Hmmm... ---------------------------------------- I think this is a more sensible approach. Most of us have had experience on PDPs with one or more disrupters.....wasting a lot of people's time being difficult, That's often a criticism of many NCSG members in subgroups. Heck, our mere participation in the RPM group is considered a disruption by those who believe the purpose of the RPM's is to provide mechanisms to protect trademark interests without regard to any other group. One person's disrupter is another person's hero. and we have a packed agenda at this meeting, it is our big chance to make progress face to face. Open records is a lot different than open forum, and we can always allow audio listen in, with texted questions permitted. Hard to do when the NCSG EC post states: "Please find below the dial in details for the closed NCSG meetings during ICANN57 in Hyderabad. Please distribute this information on a private list." Closed means the door is shut behind you. No one who isn't invited can follow live, transcripts are not distributed to all. As I'm currently trying to open up the CEP, after being part of groups that have successfully pressured the Board and the GAC to become more open, I really can't attend closed meetings and maintain any sort of consistent legitimacy. The NCSG should be a leader in opening up meetings, not lagging the Board and the GAC in transparency by closing them. We have member Constituencies engaged in actions concerning membership eligibility in private email exchanges, our "leaders" meeting with Board members in closed fashion... Sad. As I'm not a big fan of "do as I say not what I do" I hope our SG leadership decides to open things up so I can attend all the meetings I'm supposed to be at. Otherwise, like our Members, I'll wait to be told what those involved chose to tell me. Best, Ed Morris Stephanie Perrin On 2016-10-29 03:58, Tapani Tarvainen wrote: Hi Ed, I wasn't actually thinking of closed/open here in terms of secrecy at all, only about keeping the meetings manageable. In other (non-ICANN) contexts I've experience with people trying deliberately disrupt meetings or to hijack them to their own irrelevant agendas, but even with well-intentioned people meetings get harder to manage as the number or participants grows, all the way down to finding big enough room for all. And in negotiations between two or more groups the number of participants from each side also matters. I would be 100% in favour of releasing recordings and transcripts of these meetings publicly as well as letting the whole world listen in, but making them fully open in terms of participation is not quite as easy. In practice I expect we'll let in any interested people as long as space allows, but if we run out of space and some rule is needed to select who gets in, preferring our own members seems reasonable to me. Your offer to help in crowd management is welcome, although I suspect the situation is a bit different in a rock concert than in an ExCom meeting in a room with space for only 10 people or so. As for who we need to ask in the cases under discussion, first the ExComs of NCSG, NCUC and NPOC, then in NCPH case the CSG and in our leaders' meeting with Board the Board members in question. I don't really expect any of them to object to transparency, but they might be hesitant in allowing unlimited and unpredictable number of actual participants. It certainly has been the case before that we've had to carefully balance the number of NCSG and CSG participants, for example.