users.
Task 3: Soliciting Meaningful Feedback (Helen and Zbynek)
--The subteam will expand initial proposals to include specific details and processes
Task 4: Improve Coordination with ICANN Structures (Mason)
--Mason will complete his analysis of what is being done already in ICANN and what needs to be done.

Discussion Summary:
Introductions: Ken introduced Scott Pinzon as a new ICANN staff member supporting the Work Team. Scott is Director, Policy Communications/Information Services.
Task 1 and 2: Scott provided an update on recent activities. He and Ken met with Marc Salvatierra on 9-10 July to discuss how to move forward to improve the GNSO Website. Scott noted that the first step is to migrate the site from a static state (content must be changed manually) to a dynamic state (content located in a database displayed on request). The ICANN website staff have begun to migrate the site although this will be transparent to users. They hope to complete migration by the end of July. After the migration is complete, changes to the look of the site will begin. Ken and Scott also are looking at the website taxonomy. Content will be tagged for cataloging in the database in August. In addition, Scott will conduct interviews of GNSO website users and is soliciting names of volunteers who use the GNSO site and can articulate their viewpoint on its strengths and weaknesses.
Task 3: Zbynek shared with the team some initial recommendations concerning the task. Work Team members suggested that the recommendations could be expanded to include specific details and processes.
Task 4: Mason has been engaged in identifying problems, determining what is already being done in ICANN, and what needs to be done. In addition to the recommendations Mason is developing, he also will consider codes of conduct for ICANN blogs/public forums and better communications at meetings.

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08 July 2009, 1900 UTC See 08 July 2009 Meeting Summary

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21 June 2009 at 11:15- 12:30 Local time in Sydney, Australia See Transcript

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10 June 2009, 1900 UTC See MP3

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27 May 2009, 1900 UTC See Transcript and MP3

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13 May 2009, 1900 UTC See Transcript and MP3

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29 April 2009, 1900 UTC See Transcript and MP3

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15 April 2009, 1800 UTC

Primary Team Members in Attendance:

• Chris Chaplow - Commercial and Business Users Constituency
• Mason Cole - Registrar Constituency
• Steve Holsten - gTLD Registries Constituency
• Helen Laverty – DotAlliance
• Zbynek Loebl - Intellectual Property Interests Constituency

ICANN Staff in Attendance:

• Ken Bour - Policy Consultant
• Julie Hedlund - Policy Consultant
• Robert Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
• Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat

MEETING AGENDA

1. Call to order / roll call

2. Approve minutes from 1 April meeting

3. Discussion and timelines for projects in work document / set deadlines

a. Assign roles to tasks:

• Steve Holsten and Chris Chaplow agree to take the lead on the task 1 with support from Ken Bour: Development of new website requirements.

• Ken Bour notes that task 2: Improving document management, is related to changes in the website requirements.

• Steve and Chris agree to also take the lead on task 2, with support from Ken Bour.

• Mason agrees to take the lead on task 4: Improve GNSO’s coordination with other ICANN structures.

• Helen Laverty andZbynek Loebl agree to take the lead on task 3: Improve the GNSO’s ability to solicit meaningful feedback.

b. Set initial deadlines for each task:

• Ken noted that the ICANN website team met on Monday and analyzed the existing website requirements document (the “Penelope document”).

• Steve said that the website requirements team will meet every other week on Wednesdays at 1900 UTC (that is, on the weeks the OSC-CCT Work Team doesn’t meet), beginning 22 April.

• Ken suggested that an initial draft could be ready on 27 May.

• Mason, Helen, and Zbynek also agreed to a 27 May deadline.

• Mason agreed to manage the overall recommendations document.

4. Discussion of recommendation format

• Mason agreed to ask Chuck Gomes whether the OSC or Council was expecting the Work Team’s recommendations document to be in a particular format.
• Chris Chaplow asked what was the best way for the Sub Teams to communicate.
• Rob Hoggarth noted that the Work Team should make sure its efforts are open and transparent.
• Steve asked staff to set up a regular conference call for his Sub Team so that others could join if they wished.
• Helen and Zbynek added that they would consider whether to set up a regular call for their Sub Team.
• Glen asked if Steve’s Sub Team conference call should be added to the GNSO calendar.Steve agreed that was a good idea.
• Chris asked whether staff could provide to the team any guidance on current document translation policy.
• Rob Hoggarth said that the policy team had a document that it used for guidance and would consider circulating it to the Work Team.
• Ken noted the need to make available in the solutions set of the web site a place for translated documents.He added that with respect to the web site requirements the Work Team doesn’t worry about policy but does have to worry about how this is done technically.
• Mason asked if there is a defined policy on translation – number of languages, when, how – that the Work Team can apply.
• Rob agreed that was a good place to start.He added that Ken is right in making sure we have the right mechanisms and tools, but it would be helpful for the Work Team to suggest whether the GNSO needs to adopt a specific policy for handling translations.For example, translation is an expensive undertaking so the Work Team will need to consider how many languages in which to translate the documents.
• Mason noted that the policy issue falls under task 3, Helen and Zbynek’s Sub Team, but Chris added that is also falls under task 1, new website requirements.

5.Next Meeting: 29 April 2009, 1900 UTC.

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01 April 2009, 1900 UTC

Primary Team Members in Attendance:

• Chris Chaplow - Commercial and Business Users Constituency
• Mason Cole - Registrar Constituency
• Steve Holsten - gTLD Registries Constituency
• Catherine Sigmar - gTLD Registries Constituency
• Antonio Tavares - Internet Service and Connectivity Providers Constituency
• Jaime Wagner --Internet Service and Connectivity Providers Constituency

ICANN Staff in attendance:

• Ken Bour - Policy Consultant
• Julie Hedlund - Policy Consultant
• Robert Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
• Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat

MEETING AGENDA

1. Call to order / roll call
2. Approve minutes from 25 March meeting
3. Review work plan-- Anything to add?

Suggestions from Chris Chaplow:

Problem: deficiencies in design of ICANN’s web sites – add

• Languages other than English (Patrick**Sharry p9 BC comments, Summary of Board Actions p8, p12 3ii, 3iv. BCG/WG p. 42/43
• Usability including review of Statistics (London School of Economics (LSE) p12, Rec7, para 3.8 3.10, Summary of Board Actions p12 3iii)
• Search engine optimization and content inventory
• GNSO low external visibility.Non-technology recommendations*(*LSE Rec 11, LSE p48 para 3.2, 3.5, 3.9. p56 3.17
• Ability for Stakeholders to find out what is going on (LSE p48 3.1, LSE Rec10)

Problem: Poor organization …..document management – change recommendation to “Improve document management” and add:

• Document management, document Tracking, mail lists.
• Note from Ken Bour:Content management as listed under the first problem does embrace the document management requirements at a high level.Marc Salvatierra cautioned us to avoid using “content management” when we mean, “document management.”**

Problem: poor ability to solicit meaningful feedback – add recommendation “Improve GNSO ability to solicit meaningful feedback” and add:

• Author documents explaining importance and significance of issues.

Problem:Few formalized channels for GNSO council to communicate with Board.Recommendation: Improve GNSO’s coordination with other ICANN structures – add:

• Transparency, open Meetings, minutes, telephone vs. face-to-face (LSE Recommendation 15)
• Other: The sheer number of acronyms at ICANN is bewildering; add a task to create a glossary that will be updated.

Suggestion from Ken:

• Last call raised the issue that there isn’t anything in the BGC and LSE about the quality of communications in ICANN, that is, the effectiveness of sharing meaning.We could create a “netiquette” sort of guideline for communications.

Suggestions from Mason:

Organize recommendations in three sets:

• Technology and tools
• Content of communications (avoid diplomatic speak, for example), effective translation, etc.
• Process: How communications are facilitated; regular monthly communications from ICANN to stakeholders, etc..Thoughts?Jaime: Content would be the first priority, because all tools would have to share the same content.

Work Plan: Divide work among team and aggregate in recommendation document

• Mason: Proposal – It may be useful to order our work in an outline as a central place of storage to track what is done and not.*Action item: Mason volunteered to start this document.*Question: How do we start dividing up this work?
• Steve and Chris agree to work together on the website section of the business requirements.
• Chris also would be willing to work on the document translation issue. Work plan action item: Provide with milestones to OSC.

Calendar of meetings

• Next meeting15 April at 1900 UTC and every two weeks thereafter.Mason will set up a meeting request and Glen will send notices before each meeting.

All other business--Update on discussions with ICANN staff (Ken Bour)
Joyce Thomas, as project leader, will create a charter document for the technology efforts.ICANN staff agreed that the project scope would be very inclusive and cover everything the Work Team has discussed thus far.ICANN staff suggests that we prioritize the requirements work as follows:

• We could identify all requirements before starting any implementation activities, but some will likely not be achievable over a space of years due to lack of viable industry solutions.On the other hand, some requirements are excellent candidates for incremental improvement in a short time horizon.We can take advantage of this knowledge and tackle the requirements in phases.It may be a couple of weeks before the Work Team gets the charter from the ICANN staff.Ken will make sure the work we do in the meantime is not counterproductive to the anticipated charter.
• Question (Jaime): While we are completing the business requirements we could start implementation?
• Answer (Ken): Yes.We would take the full set of requirements and determine which “buckets” we could address right away (e.g. “Content Management”) for which there are technology solutions.We could work on those items first using an agile development methodology where the “beta” site goes through incremental improvement based on team interaction and feedback.

Meeting adjourned 1943 UTC.

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25 March 2009, 1900 UTC

Primary Team Members in Attendance:
· Chris Chaplow (Commercial and Business Users Constituency)
· Steve Holsten, Vice-Chair, (gTLD Registries Constituency)

ICANN Staff in attendance:
· Julie Hedlund - Policy Consultant
· Robert Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
· Ken Bour - Policy Consultant
· Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat

MEETING AGENDA

1. Call to order / roll call
2. Review agenda
3. Review web team call with ICANN

Points from last week’s meeting:

Two ways to think about any major system development activity:

1. Requirements Development: which should describe a set of business needs absent any specific technology solution. A well-written “Business Requirements” document would be solution/system/platform agnostic.· The Business Requirements document developed originally (by Penelope Wrenn) came from a specific system orientation (Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server) because, at that time, she had that background and experience and thought it would be an ideal solution for the GNSO. When Ken became involved, an effort was undertaken to sanitize the “Sharepoint” bias, but it was not completely eradicated.
· Even with that limitation, the document is a useful place to start because it is comprehensive and contains an excellent set of requirements. It needs to be cleaned up and perfected under the auspices of an ICANN fully funded, accepted project.o A charter will be drafted by the project management office for this work effort
o Once a newly issued Business Requirements document is completed, it should be certified under/by the ICANN infrastructure
2. Implementation:· Having decided (above) what the Work Team would like to see in an improved communications website, the next task is to start building it.
· Normally, the next step is prioritization of the requirements into buckets considering elements such as cost, need (urgency), feasibility, solution availability (purchase or build), timeframes, expertise, etc.
· Discussion last week focused on three different requirements areas: “content management”, “collaboration,” and “document management.” All three of these categories are addressed in the Business Requirements document that was previously published.
· In terms of “collaboration” and “document management”, the technical or feasibility problem is that there are very few solutions available in the industry that support multiple platform environments such exists within ICANN and the GNSO. Sharepoint, for example, handles all of the content, collaboration, and document management functionality that most organization would want, but it is not compatible with Mac operating systems (and others); as such, it is a poor candidate for ICANN, which cannot exercise control over the platform environments that its volunteers bring with them (in many cases as specified by their companies).
· The internal project mentioned last week to develop a document management system for ICANN Staff is feasible precisely because they CAN constrain the technical platform environment, but it will almost certainly not be portable to ICANN as a whole.
· In terms of prioritizing actionable requirements, the Work Team could determine if there is a particular narrow scope that can be addressed in the short term, for example, ”content management,” as advocated by Marc Salviaterra. NOTE: Marc also made a point of requesting that, from a terminology perspective, we are careful not to mix "content management" with "document management" or "collaboration" -- each of which has generally accepted meanings
4. Reviewed potential areas of focus for Work Plan

a. GNSO website· Although we should be solution agnostic, the Work Team should be mindful of feasibility when coming up with a wish list for improvements (e.g. it would not be “reasonable” to write a requirement that all documents should be translated into five languages automatically).
· The Work Team should engage the ICANN technical staff to ensure that the requirements are within the scope of ICANN’s architectural constraints.
· The Work Team should be encouraged to extend beyond the ICANN Board recommendations (they were guidelines, not exhaustive prescriptions) for website improvement.
· This should be a two-stage process: (1) develop requirements, then (2) decide what can be implemented including adds, changes, or deletes to the current GNSO website. NOTE: the current GNSO website cannot be supported as it is now from a content management perspective because it is not database driven
b. Document Management· Question: Should document management be a separate subject?
§ KB’s View: In the technology world a website can be thought of as a delivery mechanism that provides features/functions to its users, e.g. content, collaboration workspaces/tools, and document management capabilities. Ideally, a document management system, as such, would be delivered through the website and would not be an independent system or solution.
§ The Business Requirements paper addresses document management functionality under the subject header of “content management”; however, as noted above, Marc requested that we reorganize the requirements into categories more in keeping with general industry usage (vs. Microsoft).
§ KB Recommendation: start with what is already in the business requirements document and reorganize/edit/augment it.
c. Document Translation· Last fall the ICANN policy team developed its own process for translating documents (internal only) that might be applicable for ICANN as a whole. The Business Requirements document addresses translation, which could be tailored to sync with what has been done elsewhere.
d. Outbound communications methods· The Business Requirements document was intended to address ONLY those Board recommendations that focused on technology. It does not explicitly address the non-technology areas that are part of the CCT’s tasks – such as improving communications between ICANN structures.
5. Review OSC CSG Draft Charter/Task Checklist
· Need to decide whether the OSC Draft Charter is broad enough to cover all of the Work Team’s tasks and details.
· Questions/additions re: the Checklist:o Low visibility of the GNSO (identified by LSE) – should it be added?
o Ensure that the web site is search-engine friendly (is covered within Business Requirements).
o Should there be a GNSO logo under the ICANN logo?
o Should the team consider working on improving the quality of communications within the GNSO, e.g. introducing norms that might enhance the sharing of meaning vs. just information? Ideas could include etiquette or “netiquette” that, in some team members’ minds, are frequently ignored within the ICANN culture.
· We performed a quick exercise to identify how the checklist maps to the Business Requirements document. In the table below, see the last column labeled “In?.” A “Y” indicates that the element is within the Business Requirements scope; an “N” suggests that it is not explicitly accommodated.

6. Suggested next steps:
· Look at the Business Requirements document and see if there is anything to add. NOTE: Ken is willing to walk the team through the document at its convenience.
· Make an outline of what the Work Team is seeking to achieve, that is, how will we know if we were successful?
· Staff will coordinate with ICANN I/T regarding the project management and charter activities. We recommend that the CCT continue its work, without interruption, while your Staff liaisons engage the ICANN infrastructure. We will keep the team apprised of progress…
· Engage experts in certain areas who could volunteer to assist. For example, someone who is intimately familiar with both Drupal and Sharepoint could help us sanitize the requirements so that they are technology/platform neutral.

7. Action Items:
1. Team members suggest any other recommendations that should be added to the checklist.
2. Complete/confirm the checklist
3. Develop a Work Plan (must be submitted to OSC)
4. Assign tasks

8. Next Meeting:
1 April at 1900 UTC. Note: there will be no meeting on 8 April due to the Passover holiday.

Meeting adjourned 2000 UTC.

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18 March 2009, 1900 UTC

Primary Team Members in Attendance:
· Serdar Acir (Registrar contact for Turkish Registry)
· Mason Cole, Chair, (Registrar Constituency)
· Chris Chaplow (Commercial and Business Users Constituency) with William Eaton, Assistant
· Steve Holsten, Vice-Chair, (gTLD Registries Constituency)
· Helen Laverty (DotAlliance)

ICANN Staff in attendance:
· Julie Hedlund - Policy Consultant
· Robert Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
· Roman Pelikh - Director of IT
· Ken Bour - Policy Consultant
· David Conrad - Vice President of Research and IANA Strategy
· Marc Salvatierra - Web Content Developer
· Ritsa Panagis - Senior Business Systems Analyst
· Kieren McCarthy - General Manager of Public Participation
· Joyce Thomas - Technical Project Manager
· Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat

MEETING AGENDA

1. Call to order / roll call
2. Review agenda
3. Results of leadership poll – Approved: Mason Cole, Chair; Steven Holsten, Vice-Chair
4. Discussion with ICANN Web Team

ICANN’s Overall IT Strategy

· Growth pains, more resources in infrastructure technology, driving changes to the ICANN web architecture.
· Trying to meet community requirements as quickly and efficiently as possible.
· First looked at GNSO web site in October 2008o Started looking into what was needed and then requirements collection.
o Decided on an agile methodology to make it useable as soon as possible.
o Question – when you started looking at what needed to be done to the web site, were you doing that in parallel to the Board recommendation?
o Answers:· Yes, the Board Recommendations preceded our work on requirements.
· We are hoping that the Work Team can use the requirements as a starting point.o Work Team should review the requirements document:· Requirements should focus on the business need and not the mechanism(s) to meet them.
· Rewrite requirements that suggest or refer to a specific design solution (e.g. SharePoint, Drupal).
· Note: ICANN staff will be open to various technology solutions but would prefer a system that supports Drupal (e.g. content management)
Key Platform/Architecture Decisions/Corporate Requirements

· Drupal is the content management software of choice – our multi-site/multilingual website development is complex.
· In the website design, some people prefer to have content pushed to them and this is easier to do via Drupal.
· Drupal is not a document management system.
· The new GNSO test development web site is database driven, which will make it much easier to expand.
· If the ICANN sites use different platforms it makes it difficult for the ACs and SOs to communicate.
· Content sharing is a huge amount of the work – audio files, agendas, etc.
· ICANN Meeting sites are now part of the shared Drupal environment. Example (using Drupal): At-Large Summit site – Supports users in three languages.
· Recommendations concerning GNSO website improvements:o Think about content in terms of ICANN overall – for the benefit of users.
o Example: ICANN.org takes a news portal approach to give a top-level view without having to delve deeply into the site.
· The GNSO website should explain the significance of what is being posted.o Consider: there are a lot of shared issues (new gTLDs, IDNs)
o One idea might be to focus on the timelines concerning progress on these PDPs.
· Recommendations concerning translated materials:o Until recently there hasn’t been a consistent approach, so ICANN staff have identified the approaches that worked best.
o When document translation can’t keep up, we end up with gaps; need to determine how to get translations done as quickly as possible.
· ICANN staff have a project management methodology that we follow:o Define the scope of the project – what it will include and should we look at other solutions (other than Drupal).
o Include objectives/goals and scope.
o Joyce and Ken have the action item to develop the Work Team’s charter. Rob Hoggarth will work with David and Denise to identify a project sponsor.
· There are probably 4-6 systems available that could handle document management, collaboration, and content management. It makes sense to use one system for the whole collection of sites; however, Drupal is not a document management system.
· Question – What actions could we take to solve the document management problems and address collaboration needs?
· Answer – ICANN staff initiated a project regarding document management but purely for internal use. With regard to collaboration we don’t have a project initiated. Concerning the GNSO website there is an opportunity to look at how the work team thinks collaboration should be done.
· Drupal can handle basic content sharing – finalized documents/postings for the sites. With respect to collaboration – Drupal does have some workflows, but anyone who wants to do real-time work spaces/document version control – Drupal doesn’t do this but SocialText does.
· Part of the GNSO improvements task is to identify requirements and determine how we can best meet those requirements. ICANN staff will share the results of our internal efforts; but, almost certainly, it will not be applicable to a wider ICANN audience (due to multiple platforms, software tools, operating systems, etc.).
· This work team could start its work on a set of business requirements that are not technology driven but business process oriented – using previous requirements as a starting place.
· The GNSO web site improvement process should take the latest and greatest from other ICANN web sites (list of Drupal sites will be posted to the WIKI).
· The website improvement should focus on the value of the communications and get them out there in a variety of ways.
· There is the process and content of communications and the work team will probably address both. It is important that we evaluate tools that will help us to accomplish our goals.
· Because the GNSO website is taken as a shorthand for all of the tools GNSO uses to get their work done this makes the task of improving it more complicated.
· This is larger than just changing the look and feel of the GNSO web site. The work team should look at the broadest set of problems and try to construct requirements that address all of them.
· Content Management is one of the items under web site requirements. Perhaps it can be prioritized ahead of others since it can be implemented more rapidly than other elements.
· This discussion highlights the need to get clarity on the scope and what can be accomplished in the next six months. How do we take this from general ideas to actions?

Meeting adjourned 2000 UTC.

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11 March 2009, 1900 UTC

Primary Team Members in Attendance:

Interim Chair Mason Cole (Registrar Constituency)

• Chris Chaplow (Commercial and Business Users Constituency) (by phone)
• Steve Holsten (gTLD Registries Constituency) (by phone)
• Zbynek Loebl (Intellectual Property Interests Constituency)

ICANN Staff in attendance:

• Rob Hoggarth, Senior Policy Director
• Ken Bour, Consultant
• Julie Hedlund, Consultant

Meeting Agenda

1. Call to order / roll call
2. Review agenda
3. Review charter amendments

i.Section 1 goals revision to reflect board recommendations as they appear in the slide pres and checklist

ii.Draft changes to Record Keeping section of Section III.

iii.Revision of Section VI to include action items from meeting, board recommendations, and checklist reference

There were no concerns with the revised draft charter.Mason asked the team to entertain a motion to approve the charter as currently drafted.After a unanimous roll call vote, the charter was approved. However, the group agreed that, in future, it would be announced in advance when votes are to be held at meetings and that absentee members could vote via online poll.

1. Team input on Sections IV and VI of revised charter

The group discussed Sections IV and VI of the revised charter, which describe the milestones and objectives for the group, respectively. Concerning the milestones, Mason asked if the “6-month completion timeframe” referred to the period beginning with the Work Team’s first meeting on March 1. Rob Hoggarth agreed that the Operations Steering Committee (OSC) expected that the Work Team might complete some objectives in 6 months. Mason confirmed that the team had 6 months from March 1 to September 1 to complete its objectives.

1. Additional CCT members

Mason asked the Work Team members if they would welcome additional members and noted that Helen Laverty from DotAlliance had asked to join. As there were no objections, Mason agreed to follow up with Helen and asked if anyone on the Work Team knew of someone else who wanted to join. Chris said that he might enlist the aid of a couple of his staff. Rob Hoggarth noted that the Work Team also could call on ICANN staff for support.

1. Selection of permanent chair, vice chair

The Work Team nominated Mason as permanent Chair and Steve as permanent Vice-Chair. The roll was called and the vote passed unanimously among the members present. However, the team agreed that a poll should be sent out to allow the full team to vote.

1. All other business

i.Meeting Minutes: The previous meeting’s minutes were approved.

ii.Work Plan: Mason suggested that the Work Team should review and discuss a basic outline of the work plan. Rob emphasized that the plan should include milestones. Julie agreed to send the draft recommendation checklist document to Mason as an outline and he could send it to the Work Team for review. Rob noted that the team should share its approved work plan with the OSC.

iii.Web Site: Ken suggested that the team should invite David Conrad, responsible for ICANN web site development (formerly Senior Web Site Architect, now Vice President), to the next meeting to give him a sense of the team’s activities. Ken also agreed to send to the team the web site Business Requirements Documentation developed by ICANN Policy Staff. Ken further noted that the web site tool of choice for ICANN is Drupal. Chris said that Marc Salvatierra of ICANN confirmed that there are 13 sites already in Drupal. Mason emphasized that the timing of the web site development process should allow the Work Team to make recommendations for further improvements. Ken agreed to invite David and Marc to the next meeting. Steve noted that the team should focus on the GNSO web site. Ken agreed, but said that some decisions made for ICANN sites in general could apply to the GNSO site.

iv.Next Meeting: The next meeting will be at 1900 UTC on Wednesday, March 18. Subsequent meetings would be held at 1900 UTC on Wednesday, March 25 and Wednesday, April 8, with Steve agreeing to chair in Mason’s absence on the 25th.

TEAM TASKS

1. Agree to charter – Action: agreed
2. Select chair / vice chair---Action: Mason nominated as Chair, Steve as Vice-Chair; poll to be sent to full Work Team.
3. Learn more about ICANN and GNSO website requirements – Action: ICANN web site staff invited to March 18 meeting.
4. Straw man draft of outline of recommendations (using LSE specifics, board recommendations, other input from team) – Action: Mason to review draft checklist and send it to the team to review prior to discussion at the next meeting.
   ----Minutes of the Kick-Off meeting, 1 March 2009: GNSO OSC CCT 010309 Mtg Minutes FINAL.pdf
   Meeting presentation slides GNSO OSC-CCC Work Team Kickoff (FINAL).ppt