Friends, as you may have seen on the ICANN website, the proposed revision to the Verisign agreement has generated a large amount of public comment, some of which is extremely critical of the ICANN Directors. There is always the possibility that one or more of the writers might try get onto the ICANN Board in order to change things. One of the routes that would be open to them is through the At Large membership, and another would be through the public call part of our own MOU that says: (b) The Protocol Council will conduct an open call for nominations for any open PSO seats on the ICANN Board. Each Signing SDO is entitled to nominate candidates by procedures of its own choosing. Additionally, nominations from the public at large will be allowed under conditions to be defined by the Protocol Council. The Protocol Council will select the PSO nominees to the ICANN Board from among these nominees. ICANN Directors selected by the Protocol Council may, but need not, be members of the Protocol Council or any SDO. We have never defined the conditions under which this would operate, although we did make a public posting of last year's vacancy. My concern is that if a person such as one of the writers to the open discussion forum were to apply to the PSO for selection to the ICANN Board, and we did not select that person, then he/she might make our own lives very difficult. It would be much easier for us if we could point to the agreed conditions and state why that person did not fit the requirements, if that were to be the case. Perhaps we should agree a date soon for an audioconference in order to discuss this point. Kind regards, Gerry =========================================================================