 We are making history and recording history. This is unstructured open time. The usual agenda is what are the issues of interest to you? What are the comments that you would make? I've always had a very deep appreciation for the fact that you have walked many miles in the shoes that we occupy and I can offer cogent advice and cogent comments about what you expected or the way things should have been or should be. I have no idea whether this tradition will continue after I leave because I'm the one that's been pushing this particular thing, but I hope so. And I might even come back if that's the case. Ni, talk to us. Talk about how you got involved, what the early days were, and what you're, you know, that's fine. Go back to wherever you want and what the issues were and any particular encounters or episodes that come to mind. The early days were one of nobody present from the developing world, few, very few, and in Africa in particular, practically empty. So the first job was how do we create company for ourselves? We had a lot of help from the colleagues in the developed environments who urged us on, but we had a challenge of bringing the right people into the community. We're also mindful that if you don't bring the right balance of people, you could lose track. In the early days, the focus was, of course, getting technical operations going, making sure we could operate our CCTLDs or preparing for the numbers registry because they were not there yet. So the focus was on bringing professionals who could help us accomplish that and also forming the necessary linkages to encourage us to keep doing that. We had challenges not only in finding the people, but also the supports for them. In some cases, we had challenges with the environment itself was not friendly. ISPs could not easily get started and so, but many of these things have changed. The technical know-how was a problem and that's why the first active organization was AFNOG, which was the operator group, and these were operators training themselves and then remaining as a community. And it is from the AFNOG that all the other groups began to split. So it was the place where we built consensus for things like the numbers registry, the CCTLD federation, and so on. So that's how our case evolved. But now it's free running like we want. Quite organic, new groups emerge. Some pass away, but in general, it's growing. I hope that helps. How did you first get involved with ICANN? I was part of the... I was very active with Internet Society and in I-Net. And I think in one of the meetings, we had to do IHC work and I happened to have been drafted to chair a session and from there, I continued to be involved. I thought of it as the same, actually. One being operational administration and the other one being impact on policies and social and so on. So I came in through the I-Net angle. I wonder who here served on the board the earliest. Is anybody from the original board here? I don't think so. Lyman, when did you begin? You started in 99. Yes. First elected. First elected. Did he beat you? He beat you. And when did you serve, Ni? 2000. 2000. Well, you're the winner. I made a reveal from the history. It was in the board, 99, 2003. Two terms, two years, and the reform saved me. So it was sent back into civil life in 2003. If you want to know how we got involved, you don't, but I will, in any case, because I was bored. That is, I was working as a lawyer. I mean, some people do that sometimes. And for some strange reasons, a partner in my firm got ill and they had to inherit all his family law cases, something I hated, because in family law, people don't want solutions. They want to use you as a biochemical weapon to destroy the other party. And there is no possible arrangement, or whatever. So I did that for one year and a half. And then when this partner died, I left the firm the next day. I said, I won't work as a lawyer again in my life. I was lying, as always. But I was firmly convinced about that. So I accepted the part time job at the university and said, well, now for some months I want to do something funny. So I've been using the internet for some time, but I have no idea how it works. I mean, how in hell emails go from one side to the other? And how it can read these pages and search these waste databases for antitrust cases, all this. So I enrolled in the ITF, I did my research. And it was in a cryptography work group that, my god, I mean, each email to me one day. So it was farther and farther and farther from getting to the point. But at that moment, interning had a very good idea to start charging for domain names. And then the domain name was exploded. Oh, this for a lawyer is something I think I can understand a little bit better than cryptography. So I got involved there. And then you know what happened? I meet people like me and Roberto and all the others that were trying to solve a problem. And the problem at the time was how you move from an internet that somehow is overseen by a guy that has charisma because everybody knows him to a church, from God to a church, because many different people will be there and nobody knows everybody. So we need an instructor how to enlarge the DNAs and how to make the DNAs to work better for everybody. That were the ideas. And then we discussed a lot about procedure. Thank you. Thank you. Roberto. Yeah, I have two very quick anecdotes. The first one was prompted by Amadeu, who was one of my reference persons when I started. Calling me old or something? No, big brother. Actually, I happened to follow Amadeu in his steps including in the position that I am now in the Board of Public Interest Registry. But anyway, the first anecdote is how I got involved. And the short answer is by chance. I was responsible for software development at the European Telecommunication Standards Institute. And the deputy director general started a program for getting the institute more involved in the internet. And she, Bridget Cosgrave, somebody, Amadeu remembers the name at least, and Francisco as well. So she was part of the committee of registrars. And the first meeting was set in Tokyo, the 8th of November, 1997. And a couple of days before, she went to the doctor for a medical. And she was pregnant. And the doctor told her, you can't travel. And so she called me and said, you go to Tokyo to this meeting. I knew absolutely nothing. And that was just a change of my life. Apparently, I did well because then I ended up in being the internet advisor on Etsy, changed the job, and so on. So that was the- And you weren't pregnant, right? No, I was not. She picked me because she was sure I was not. That interestingly enough, but that's a side thing, that happened to be a good move because basically, and Francisco remembers those days, those were the days in which Etsy, predominant in Etsy were the telecom operators. And the telecom operators in the late 90s were not really in very good terms with internet people. And so to pick somebody that was not from that world was a good move. The second thing that I would like to remember here is, and that was prompted to me by what Ni said, in the very beginning, when the DNSO was formed, then there were these constituencies and then the council. The council was supposed to be the synthesis of the discussions in the constituencies, but there was no forum where ideas from different constituencies could be exchanged. And so me started what then became the general assembly of the DNSO. And somebody proposed me to chair, to put my candidate for chairing the general assembly of the DNSO. And I said, no, listen, now I'm in no constituency. I'm just a plain user. I'm not connected with this world anymore. And the answer was, in that case, you have the best person to do it. And so I ended up in chairing the general assembly of the DNSO. And I think that that's why I'm saying this, because it was the first attempt to bring at a level that is not the top level, the council, the decision-making bodies, but to bring the discussion among constituencies. And I'd like to see this as the first step to multi-stakeholderism from the bottom up. So it was an interesting experience. It was a challenging experience. Those who have lived those days remember that we were flooded by emails. We had to set up rules in order to limit insults and all this. The vice chair was Harold Halverstrand. Interestingly enough, we both ended up in the different times in the icon board. So we set up rules, a moderator, and so on. And then at the end, it was an interesting experience. The person that contributed most to that mailing list was the very famous Jeff Williams. And the debate is still on whether he is a person or not. But anyway, it was probably not successful in achieving things, the general assembly. But I think it was a good experiment. And we learned something from it. The other history that is interesting and how to deal with two different countries going to Brazil in 2003 to the GAC meeting. And the two countries have some problems not to be sitting together in the same table. And they both came to me and said, well, I can go to Brazil if the other cannot. And the other say the same. So I was thinking about we use in the GAC to put all the names of the countries. So my simple solution was take out all the names of the countries and register all the names of the persons. And start to talk with the person directly, not mention which country the person believes. So both countries sit down in Rio in that time. So it was a start of a very good relationship with the two countries that became for me a very interesting situation that I was invited almost all the time after that to sit with each one and have lunch with each one to talk about if I will guarantee in the others. I said, well, in Brazil I can guarantee. In the other countries I cannot. So it was a very interesting opportunity to bring together people that are not comfortable to be together in the same table. So end of stories because there is a lot. Bottom line is we bring people together to be uncomfortable with each other. Lyman, your turn. It's interesting to think back to some of the early issues that I can't face. It was easy, even from the beginning, to know that registries and registrars and so forth should be a part of ICANN and should have a role to play in the decisions that it made. But it was not at all clear what, if any, role individual internet users, what has come to be called the at large, would be represented. And if we go all the way back to 2000, ICANN actually conducted what was the first and very definitely the last open election for five board seats, one from each of the five geographic regions. And I was one of 10 candidates in the North American region. This was my introduction to participation in ICANN. I remember that Larry Lessig was one of the other North American candidates. And he was at the Berkman Institute at the time. He arranged, he actually got Jonathan Zitron to arrange for us to have a candidates debate at Harvard. And so all 10 of us gathered there. And I went back recently just to refresh my memory. I looked at the transcript of that debate, which lasted two hours and was broadcast and so forth. And what struck me in the transcript was the incredible idealism that was expressed by all the people who were there. They just thought that they were about to change the world. And I was just astonished. Not that we have necessarily lost that kind of enthusiasm, but certainly the youthful energy that was represented in that candidate pool was remarkable. I managed to not come in last in the voting, but I managed to come in ninth only because one of the 10 candidates withdrew before the end of the voting. But that obviously did not dim my enthusiasm for ICANN as an enterprise. When me and I were both on the board together a couple of years later, we were two of the originally five and ultimately winnowed down to three members of the Evolution and Reform Committee that was tasked with carrying out the consequences of what our second CEO, Stuart Lin, had identified as an organizational crisis that was going to prevent ICANN from continuing to fulfill its mission. Alejandro Pasanti was another member of that committee as were Hans Kreinbrink and Phil Davidson. And we had to tackle the issue of the at-large because, of course, we'd had this election and it was widely considered to have been less than a resounding success, notwithstanding the fact that it was completed and it did seat five directors. And in the process of looking at the at-large, there was almost a rebound from the election experience. And it was not until the last few iterations on the new bylaws, the reform bylaws, which were eventually approved in 2003, that we actually had a fully formed at-large advisory committee at the advisory committee level. There had been a number of attempts to have an at-large component within ICANN with some other status with what many people considered to be a lower or less than advisory committee status. But we did, in fact, finally come up with a structure that included an at-large. And, of course, we've seen that grow tremendously over the intervening 13 years now, 14 years now. So I guess from an anecdotal standpoint, the thing that I certainly carry away from that experience in the early days of ICANN is the value of, let's call it, youthful enthusiasm, but let's imagine also that it can infuse even those of us who are no longer youthful. Fantastic. Ron. Thank you, Steve. As one of the newer members to this esteemed lunch of board members through history, I can't help but ask, especially of those that have been around a bit longer, and just hearing about the early elections, I don't have the details, but I hear there was some controversy in that election period where initially it was invalidated, and then subsequent to that, it was redone. And I don't know which part of the election you went through. If you can share some of that. I mean, just for, since we're doing historical things for the video montage, maybe we can add a little bit about that, not just for me, but anybody else who might listen to this later, what were the issues there in that early election and how did it get invalidated and who survived that? Anyone? I don't remember the elections being invalidated. I guess you refer to the at-large ones. The SO ones sometimes were quite violent, like the DNSO, but they were never invalidated. But they had, if I make the comment, they had the byproduct of only allowing people with thick skin and root models like me being on the board. Which eventually led to having a noncom, a more peaceful way of selecting people that is not that contentious as it was the initial, and so especially the DNSO ones. Regarding the alak ones, number of things happened. Some of the things that happened but didn't let invalidation is was I would say some kind of irregularities, especially in the ASEAN area. In Europe was very simple. I mean, the problems with these elections was something like bring your own electorate. Any election means that you have an electoral base and these electoral base choose. But here was no electoral base and each candidate was bringing the electoral candidate. So the European elections were German elections for the simple reason that the Bertelman's Foundation was spending a lot of money and getting a lot of attention in the German newspaper. So it was about whether this German candidate or that other German candidate or that other German candidate, which one bring its own electorate would be elected. In Asia, what happened? It was a sort of nationalistic context between Japan, China, Korea, but especially Japan and China. One thing that was somehow irregular that suddenly thousands of people enrolled for the elections being all of them employees of a telco in Japan, right? And then the Chinese discovering that and coming to ICANN and say, well, you should extend the term because we don't have enough time to enroll all the people we want to enroll to vote for our candidate. And this created a sort of tension. See what are we doing now? But what happened is that because of the incredible massive hammering of a couple of organized groups in Japan and China trying to enroll everybody, the system exploded. So at a certain point, nobody was able to enroll before the end and nobody was able to vote at the moment of the elections. And this created the problem of what to do, extend that, which was done. But I don't think that was at any moment a real issue about invalidating the elections. It was a general consensus that redoing the elections the next time should not be done with the same rules. That was quite clear. In the same way, the question of Ron, I think it could be also interesting to know why I can just select or elect five and not the nine who were supposed to be the nine. And yeah, but it was supposed to be nine. And it was at the first time five. And then I can decide not to have a second time for the fourth remaining seats. And it's why the initial people from the board stay longer than it was supposed. And as I have the floor, I joined ICANN in Melbourne 2001. I just was hired by a non-for-profit company who got as the chief information officer of the largest French company. And they just decide before I joined to be BC secretariat. And then I arrived in Melbourne. I was supposed to do that. And I don't know if you see when you arrive and you have Miley and Cade, Phil Shepard, and Teresa Swindard. And they are the one who tell you what to do. And then they decide to have somebody at the end. And they change the secretariat to somebody from Brussels. But I follow this up to the time I left Siegraf. And when I start to be chair of the French chapter of ISOC, I become part of the discussion about the creation of the full at-large. Because as you know, after the election, sorry, the selection by the board in 2003, it took four years to set up the regional at-large organization. It was done in 2007, almost for the five regions at the same time. And there we had election for the definitive at-large advisory committee from the Rallos and the Nomcom at that time. And I was elected, I guess, for one year and then for two years. And then decision was taken to have two, now one seat on the board for at-large again. And it's why I came to the board for six months and three years. And during the course of these six plus three years, the board decided to extend everyone who was selected as SONAC from the middle of the year to the end of the years. It's why I end up to do three term, six plus three plus six months, and then four years. But in taking back some discussion, it seems that the board were unhappy in 2000 with the election of the at-large people. Just as a joke, it seems that the board currently is unhappy with at-large because they didn't give the second seat to at-large to the board. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody? Sorry, Wendy. Thank you, Wendy Seltzer. I wanted to pick up on Amadea, my fellow lawyer's view of an exaggerated taste for procedure because certainly that is one of the components of this group. And I've got involved with ICANN first from the Berkman Center as a law student facilitator of some of the early meetings and early scribe and somehow have stayed engaged in various places served on the board as a lack liaison. And I think I've come to see that the procedures can serve as a way to bring more of the different viewpoints into discussion and bring people to share ideas that they might not initially have seen as compatible. So it's been interesting to watch as a core of people come to support the ICANN idea even as they continue to have different ideas of what ICANN should do and what substantive policies should be chosen by that organization. And I think core to sustaining that is continued focus on the narrow set of functions that need to be coordinated here by ICANN and leave most of the really exciting substantive policy discussions for determination outside in the places better suited to them. If I recall, you were heavily involved with the push of getting a voting seat on the board for a lack, is that wrong? I continue to, I have always been ambivalent about how a lack is constructed. I think that the individual user interest is a critical one to be represented in ICANN. I still don't have the right solution to how to represent that correctly and get the engagement of enough people who represent the individual user and not particular pieces of commercial service to the individual user or particular ideological components that they buttress by they, we, I mean, I have to include myself there and buttress by saying these are the interests of the individual and I think we're seeing in recent politics, direct democracy is not the answer. We need layers of structure to help filter and report the views and interests of individuals. So even as a student of law and politics I don't have the answer to how we do that right in the global internet. Now I wanted to say something completely different just to change, explain something that has improved a lot in ICANN. It's how the board does the public meetings and especially the votes. In the early days, if you check the minutes you will see that everything was something like 17 in favor, known against or 17 against, known in favor or 19 in favor or perhaps 15 in favor, two absent and two abstention or something like that. That was not the reality. The reality is that the night before the public meetings we're having a dinner and by desert time we started to vote, right? Even worse before the elected people from a large, you know, the knees and others were there. It was a complete rehearsal. Then you will say that and you will answer this and you will move and you will second. Everything was just like a pas de deux in ballet. It was deadly boring. It was, we were bad performers. It smelled pre-cooking. It was awful. Really, nobody could believe that. I do confess that sometimes I was voting against in the morning after or abstaining something I voted in favor just for the sake of somebody disagreeing, right? Because it could not be that everybody could read on everything smiling and with a perfectly rehearsed ballet. And I think that you are much more credible now when you have real votes and we see that, you know, there are people in favor, people against and people that don't have an opinion. And I think that's more, you know, it's more helpful to the community to trust you that what we were doing in 99 and 2000 and even 2001, 2002 somehow. Excellent, excellent. Bruce, I want you to top that. You've been off the board for a few minutes. You were on the board for a full nine years, right? And vice chair for a lot. And you were chair of the GNSO council for some years before that. And my memory doesn't go back earlier than that. But that's a long arc, pick something notable. It is interesting to reflect on that. So I think I was there for about nine and a half years because I joined the half year. That's right. That was my doing actually to extend some of these. So an extra half year, Sebastian was one beneficiary and you were another. That's correct, yeah. But it's interesting that it's quite a long, I've just been interested in listening and quite a lot of discussion about ALAC and the process of appointing board members. It's also tightly coupled with the introduction of the nominating committee as well, which I didn't really hear that much discussion about. But I volunteered to participate as one of the members of some sort of non-com advisory to the actual review team or something. But in any case, they're linked. And I think the non-com was an attempt to sort of see, you know, how do we get the community appointing members to the board that don't come from a particular supporting organization or particular advisory committee. I think that's something I've noticed is trying to get that balance on the board between people that have spent years and attended many ICANN meetings before they joined the board as I had. I cut my teeth, I guess, you know, from the ground up, bottom up, so to speak. As a member of the Registrar Constituency, then joined the, what was the DNSO Council at the time, which had the combination of the GTLDs and CCTLDs. I think Demi who was here earlier was on that council at the time as well. And that in itself has been interesting because there was a split, there was a Brexit event that happened in the DNSO and the CCNSO went off and created their own supporting organization and then appointed people directly to the board from that supporting organization. But I think one of the things I look at it is there's been organizational development and a lot of people have talked about that, but there's also been people development and I think there's two aspects of the people development. There's the people that have come through the community, taken on big roles and then eventually joined the board and I think Leon is a great example of that. He's just been elected from ALAC but he was involved in ALAC, got involved in a leadership role in the accountability process and then was eventually appointed to the board. So I think it's great to actually be able to see people develop within the community to those roles but also I think it's good that the nominating committee finds people from outside the ICANN world that bring different perspectives. Thank you. Thank you, I've been looking forward to this. Thank you all. Thank you.