Minutes of Extraordinary Meeting
Present: Karaitiana Taiuru, Pavan Budhrani, Phoebe Yu, Les Allinson, Mahmoud Lattouf
The chair said that he would be updating Pavan on what occurred in Mexico sometime next week and we could go ahead with more pressing issues at this meeting.
The key theme from the meeting in Mexico was that we needed to be multilingual to attract and retain members. That was the major issue.
In Mexico, when the chair went around, he found out that many people thought that English was a barrier to communication.
There was a need to differentiate from American ways because at the end of the day we are Asians and things work differently here.
KT said it was important that we needed to focus in multilingualism to retain and grow our membership. He said the only ALS only that speaks one language is Australia.
Pavan suggested that when we have Skype meetings, we can simply ask ICANN staff or others to translate the whole thing into languages that can be understood better by our ALS’es.
Chair said that was a good idea and more has to be done alongside that, for example, the application forms need to be translated and he would like to see introduction videos of APRALO on YouTube in various languages - Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic etc.
He also suggested that people should be able to write emails in their own language and then this could be translated and read by everyone else.
The chair also suggested for the introduction videos, we can get people to take the lead for example, we can get people like Pavan to do an Indian/Chinese one or Shiva to do an Indian one too.
Mahmoud said he would be able to take care of the Arabic part too.
Les said he would email Joung-Im Kim who is the "new" als from KR and get her perspective as a new comer.
Then the chair suggested we needed someone from APRALO to be present at ICANN consultations, we have been handicapped before by not participating in these meetings.
Pavan suggested that we should use a rotating system and then get people to attend those meetings occasionally and everyone agreed with that.
Les mentioned about the facebook group and suggested we encourage all ALS and staff to join that group.
KT mentioned how he talked with Edmon at the Mexico meeting and how APRALO can join DotAsia at the next IGF meeting too as a way to avoid going through the cost procedure from ICANN.
Everyone also agreed that we need 20 minutes before any meeting to talk about any ALAC issues with Cheryl.
Pavan will be sending out reminders before every meeting so that everyone is up to date.
The chair mentioned it was a good idea to look after the ALS pages and make sure they are up to date and also make sure everyone in APRAO have each other’s IM.
Meeting ended at 0956 UTC
