Hi,

At the meeting in Seoul, as well as part of the Transition Plan, the NCSG (Currently NCUC + Board Appointed council members) decided that membership in the NCSG should be opened as soon as possible so that organizations and people who were interested in joining the NCSG but perhaps not in joining the NCUC would be able to join. In order to make that possible, it was necessary to create a Membership Criteria document.   There is consensus in the NCSG-EC on sending the draft out for review at this time.

A draft of this document has been posted on the NCSG Executive Committee (NCSG-EC) wiki page:  https://st.icann.org/data/workspaces/ncsg-ec/ 
in http://bit.ly/4uOAT4

A rtf version of the document is attached.  A pdf is available on the wiki.

As we would like to open membership as soon as possible, I would like to ask people to comment on this document by 11 January at which point I will ask the NCSG Executive Committee members to review all comments and decide on any necessary changes.  After that, the plan is to open membership to the NCSG.  The intent is also that this membership criteria document would be folded into the yet to be developed NCSG Charter, which will need to be approved by the Board and then would replace the Interim Charter.  

The next step for the NCSG-EC, which we have already begun, is documenting the process for forming an Interest-group/Constituency.  As mentioned during the NCUC monthly meeting, we are currently working on this without trying to determine the final state question of whether the NCSG  ultimately has Interest Groups or Constituencies, since we feel that the basics of forming such a group are pretty much the same regardless of the end decision on Interest-group versus constituency - briefly: first gather a group people of a particular interest, then organize and then start to contribute to the NCSG and the GNSO.  As with this document, once we have a draft that has NCSG-EC consensus for sending to review, I will send it out for review.

I will also be forwarding this email and the draft to the Board's Structural Improvements Committee for their comments.

Avri
acting as Chair NCSG Executive Committee