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The new GNSO is go!
Wednesday, October 28. 2009
The GNSO has been undergoing a restructure for over a year. It is a structure that aims to encompass all those parties who have interests in how gTLDs are managed and handled at policy level.
The new GNSO structure is bicameral, i.e. it has 2 houses. The Contracted Parties House, as its name suggests, groups those entities that have direct contracts with ICANN: the registries and the registrars. The other house is, unsurprisingly, called the Non Contracted Parties House. In it are the intellectual property people, the Internet service providers, the business users, and the non commercial users. In short, the contracted house is for the suppliers and the other is for the users.
The final step on the road to the new GNSO structure was scheduled for today, when a new Council would be seated which paralleled the new bicameral structure. Instead of the previous system, with a single chair/vice chair combo, the new configuration has one chair and 2 vice chairs, one from each house.
All the way through the run-up to today's Council meeting here at ICANN Seoul, during which the election was scheduled, there was doubt that with its new split structure, the Council would ever be able to coalesce around a common choice for chair.
Some even suggested that each house would scuttle the process by choosing its own vice chair and then blocking the chair vote. As responsibility for the Council's administrative function automatically defaults to the vice chairs if no chair is elected, why would a house want to vote for a chair from the other house, which obviously had to happen at some point for a chair to be selected?
In the end, the vote actually went as efficiently as anyone could have hoped. In a 2-round election, current vice chair Chuck Gomes was elected to replace outgoing chair Avri Doria, who was given a standing ovation from the audience and Council members present in the Seoul Lotte Hotel's main ballroom as she stepped down.
Chuck will work with Olga Cavalli, chosen as interim vice chair by the Non Contracted Parties House, and myself, chosen as vice chair by the Contracted Parties House. All 3 positions are for a one year term. The next 12 months are going to be a steep learning curve for me, but I'm looking forward to the challenge and to working with some of the Internet community's most talented and dedicated people, to shape upcoming gTLD policy.
