Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well, we are going to start now. Very well, so today, I am very sorry that Fatimata will not be here. She is absent. She is in now conditions that do not allow her to participate today. So we’ve already done the call to see who’s here, so now we will do the review of the action items in May.
And there’s only one item really, and this was that Hawa was going to be sending the update on the mail, but she has not sent it yet. So Hawa is now with us here in line; if she could just tell us why this was not sent, this update. Hawa, can you hear me? Okay, Hawa last time you had promised to send us by email the update on the ALAC activities. Do you remember?
Hawa Diakite: Yes. I remember.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So if you could just please tell us what’s happening with that, because it’s important. So that was really the only pending issue on the action items, the updates, and now we’re going to go to item four of the agenda, open public consultation. And as you can see we’ve got the At-Large policy, the At-Large development schedule, and we have many ALAC statements that have been prepared and posted for the consultation.
So do you want me to mention each of them one by one? Is that important really? No. Okay, so as you can see, you see all of the issues on public consultation, so those of you who want to participate in any of these statements for public consultation, if you want to participate you can simply click on the link and that will be enough. Now, accountability and transparency with ICANN; responsibility, in regards to accountability and transparency, I really encourage all of you to participate in that because we really need everybody’s opinion.
It’s important because you will be informed on how ICANN is working and what they do. So if we are able to give an opinion then it’s good. So in particular, that specific consultation is very important. I do understand that many of you are not interested, at the DNS, for example, or even not interested in the 47.
So I understand all that, but I think that everybody should be concerned in regards to transparency and accountability within ICANN. So I think that it is in our best interests that we do participate in that consultation; it is a way to participate in the decision-making when they give us consultations. Very well, I will now go to the proposed agenda items. So, item four, we have of course Brussels meeting in the activities.
As you can see there, there’s a link for the schedule that we are going to have in Brussels, so what can we say in regards to that? You’ll see all the items detailed there at the bottom. As you can see there, that’s item A in the agenda, so if you want to see more in detail you can click there.
And then of course Item B is the update on the joint AFRALO/Afri-ICANN, which we’ll take into Brussels. This is something that AFRALO proposed and the goal of this meeting is to ratify - the Board in Nairobi came to a resolution because they decided that they understand that there are certain people that do not have the means to do GTLDT request.
The price, for example, which is very expensive, that’s one of the issues. This is something that they want to work on, so the Board decided to establish a working group between GNSO and ALAC, between all the ACs and all the GNSOs, in order to come up with a way to give assistance to those who need it, to those who will be asking for help, especially those who will be asking for GTLDs and those that need help, in order to not only do the request in order to explore the GTLDs that will be requested.
So this working group has already been established; it’s working very hard at this moment. And there are two or three members of the ACK group in that working group. Another issue that came up was that there are people that are not able to request GTLDs because of price, especially developing countries. Africa is a re-developing region and that is a perfect example.
Africa is the perfect example of countries who need this type of assistance, and this is the reason why we wanted to work to see what the Africa GTLDs need, and ask, and this is why we came up with this resolution.
So let me continue then speaking about this. Very well, so I will then continue with this discussion. So this meeting, once again that I spoke to you about, this joint meeting between AFRALO and Afri-ICANN, which gathers the whole African community and who will be present in Brussels, will get together in order to come up with what the expectations are of the African community in regards to this resolution, and what do they think about the assistance that has been prescribed, if you will, by this resolution.
So we had thought that the results of the working group do not correspond with the expectations of the African community, and this is why we think that this meeting is also important. First of all to see a snapshot or to do a snapshot, if you will, and basically an overview of the situation, and then with the meeting in Brussels we will be able to know if the preliminary results actually correspond to the request from the African to the community.
So if this corresponds then we will prepare a statement and will start working on that, but if that does not match then we’ll have to draft the statement in order to inform everybody about this, and then send the statement to the working group and also to the Board. So this is more or less what the situation is in regards to that item; so that’s item 4-B. We have now discussed, first of all, the schedule for Brussels, and then item 4-B is the joint AFRALO/Afri-ICANN meeting.
And then I have already spoken about the item three open, public consultation period, so I basically just mentioned to you all of the issues on public consultation. Every time I speak about the policy advice development schedule there’s no reaction; nobody speaks about this, so this is why I said whoever is interested in participating in these consultations then click on the link and if you’re not then that’s a different issue. Did somebody want to say something?
Heidi Ulrich: Tijani, if I may, this is Heidi.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Let me go ahead and tell him; give me one moment. Slowly Heidi, please.
Heidi Ulrich: Yes, thank you, I will try to be slowly.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you.
Heidi Ulrich: I just wanted to update everyone that from this Monday, the 31st of May, many new public consultations have been posted on the ICANN site, and this is in order to have them finished or discussed during the Brussels meeting. So this is a very important time to look on the public consultation page for all of the key issues that are being discussed, including the version four of the Draft Applicant Guidebook, which is a very important document to comment on and that’s all.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very, very true, Heidi. You are very right. And this is what I was saying at the beginning. We have the opportunity to give our opinion and it’s something that we should do in order to contribute to decision-making, because if we do not participate in these consultations, our voice will not be heard. So there are many issues on consultation, this is why is it very important to give our opinion in these issues, since this will all be decided in Brussels. Very well, and thank you, Heidi, for that clarification, very well.
So now we are in item five, and this is the survey on the ALSs. So Heidi just reminded me that there will be remote participation in Brussels for all those that want to participate in Brussels, there’s will be remote participation. And this will be available for every single meeting, and there will be interpretation in all of the meetings, as well. Thank you, Heidi, for that. So now item five; once again, the survey on the ALSs. So as all of you know, there is a survey which closed on May 24th, and the ALS participation was not very good at the beginning.
We tried to encourage many in order to participate, so at the end it wasn’t too bad, and this is in regard to the ALSs that participated in the survey. And it’s a very important survey really because it’s going to allow us to clearly see what’s happening with the ALSs and with the community, because AFRALO is the African ALSs, and if we do not know where they stand, there’s not a lot that we can do.
So like I said, this survey was released and now we have closed that period, and so there’s a working group that has been established to analyze this survey, and so the official representative for this group was Didier. Unfortunately he was not present in the first meeting of that meeting, so I will ask Heidi or Gisella - I don’t know who was present in that meeting - if you could maybe give us a small update on what happened in that meeting. So who from the staff would like to give us an update?
Heidi Ulrich: Hi, this is Heidi. I’m happy to do that. We had a good first meeting. We had - they selected Devon Nand from LACRALO as the chair for that working group, and they also decided on the parameters of their analysis. Each of the five regions, the representatives from those five regions, will be preparing the preliminary analysis for their particular region.
They will be looking at language issues, they will be looking at regional issues that were commented on the survey, and during the ALAC and At-Large regional leaders workshop on Sunday the 20th, in Brussels, the working group will present a preliminary analysis. There will be first the global analysis; so the overall results of the survey. And then each of the regional representatives will present their specific region’s preliminary analysis.
We had a relatively good result overall. We had around 50% of all 123 At-Large structures complete their survey. Unfortunately, some regions had a not the best result in terms of number of surveys completed, and AFRALO was unfortunately one of those, with not a very good return rate. I think only about five surveys were submitted. So that will not allow us to have a very good picture of the situation in AFRALO.
But it was also decided that after the Brussels meeting, the regional representatives - so for AFRALO, they are Tijani and Didier - they will follow up personally with those At-Large structures that did not have a chance yet to complete the survey, in order to collect the very important information for additional analysis. So does anybody have any questions?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, question, Heidi, there’s only five African ALSs? I thought there were 12 from what I saw.
Heidi Ulrich: Sorry, in the number of results, do you mean?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I was talking about the ALSs that participated in the consultation period, in the survey.
Heidi Ulrich: Okay, is this Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes.
Heidi Ulrich: Okay, Tijani, if you say that 12 responded then you are correct. The last time I looked I think it was five, but you will have looked at the more recent results.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Right, basically I did a bit of forcing. I personally called some of these and this is why I think there were 12.
Heidi Ulrich: Okay, well thank you, very much for the update, and also your-
((Crosstalk))
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And so just analyzing the results I thought there were 12, but I could be wrong; I don’t know.
Heidi Ulrich: No, I defer to you, because you’re going to be one of the members of the working group on the analysis, so I defer to you.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And 12 is exactly the average. So about 51% of all the ALSs in this case, in ICANN, so since Didier was not present in that meeting, I will be doing the analysis for the region, so I’ll take care of that.
Heidi Ulrich: Tijani, I have just another quick-
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Let me go ahead and tell him, Heidi. Not a problem. So there were 10 ALSs that did not participate and these 10 ALSs need to participate in the survey, even if their participation will not have us include them in the list, but we do need this participation at the moment to have a clearer view of the African. Go ahead Heidi.
Heidi Ulrich: Yes, thank you, Tijani. I just wanted to point out that there is now an ALS survey workspace Wiki that has all of the information regarding the purpose of the survey, the members of the analysis working group, the questions of the survey. So that has been prepared and I have put the link to that workspace into the chat space for this call. So please take a look at that workspace and if you have any comments, you’re welcome to add your comments to that. That’s all.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, very well. So we have spoken about item 5-A – and a question, Iobe?
Iobe: We had a bit of difficultly filling out this survey. We really were not too clear on the form of the questions. We tried working on this on the last few days, the problem is there were certain parts that were not very clear, and that was the issue. So my question is, for example, the format specifically, which is done in Word, because that would be perhaps easier to understand, so maybe that is something that should be brought up, obviously. Like I said, we tried to analyze but it was difficult for us to fill out because of the format.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Iobe, and you’re not the only ALS that had difficulty in filling out this survey. But you could have asked for clarification and you would have gotten that. But nevertheless, this has been closed, so the analysis will be done based on what has been received and this will be used for the future. But if this happens again then you will need to act accordingly to that.
Very well, so we are done with then this issue in regards to the survey. Since Cheryl’s not here, let’s go to item eight, and this is - no I’m sorry, we’re going to do item seven, and this is in regards to the At-Large Board selection process. So Iobe and Boudoin are part of the Board Accountability Validation Committee, and they are our representative in that committee, so we are going to ask Iobe to then give us an update on that committee.
Iobe: So I wanted to say that the last meeting that we had, we had it last Friday. Unfortunately, I was at a workshop and so I was not able to participate in that meeting. And so on Sunday I was not able to analyze the reports for that meeting, so I do apologize for that. So I am not able to give you an update today in regards to this working group. If Boudoin was here, then I think he would be able to do that, but towards the end of the week I can work on some of this and send something out.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well. Thank you, Iobe. Heidi, since you were present, if you could give us then a little update on that committee, please?
Heidi Ulrich: Yes, thank you. The committee, as Iobe mentioned, met last week. They had a very long call; it was over two hours. It was primarily a drafting session. They drafted and completed two documents. One is the statement of interest that will be used by the applicants for the director position. That has been completed and it will be translated into French and Spanish.
The other document was the actual call for candidates; that was again drafted and completed by the members of the group. And again, that is being translated into French and Spanish. So I believe in the next few weeks those documents will be sent out and the call for candidates should be underway shortly. And that is all, sir.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well, thank you, Heidi. So if I understand, then, the statement of interest is something that was worked on and the call to the candidates-
Heidi Ulrich: Yes. Well, the-
((Crosstalk))
Tijani Ben Jemaa: -is being prepared as well, is that correct?
Heidi Ulrich: Yes. Well, again, just to clarify, the statement of interest was initially drafted by the At-Large Board Director Design Team, and then the new working group, The Board Candidate Evaluation Committee, they put some finishing touches on it, mostly grammatical, just small changes, and then they approved it and have approved it for translation.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well. Just a moment, Heidi, they’re telling Aziz to mute himself because there is a bit of noise in his line. And thank you, Heidi, for this update.
Heidi Ulrich: You’re welcome.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So we have now done item seven; now we can go to item eight, and this is the new ALS applications. So we received then an application, an association called Binary Egypt, and we received as well - oh, and Cheryl is here now, and now that Cheryl is here I would much rather go back to item six, and this is in regards to the responsibility and transparency.
And Cheryl is the only At-Large member in this team, talking about the Accountability and Transparency Team. And since she just had a very, very long meeting with that team, she’s going to give us an update and she’s going to give us some recommendations. So Cheryl, are you here?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes.
Mya: Oh, hi, Cheryl, this is Mya. How are you?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Good, thank you, Mya.
Mya: Okay, Cheryl, and just a little request from the interpreters; slowly, because I know that this is a very important point and I don’t want to miss anything, if it’s okay with you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Not a problem.
Mya: Thank you, so much.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hello, everybody. I’m sorry I’m not in particularly good voice today, so I might speak a little less rather than a little more, which is my normal style. With the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, one of the most important things for the region to look at at the moment, and particularly to encourage the At-Large structures and, of course, individuals within the regions, is to respond to the current public comments on a set of 10 questions that we’ve put together. Heidi, have you put to the agenda - I’m sorry, I haven’t looked at the AFRALO agenda in detail - the link to the public comments off the ICANN site?
Heidi Ulrich: I’m doing that now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, very much. The call for public comments is an important preparation before Brussels. At the Brussels meeting we will be hoping that a number of comments have come in on the particular questions that we’ve raised, and either at Brussels or shortly after Brussels we will also be putting out a simple survey tool which will ask very similar questions, but put them into a measurable way. Let me explain.
For example, to have a set of text or words from your ALSs which gives is feedback or information on how much you believe the Board takes note of Government Advisory Committee points of view and advice; how much you believe the transparency of what ICANN does; how staff advise decisions that are being made by the Board; how clear it is for individual internet-end users to understand what goes on in ICANN – it’s very simple to perhaps write text that says, “I do,” or, “I don’t like it,” “I do,” or, “I don’t want more,” “I think,” or, “I don’t think it is working well enough, but what we’re trying to do is also get a set of measurables.
So when the survey tool comes out, you’ll be given a set of – and this is something that individuals as well as At-Large structures and of course the region should be encouraged to respond to – what we’re after is on a scale of, “I agree,” “I partly agree,” or, “I disagree totally,” in other words one to five, how much do you think ICANN does or does not do things in an accountable and transparent way? How much do you think policy development is clear, and how your voices and your opinions are taken into account?
And it is with that information that we will be able to look at what the community view is now, and compare it in 12 months time or 18 months time, when ICANN has undertaken the recommendations from the Accountability and Review Team. We will then be able to compare what you believe now on our first review, and what may have changed - and we hope it’ll be a change for the positive - when we have our follow-up after implementation. That’s the very first point. And at this point I’d like to ask for any questions or any points of order that anyone would like to raise.
Iobe: This is Iobe. I didn’t quite well understand the portion of the surveys that will be presented in Brussels. Is that similar to the survey that we did recently?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Not at all.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And this is what Tijani is explaining to Iobe at this moment, but go ahead Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, the questions from the Accountability and Transparency Review Team are all concerned specifically with what the Affirmation of Commitment said ICANN must do. In the Affirmation of Commitment, it was required that ICANN look at some very particular matters. On the matter of accountability and transparency, in section 9.1 of the Affirmation of Commitment, it gives five very particular areas that ICANN has to undertake a self-review.
The particular questions in the public comments, which opened on the 18th of May, when you look at the public comment part of the ICANN website - and I believe Heidi has put that link into your meeting minutes, as well - until the 1st of July - in other words, just after the Brussels meeting - we are seeking very particular feedback on very specific questions. There is a lot of background material on the Affirmation of Commitment linked, and if you take the time to have a look at that reference I’m quite sure you’ll find it is very self-explanatory.
But let me just give you a sampling of the questions we are asking both At-Large structures and individuals in your region, and of course the regional organization itself, to respond to. The very first one is do you think ICANN is accountable to all its stakeholders? And as ALS members and a region, you are a primary, essential, and important stakeholder. So you have a yes or no or a maybe that you may be able to answer there. Having answered that very first question, we then ask, can you identify any examples where you think ICANN did not act accountably?
So if you have a problem, you have an opportunity to tell us; if you have an example or a fear, you have an opportunity to tell us. And we are, I can assure you, going to look through these examples and pull out some specific case studies which we will be analyzing and going into great detail in between July and September/October. So it may very well be that an issue that your region or one of your ALSs or ALS members have, could be selected as a case study for us to look at.
There are then a number of other questions along similar lines; there are 10 questions in total. The next question asks about how you feel ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, including the ombudsman and the board reconsideration process, works. The third question looks at how ICANN’s decision-making goes on; do you believe it’s transparent enough? And if there’s any examples you have where you fear there is a problem or that there might be a case study we can pick out of.
And it goes through 10 of those questions. None of them are particularly difficult, and the can be yes, no, or maybe answers, but what we’re trying to tease out is the actual opinion of our stakeholders. Now that’s the formal public comment that is open now. We’ve also taken those 10 questions and put them into a slightly different form in the form of a survey. There you will have something like, how much do you agree with or disagree with the following statement?
And the statement would be something like, “ICANN is accountable to its stakeholders.” And you have a scale of “I agree totally,” or, “I disagree absolutely.” And you can pick a number between one and five, or one and ten, along there. And it’s that part that I’m very keen to get the At-Large structures’ individual members to fill in when that survey comes out, because then we can measure if community feels that ICANN is accountable but only about half as good as it should be; we can measure that and try and get it to be as accountable as it must be in the next review or the review after that. Is that more clear for you?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, it’s clear. Thank you. I’m looking at the documents, so yes, thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: At Brussels, there will also be a number of other opportunities, and one of the reasons I’m so please to talk to the AFRALO meeting to today is that on the Sunday in Brussels, during our ALAC and regional leaders meeting, we will have a little bit less than an hour and a half but certainly more like an hour and a quarter where the Accountability Review Team - the whole team, myself included, all 13 of us plus a couple of extra people - will come into the ALAC meeting room and we will be there to listen and to discuss and to talk with you as community leaders. We will be looking, obviously, to get dialogue on these questions that we’re asking, but it is a very rare and very personal opportunity to interact with ALAC and the regional leaders.
And so between now and Brussels, if your region can gather information, can empower your leaders and those that are attending Brussels - and I know African region is having a very good attendance in Brussels planned - each of your voices can be heard and brought to the table. And I think that would be a very exciting and a very good thing for the region indeed. We will also, on the Monday, be having a public forum- in other words, in the big meeting room with the whole of the ICANN community.
And to some extent, whilst you have a very personal opportunity on the Sunday to meet directly with the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, you also have the opportunity for anything you want to raise in the more public forum to be brought forward on the Monday in the public forum as well. And just to let you know, from a personal point of view, any issue that any individual or the region or an ALS has, if it is brought up on the Skype chat that I set up for accountability and transparency, for community use, if it is brought up on our Wiki page.
And I’m quite sure Heidi will put up, if she hasn’t already put up on the agenda, the link to that Wiki page. We have a place within the At-Large Wiki for anyone to put up anything at all that concerns them, a comment, a criticism. It’d be nice to hear a good thing from time to time. And I am taking those comments into the room, into our meetings, and onto our discussion list for Affirmation of Commitment. Let me finish by giving you a simple example. I don’t want to take too much more time out of your meeting.
I want to thank you very much for the time you have offered me today. Yesterday, when the Brussels schedule came out, the full schedule for the Brussels meeting, the formal ICANN meeting schedule, because the Accountability and Transparency Review Team is meeting all day on the Friday and for a half-day on the Saturday before the formal meeting begins, it is listed on the Brussels meeting.
There will be an Adobe room; there will be remote participation throughout those meetings, with the possible exception of a very small section, probably on Friday afternoon, when we may be hearing from some consulting firms who will be putting forward some commercial incompetence plans where they may have responded to a request for some of the top firms to look at ICANN as a sort of a professional review; that would be in camera.
That would be done in a closed meeting, obviously, because they’re commercially competitive companies that would be preparing proposals. But everything was meant to be open. On the Brussels schedule, the meetings were listed as closed. I found out, not when I read the Brussels schedule but when you, the At-Large community, had read the Brussels schedule before I’d got out of bed that day, noticed it was listed as closed, and asked the question in the Skype chat.
From me finding out that it was in error listed as closed, it took less than 45 minutes to have that changed, and that change came from the very top; Doug Brent, our Chief Operations Officer, simply said, “We are sorry, it should never have been listed that way; it will be changed,” and it was changed immediately. So it is a very powerful exercise, but we need to hear your voices to exercise that power. With that, I’ll thank you for your time and ask if there is any other questions.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, and if there are no other questions for Cheryl, Cheryl I want to thank you, so much for having been here, for having taken the time to come today and give us an update on many of these issues, in order to improve responsibility and accountability for ICANN. This is something that is also part of the MOU and the joint agreement, and that is something that has also encouraged the establishment of this team. And as Cheryl just explained, there is a lot of work that is being done. So if there are no other questions, Cheryl, thank you, so much, and it was very nice of you to come here with us and we thank you again.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Mya and thank you to the team at AFRALO. Perhaps Mya, you could mention that I have a very croaky throat so your job was much harder than it normally is, interpreting my words.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And in the name of everyone in AFRALO, we hope that you get better soon, and take care of yourself, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, so now we will continue. We were in item eight, this was the ALS applications. So Colorado ISOC - Heidi, if I’m not mistaken, Colorado is not part of Africa, right? Do we have Colorado ISOC here? That’s not Africa, is it?
Heidi Ulrich: No, we have two At-Large applications. One, as you rightly mentioned, is Colorado ISOC; that is in the state of Colorado in the United States. That will be, if accepted, in NARALO. The second application is from Binary Egypt, and because we have Sharaway on the call, who is also from Egypt, I would like to ask him if I may whether he knows that particular organization. It is called Binary Egypt.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes. And first of all, I want to tell everybody here in AFRALO that due diligence was already done by Amresin, who is the Middle East official. So personally, I did read this application; it’s more of a user association than anything else, but Shara, do you have any more information on this entity? Sharaway, are you still there? Heidi, is he still here?
Heidi Ulrich: Sorry, I was on mute. We’re dialing; we’re just redialing him right now.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Oh, no, he got disconnected, okay.
Heidi Ulrich: But if I may, Tijani, the due diligence for both of those applications are currently underway. Just a quick correction; they have not yet been completed.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well, I made a mistake then, because I think I saw something that they had already been done. But you know more than I do on that. Personally, I did read the application, and it’s more of a private sector company than anything else, more than individual users.
I don’t know if everybody else read the application, but it’s a good idea for everybody to read this application and then present your opinions to those responsible in ICANN. Now, has anybody here read that application? No, no one? Okay. Well then I recommend that we do. Okay, can Hawa give us any updates on the ALAC activities, if she’s still here? Hawa, are you still here?
Heidi Ulrich: Is Sharaway back?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I don’t think so. Oh, is he?
Heidi Ulrich: I heard a sigh, so that may have been him.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, if so Sharaway, can you give us your point of view in regards to Binary Egypt, if you have any information on them?
Sharaway: Hello?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes.
Sharaway: I don’t know this Binary Egypt; I don’t know them.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well. And so just know that I did read the application and I’m not too sure that this could be – I got the impression that it’s not an internet-user association. I got the impression that it’s more a private sector company, but we will do due diligence on this. I think Mohammed will be a bit more familiar with this entity association, and from there we will make our decision. Very well, so Hawa is no longer here, so we have no one else to give us any updates on the upcoming ALAC activities. Anybody in the staff, do you have any updates that you can give us?
Heidi Ulrich: Hi, just very briefly, the ALAC met last week and they agreed to prepare statements on many public comment consultations. I’ve listed those on today’s agenda, so there are actually six ALAC statements currently being prepared, so very busy. And as I mentioned earlier, in addition to those six there are now other public consultations that will be, I’m sure, some statements prepared.
In terms of the At-Large community, I wanted to just bring to your attention again that there will be several community calls in the next few weeks. The first one will be a community call on the fiscal year ’11 operating plan and budget; it’s a very important call. That call will have the CFO, Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Wilson, who will discuss the fiscal year budget, and it has direct impact on the At-Large community, in particular the issue of the general assemblies for each of the five RALOs, so I encourage you to join that call.
That call is either going to be on the 9th or the 10th of June. The doodle closes, I believe, today, so the announcement of the exact date and time will be sent shortly. The second community call, again very important, is going to be on the new Wiki that ICANN will be transitioning too. Currently we use the Socialtext Wiki, so you will be very familiar with that Wiki page. We have all of the At-Large documents, as well as the AFRALO and other regions.
We are going to transition to the Confluence Wiki, which has a lot of advantages that this call will introduce you to. So I very much encourage you to come onto that call; it will have interpretation into French and Spanish, as well, so you can listen to that in your preferred language. And you will see all of the advantages that this new Wiki has, as well as the schedule for training and for the transition to this new Wiki.
That call with be either on the 14th or 15th of June. So I believe the doodle is now open, so I encourage you to fill that doodle out, as well. And the third call, which we are still in the planning stages of, is one on the ICANN meetings for the next several years, and I will have more information on that community call very shortly. And that’s the information so far.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Very well. Thank you, Heidi. Okay, so we are finally at the last item; any other business. Do we have anything else? I do have a little thing that I want to discuss with you. I had spoken about the joint AFRALO/Afri-ICANN meeting, so we have established, as I said, a special team in order to prepare the statements that will be presented in Brussels, not only for information, but also correction and also adoption.
So we are looking for people or entities who will be asking for new GTLDs, in order to be able to work with this. So if you know anyone who is asking for any new GTLDTs, or any entities, please let us know or give us their information, their cell phone or anything like that. This will be important so we are able to prepare the statement. The second issues in this talking about this joint meeting: we have wanted to establish an organization committee for it for the same issue, to deal with all the aspects.
So AFRALO already has three people in this special committee, but we have nobody from Afri-ICANN, so please try to encourage people that you know who are part of Afri-ICANN to participate in this organization committee. And that was the final point that I wanted to mention in regards to this joint meeting. Is there anything else? So this week I know that there is enough not really meetings, so we’re sticking to them and see if they would be able to - no, I was talking about RALO participation specifically, so we’ll try to get that information, very well, for that information then, anything else?
Very well, if there’s nothing else then I will release all of you. I want to thank our staff; thank you, Cheryl, who has already left, and thanks to everyone, and thank you Mya for her patience, and for her interpreting, and thank all of you for having participated in this meeting; there weren’t many of us today.
The next meeting will be after Brussels, so all those of you who are coming to Brussels, I will try to get in contact with you so we can get organized in Brussels; so we can meet and so we can do everything possible so we are able to accomplish a lot of the AFRALO goals; we have many interest, and I’m hoping that together we are able to accomplish. Thank you, everyone, have a great day. Bye-bye.
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