Wolf Ludwig: I need to know who is on the call. I see Avri, Oksana, Olivier, Sandra, Sebastien, Siranush, Vladimir, Yrjo, wow this is more than I expected.
Gisella Gruber-White: We also have Christopher and Julia who are not on the Adobe Connect.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, can you note this for the minutes please?
Gisella Gruber-White: They all on the Adobe Connect all the participants have been noted Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay great. This is quite an impressing attendance and I'm very pleased about this. I hope that - you said before that you tried to get a dial out to Annetta again and maybe she will join us later this evening.
Gisella Gruber-White: Correct we will keep trying.
Wolf Ludwig: May I first of all ask you whether the suggested agenda is alright or anybody wish any additional point? As I hear no objection or no voice raised, no hands raised in the Adobe Connect neither I take it as approval for the agenda suggested for today's call. I think the attendants for our call are already registered. I have seen any particular apologies for tonight.
Gisella Gruber-White: Lutz Donnerhacke and Bill Drake.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay I guess this will be - yes I see it here on the discussion notes and this has been noted for the call notes already. Let me start with our today's agenda review of action items. I tried to recall them from our last call and there was nothing special except the points we have forwarded from the September call which was the finalization of the certification of due diligence process regarding our new member. And to my memory it was nothing else. Next item is welcome and short introduction of Silvia, our new manager of At-Large Regional Affairs. I think you have seen the communication on the EURALO and At-Large list already.
Silvia has started her new job with At-Large staff end of October, beginning of November. This was announced already at the Dakar meeting before and afterwards. As you have seen as far as I can imagine the communication related to her start and Oksana and I we had some calls on introduction and updates with Silvia already. Oksana had it last week. I had a call with her yesterday and I simply suggest that we give Silvia a warm welcome and opportunity to make a short introduction by herself. Silvia you have the floor.
Silvia Vivanco: Thank you very much Wolf. It's really a great pleasure to join ICANN and to be able to work with you with the RALOs and EURALO. As Wolf said, we had a call already with Oksana, Wolf and I am very pleased to have this opportunity to work and continue furthering the work of the EURALO. I would like to give you some information about myself. I am Peruvian and American. I am an attorney. I studied law and political science in Peru. And I worked for a number of years in the telecommunications industry. I also worked at the United Nations as Project Manager and as Program Officer in Vienna, Austria. And I just recently moved back the United States to join ICANN. I just want to assure you of my commitment to support you and to work with you and to be - I hope I can be useful to achieve the goals that you have for this organization thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank you very much Silvia. I think as we have realized from the communication already you had a very strong or several very strong points that from our European angle and perception your very strong point is of course, the years you spent in Vienna in one of the most exciting cities and capitals of Europe. You have worked for the UN. I've understood that you are rather familiar and very familiar with German and European cultures. And I really do hope that this makes your life working with EURALO much easier.
Silvia Vivanco: Thank you very much Wolf. Your word is true. Vienna is in my heart and these years in Europe have been a wonderful experience I feel delighted to be able to work with EURALO remotely and to be connected to Europe through this job. It's really a great opportunity, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes and for us it's a good opportunity to have you on board as well. I see a hand raised, it's Christopher Wilkinson who wanted to speak, and you have the floor Christopher.
Christopher Wilkinson: Silvia con much gusto. Tienes tambien [inaudible 00:07:30] in europa.
Sandra Hoferichter: It’s that Espanol? Si, si gracias.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes we are very much encouraged Multilanguage, multicultural region which is well known because English is not our first language. I think we only have Olivier who has a chance to be bilingual being semi French, semi British to so say and also as of us we have English as our second language, we have French as another important language. We have Spanish. We have through our extension through eastern European, Russian becoming more and more important at the EURALO level. And I think multilingualism is something very important for our agenda and everybody who can contribute in this direction is welcome.
And if you are - you can be sure that a lot of people share some languages with you. Sebastien, to my knowledge, Mr. Bachollet is speaking Spanish fluently so you will find Annetta Muehlberg as well. You will find many people at EURALO who can communicate in unique language as well. Any more questions regarding this point, introduction and welcome and short introduction of Silvia? Any more questions? If this is not the case let me continue with our first point on today's agenda what is welcome of new EURALO ALS together against racists in France. And I know that Yuliya is on the call tonight.
You probably have seen all the welcome messages over the last two weeks. Together Against Cyber Crime, our new ALS, was confirmed by At-Large at the end of the ALAC meeting at the end of the Dakar conference. And for me it's a particular pleasure to have Julia on board. I would like to give Julia some minutes to introduce herself and I think you may recall from previous communications that Yuliya and her organization was already closely involved in several internet governance related events like EuroDIG and the IGF. Yuliya you have the floor.
Yuliya Morenets: Thank you wolf. My name is Yuliya Morenets and I represent this organization Together Against Cyber Crime. I would like first of all to thank all members for the [inaudible 00:11:01] and we are very interested and very happy to join EURALO and every excited about the work that we will do all together for the interest of users and customers. As wolf just said we are involved in the intent governance issues and participated in a number of internet governance forums. And also EuroDIG and we have developed a number of social projects in order to fight against cyber crime. Thanks so much.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks a lot Yuliya. Any other questions or comments from your side? I see there is a comment from Oksana along with [inaudible 00:11:51] in regards from Ukraine. As the origin of Yuliya she is a native citizen of the Ukraine and closely related to Ukrainian internet governance affairs, et cetera. And I would like to support [inaudible 00:12:19] from Oksana again. Any further questions? As I see no hands raised on here or on Connect, let me continue with our next agenda item what is Post Dakar ICANN Policy and ALAC updates. We have the pleasure to have Olivier on board of this monthly call and I give the floor to Olivier to give us a short update on this issue. Short means Olivier you have five to 10 minutes, you have the floor.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Wolf. Now I have been sent any specific notes about what to say about what's happened in Dakar. However, I will somehow look through the list of action items which have come out of the Dakar meeting. As some of you who were there might know we had an extremely busy agenda. I total of in excess of 17 meetings or even more than that if we added the capacity building sessions which AFRALO has very kindly put together for their delegates but really for everyone as well to follow.
And I know that several EURALO representatives were there at 7 o'clock every morning following those capacity building sessions. It was a very busy time. Now with regards to the discussion that took place it was very wide ranging. We had an ALAC and regional leadership session that started with discussions about outreach and inreach, a discussion with Scott Penson and Mandy Carver who are effectively working for Global Partnerships and Scott is working in the Publicity Department. A lot was achieved on that with regards to podcasts that would be distributed and would be recorded but also the overall relationship we would like to entertain with Global Partnerships and enhanced communications with them.
We had a session on consumer metrics, discussion on the consumer metrics WG which is actually going to have a conference call right after the current call. There has been a lot of discussion on metrics to be developed as a way to measure the impact of new gTLDs, so before and after new gTLDs are introduced. The discussion was there just to bring the At-Large perspective to this. At-Large improvements, a very big chunk of work that was finalized prior to the Dakar meeting. I'm glad to announce that the structural improvements committee has given it a green light to pass the report to the Board and we've now been told that we need to continue and actually implement all of the recommendations which were made in the improvements document.
And Seth is now working at passing the torch over to Cheryl Langdon-Orr who will take over the actual implementation of the whole set of recommendations. There is a lot of follow up on that and I really do hope that many people from EURALO are going to volunteer to be part of that follow up working group. Discussion with Christina Rodriguez took place regarding language services. And thankfully as Wolf mentioned earlier in our region it appears that everyone is happy to use English as the common language since we have so many other languages in our region. But there are calls from some regions to have interpretation on several working groups and so there was a discussion based around that. And we were given more information about how much translation is taking place at ICANN. I understand that there is more work to be done to make ICANN fully Multilanguage.
And so there is probably likely to be more and more documents translated in other languages than just English. Looking further down there was a discussion with IT, David Clausen came to see us and we had a look at the translation tools that are available and bugs associated with this. There was some discussions are automatically translated between English and Spanish and vice versa. Further down the DNS Security and Stability Working Group we had a small presentation about this working group that is currently working on the DNS stability and security. Ongoing work, not that much to say at the moment, it's still very early days but there will be more done in the future.
The At-Large meeting with the ICANN Board was very positive. There were a lot of discussions about the issues around WHOIS, the accuracy of WHOIS records. There was also a discussion about the CEO search and so we are going to have a collection of At-Large views on the CEO search which will be synthesized by staff and then results be sent over to the Board. We had a meeting with the GAC, Government Advisory Committee that was very positive as well. And there were talks of creating a joint working group to draft a joint statement on conflict of interest. I'm glad to say that we thought pretty much along the same lines that some of the recent events at ICANN that took place really demonstrated a need for stronger rules on conflicts of interest.
At-Large had a meeting with compliance as well and again, we managed to get compliance to look into more problems of noncompliant registrars and registries and thankfully we've seen that the compliance department has got more and more people and so they are being more and more active. And hopefully we will see a lot more movement in that so that the major complaints of our users out there, which is that of dealing with a rogue registrar, losing their domain name and so on, so that these things hopefully be reduced with time. Policy discussion on ALAC metrics, there is a discussion at the moment in a working group that will be started to look at the performance of At-Large Advisory Committee members because if you are a member of the ALAC you do have a minimum set of conditions that you need to follow as far as attendance is concerned, as far as voting is concerned.
There are only 15 people on the committee and if you don’t represent the views of your region then you really are letting your region down. That's work that is coming up. And of course with this there will be a discussion at regional level to do with the removal of or possible removal or possible sanctioning, I don’t know what the word is or cautioning of someone that the region has put on the ALAC. Then there were discussions on the ICANN Academy, that’s another very important development that comes out of the At-Large Improvements Report. And I know that this region the EURALO is positively involved with this because [inaudible00:21:18] Sandra Hoferichter are at the core of the presentation of or the proposal for an ICANN Academy.
Further down, rules of procedures we are due, the ALAC and At-Large is due for a new review of the rules of procedure because ICANN keeps on evolving, the internet keeps on evolving and we also have to evolve. So some of our rules of procedure might not be in line with what we do today. So these will actually be worked on in the future. The geographic regions review final draft report; I will speak about that a little bit later on when speaking about the current open comment periods. The At-Large Regional Leadership meeting, I think I will let Wolf speak about that.
And finally just a couple of more things, we had a meeting with the NCSG which was interesting trying to find out ways of working more closely with the NCSG to help the internet users have their voice in ICANN. And also probably with that we are considering the creation of a joint workspace. Then we also had finally a wrap-up session with Rod Beckstram. Also meeting with us and giving us his view on the road show of events. As you all know there is an ICANN road show going on at the moment traveling around the world to promote the launch of the new gTLDs.
And we complained that we hadn’t been told about where that road show was taking place. So we have been given the details of a web page and I'm hoping that this could be put on the chat, a web page that will show us where the events are taking place. Apparently we are welcome to go and attend these events. That has not been verified yet but we can test it out if you have the road show passing somewhere in your area, test it out. I think that’s going to take a bit too much time, I probably have already gone over my 10 minutes time; the floor is back to you Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay thanks Olivier. I think some of the points you raised we will come back later during this call regarding the road show, the new gTLD launch, et cetera. We will come back to this point under Agenda Item 8. And I see Christopher Wilkinson has raised his hand, Christopher you have the floor.
Christopher Wilkinson: Thank you Wolf. Thank you Olivier, a really comprehensive the thoughts are very detailed and [inaudible00:24:26] work in Dakar. [Inaudible00:24:29] but my only thought is my recollection is that I started this on conflict of interest several months ago and if you want any help or presence in working groups or other contacts, Olivier I would be glad to put my order in as requested.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks a lot Christopher your offer will be noted that if there is any special opportunity where we need and can refer to your knowledge and input, Christopher be assured that we will come back to you.
Christopher Wilkinson: Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: Are there any other direct questions.
Yuliya Morenets: Thank you Olivier for us [inaudible 00:25:40] a few things and well we were involved before but [inaudible 00:25:45] now things. And you just mentioned then there is this small representation of EURALO to the Security and Resilience comments. We would be happy to contribute or to be involved closely to the subject because we work on cyber crimes, more on security and resilience. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay thanks Yuliya I think this will be noted as well. This would be the first and great opportunity for a new member ALS to contribute actively into ICANN processes and ICANN consultations and ICANN policy development. That is highly appreciated. Are there any other further direct questions and comments to what Olivier explained from the Dakar agenda and the variety of events and meetings we had over there? It was a very productive and very well organized. Yes I see Sebastien raising his hand. Sebastien you have the floor.
Sebastien Bachollet: Thank you Wolf, it was just to - it seemed important to say that your colleague from AFRALO made a very good [inaudible00:27:25] not just for the knowledge base they tried to build during this few hours in the morning, but also with the AFRALO showcase it was very well attended and well organized. I would like to also mention that it's one of the first times that I really see that the region and not as a country not realize people to come to a meeting and to encourage ICANN to still go to those countries where it's difficult to go, it's difficult to find a place to organize a meeting.
Some of us get some trouble with the hotel and the facilities and that’s good but in the same time we have to be careful and very thanks to the regions that there are providing a lot of new participants and that was very good turnover also, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank you very much Sebastien for your additional comments and remarks and I see Olivier’s hand raised. Olivier you have the floor.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Wolf and I was just going to add one more thing. And that thing I was going to add needed to be added because it was the JAS Working Group’s recommendations which were received by the Board prior to ICANN and which were studied very carefully and notable in a very notable recommendation the Board has accepted some recommendations and has said that work needs to be continued in this direction, although implementation doesn’t appear to have moved forward with it yet.
But certainly the impact of the JAS Working Group’s work in which the At-Large community has really contributed to very much and not only the African region but I know that all of the regions have had members of their region on that working group. the impact has certainly surpassed most of what we would have thought would have happened a year to a year and a half ago. It was key subject in Dakar and I think At-Large and the regional At-Large organization should feel very proud about that, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay thanks a lot Olivier. are there further direct questions or comments? I see approval from Sebastien’s side and we still have some more opportunities to talk about Dakar as the next agenda item. It's Impressions and Conclusions from Dakar, if Olivier already - we have Sandra who was representing our At-Large members at Dakar. We had Oksana and Yrjo and I would like to ask all of you of those who have been Dakar as well to shortly present your observations and conclusions. May I ask Sandra first?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes thank you Wolf. I would like to go a little bit more into the deep of the ICANN Academy which Olivier mentioned already. We have the - Wolf and I have the honor to chair the working group on the development of an ICANN Academy and next to this formation of this working group which will start very soon, we had also some very interesting discussions with ICANN staff about the organization and the foundation of an ICANN Academy which will give us the great possibility to do a joint project between ALAC and staff to bring it to success hopefully very soon.
The plan could be to have a first approval of an Academy in Toronto which is in less than a year from now -- the ICANN meeting in Toronto. And I would like to encourage everybody on the call who is not in - who could not attend Dakar to join this working group on this ICANN Academy because the working group does not only reserved for ALAC members but also for ALSs and RALO members. If there are any questions I would be happy to answer them.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes thank you very much Sandra. Are there any direct questions? We have Amanda, Sandra and I are committed to chairing the respective working group to follow up on the consultation procedure at At-Large level and I think we have together to get together Sandra, Olivier and I and this At-Large staff to look into the details of our mandate to start this working group. I have received feedback from representatives who would like to participate from NARALO, LACRALO; I have no feedback from AFRALO and APRALO so far. But at the moment we will concentrate on this follow up.
I think we can get more people involved and start to discuss a concept on the basis of our proposal and to get some more input. Any more questions or comments regarding this point, if this is not the case, I would like to ask Oksana for her observations and conclusions from Dakar, Oksana you have the floor.
Oksana Prykhodko: Thank you very much Wolf. I was really great impressed by the level of organization and the energy and the input of the Dakar meeting or maybe my future activity, my [inaudible 00:34:54] during this meeting where [inaudible 00:34:57] the reason transparency, accountability, conflict of interest, GAC representation, and alternative routes and it was extremely useful for us to develop all these approaches. I told you about our November 18 roundtable in parliament.
And I would like to say that we received great support from all multistakeholders involved in this internet governance and information society building up issues. And I hope to receive more support from ICANN staff for beginning of the year for promo new detail programs, idea across the Ukraine is extremely interested in [inaudible 00:35:58] variance, new projects and so on and I would highly appreciate all support from ICANN staff and ALAC members, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay thanks a lot Oksana for your observations and conclusions. Next on my list is Yrjo and Yrjo you have the floor please.
Yrjo Lansipuro: Thank you Wolf. I was in Dakar as a member of NomCom EURALO mandated member and as per the travel policy of ICANN I could not be there for the [inaudible00:36:45] of the meeting escape at the last minute for the NomCom meeting as such. But I could not fail to notice that what is referred as recent evidence, they have certainly had a big impact in the sense that there is a lot of emphasis on ethics and avoiding conflict of interest and so on and so forth. And of course this is very pertinent to the work in nomination committee.
That was the case before but now it is even more so. As far as the NomCom is concerned we are off to good start under the chairpersonship of Vanda. And I may notice that as you all know, there are five At-Large members in the NomCom and I've been talking to some of them and I said perhaps we should keep a little bit closer together as At-Large members in NomCom of course within the operating procedures of NomCom but we should just compare notes from time to time, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks a lot Yrjo for your additional information regarding the NomCom. Are there any direct immediate questions to your remarks from the call? I know that you do an excellent job on the NomCom and I can completely support what you said as it should be a close ALAC coordination in this group among the ALAC representatives at the NomCom. And I think this will promote a good and [inaudible 00:38:47] strategy. I see Olivier’s hand raised, Olivier you have the floor.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Wolf and I'm sorry to come back also for a third time but there is one more announcement which I would I like to make which is that Avri Doria has taken over the chairing of the gTLD working group that we have. It used to be run by Evan Leibovitch and has been passed on over to Avri. So welcome Avri and I wonder Avri whether you just wanted to say a few words because obviously we need to get that working group to do a lot of work and to populate it with people from EURALO.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks Olivier, as far as I realize we have lost connectivity with Avri at the moment. She is according to Skype information I have, she is traveling in a train in the US and she is now crossing areas into where there is not always connectivity provided. As soon as Avri comes back to the call I will let you know and maybe we can come back to this question. Otherwise we can sort it out via some email or other communications.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yeah it was basically just to summarize and encourage members of EURALO to join the gTLD working group and take part in the work that will follow in their part of being with the implementation of some of the recommendations that we've made. It really has to push. One thing that is particularly important is the ability that At-Large will have to vet new gTLD applications. It's not a case of vetting them. Sorry I'm using the wrong word here. To object to new gTLD applications and that is certainly a lot of work in putting together a process for this to happen. We have fought for that right and we have been given that right now. So we need to do something about it and to make sure we have something that is not going to drain our resources. And with that I will shut up, thank you very much.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay Olivier your comments and remarks are always welcome here and just take a look at some chat exchanges, Heidi noted it already transferred it to Avri who I think is still on Adobe Connect. As I can see she is simply out of a call connection and we will follow up with her and I agree with you that this issue on new gTLD is a top issue at the moment. We will come back to this point at a later agenda item today. We are running short of time, let me just ask you whether there are any further questions or comments regarding agenda Item 6, Impressions and Conclusions from Dakar.
I think we have heard comments from all of those who have been present at the last ICANN meeting. I see no hand raised for some additions on agenda Item 6, let me start with agenda Item 7, Materials for Public Comments Published Recently. I think you may have followed the list recently the last two points I've seen are some additional comments on strategic planning. This was a message circulated yesterday or two days ago and there was a new one what was forwarded today, it's on the framework of interpretation interim report. But I give the floor back to Olivier who can accomplish this information, please Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Wolf and certainly there are a lot of current comments going on out there or requests for public comments out there. I'm a little sad that we didn’t have actual links to each one of them from the EURALO agenda, especially since those links were available in the earlier ExCom call which we had. I will quickly run through them since I realize we are running late. The first comments that was due a few days ago was the Internationalized Domain Name Variant Issues Project, just to mention that we have several of our EURALO members take part into the work on this project.
I think that I ran through it, already went into the work itself without an actual comment to be filed. The important thing at the moment which you just mentioned Wolf is the input into the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan. We have a current webpage that is available for comments. Tijani Ben Jemaa has written a first draft. There have been more comments coming in. The draft that Tijani wrote was based on the discussions we had in Dakar. We certainly need more input so I would encourage everyone to have a look at that within the next 24 hours.
The deadline for our comments is 12 o'clock UTC on the 17 November. There is a final report on the internationalized registration data working group, there is a statement which was written by Carlton Samuels which is also on a Wiki space at the moment and I would urge anyone if they have any comment to make to write their comments on there. The frame work of interpretation that you just mentioned indeed is particularly important. Cheryl Langdon-Orr is in that working group.
We will have a first draft written very soon. And the deadline for comments is for At-Large or the ALAC to send it's comments is the 1 December, so we still have a little bit of time until then. I'm pushing for the first draft to be written and then of course there will be a public call for comments that will go out to the lists. The registry stakeholder group alternative proposal for continued operations is another one where I think Avri Doria is going to lead a response to that. The deadline is the 2 December.
And then you have this absolute mouthful, IDNCCPDPWG2 Draft Final Report which effectively is a policy development process for internationalized domain names. Edmond Chung our IDN liaison is leading on that and working with Cheryl Langdon-Orr to produce something. The deadline for that is the 15 December. There is also a comment period opened for the work of the JAS which has been very kindly written as work continues to increase developing economies participation in the new gTLD program.
I don’t know who thought of that short title, but anyway, because At-Large has been so involved in the actual work of that working group the most we would probably be file if we were going to file a comment is just support for the actual work itself. And finally the geographic regions review, very important closing date is the 19 December. Tijani Ben Jemaa from AFRALO is currently writing a first draft. It is important because the report which was written by the geographic regions working group is a draft final report. So that will then go to the Board afterwards.
In there, there are a number of points which I think maybe not our region, but some other regions might have big reservations on. One of the problems that we have - as a summary it basically looks at aligning regional internet registry space with the ICANN space -- ICANN geographical location. So in other words for us in Europe it would align the ripe registry region with the EURALO region and that would therefore add all the Gulf countries. Yes, you haven’t misheard me. The Arabian Gulf countries would join Europe.
And at the same time it might not help some of our friends in countries that are in the limits between Europe and Asia and are currently marked in Asia and might wish and go be a part of Europe rather than being part of Asia. It's a big old mess, this report. And we definitely need to comment on that. I know that Tijani has captured most of the notes on this. But I'm sure there will be more for EURALO to add to this statement. And with this I pass the floor back to you Wolf, thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank you very much Olivier for all the additional information. I think it's a huge play crown for comments. I could immediately step in to comment on the enlargement of the regional model including Arab countries into the European region, et cetera. I think unfortunately on today's call we do not have the time to go into further details like this. What you may have realized on our chat there is an interesting exciting discussion exchange of information going on. I have to follow this up again in detail at the end of this call.
Unfortunately we only have a few minutes left. And if there are no immediate questions to what Olivier has said regarding the deadlines for comment on ongoing consultations next one is in two days on the strategy on the other points we have some longer deadlines. I would like to continue with our next agenda items which are some briefing issues. It would be agenda Item 8, I see no urgent question in the Adobe Connect so let me continue with agenda Item 8, Recent and Upcoming Activities of EURALO members.
The subpoint of this was what was mentioned before, the ICANN strategy and outreach and the other on the new gTLD program and a launch period. That has been quite a number of interesting events recently in Europe. The first one after the Dakar conference was the new gTLD event for November 4, 2011 in Berlin organized by Eco. I got to know from Sandra that she was in Berlin the very Friday and together with Thomas Schneider and Sandra can give us a short summary of her observations and impressions. Sandra the floor is yours.
Sandra Hoferichter: Thank you Wolf. I would like to be very brief. I don’t want to go into detail about this event, I just want to raise one point which turned out and could be important for the future discussions within ICANN. the point is that the city in Germany and at least I can for the moment I can only speak for German city new gTLD initiatives, recognized that the timeframe given by ICANN for the application phase is very tight for them because the city administration needs more time to go through their procedures in collecting a trustable person to apply for a dot com dot Hamburg or whatever.
And they said it's going to be very difficult to sort all those issues out and to go to the administrative procedures by the end of March where you have to get your ticket, your application ticket where you have to pay the first $5,000 USD to be in the pool of applicants. And then you have to conclude the application until the 12 of April. This issue just came up after an informal meeting between city initiative together with what Beckstram, Karen, Lance and [inaudible 00:53:37] from the federal ministry of economy in Germany who is also a GAC member for Germany.
I can't imagine after the event taking place in Switzerland this issue may be right again and this could be that - or this is at least it is my expectation that cities [inaudible 00:54:07] will ask for extended applications deadline to apply in the manner they can also manage to follow up with their administration and their election rules and call for RFCs and all these things. This could be an issue for the next ICANN meeting or for the upcoming new gTLD project, thank you Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank very much Sandra. I think you raised a very important point. As one of the impressions or outcomes of the Berlin event, the Berlin launch of briefing of new gTLD process. as one of the co-organizers of the Swiss event and the end of two months in Bern I can add similar observations and a lot of feedbacks we have received so far is exactly wow we realized there was a strong media communication early end of summer after the ICANN meeting in Singapore. It was a media issue all over the world. But a media issues are normally very short cutted issues lasting for two to three days then some new headlines are overwhelming the old ones. And in the time between there was not much follow up in detail in different countries.
I haven’t seen much communication except in some very specialized circles. After the Dakar meeting, but I think it's still a great initiative and best practice from ICANN to call on the constituencies in its different facets to support ICANN in launching this new generation of TLDs. And we [inaudible 00:56:32] or are picking up in Switzerland as well. we will organize a briefing with Swiss GAC representatives what is Thomas Schneider and François Mohova together with Swiss ccTLD registry which is [inaudible00:56:54] and they immediately asked simple society or the user representation EURALO and the business sector to co-organize this event in Bern.
And [inaudible 00:57:12] afternoon forwarded you some more details we have that page still under construction and this is a very promising event. But gives EURALO a first opportunity to co-organize on a real multistakeholder level, a national conference on an ICANN issue with as a stakeholder proves. And we have invited people from the ICANN Board. We have invited people from the business sector and from the domain industry to make sure our presentations, inputs, on incentive side of this program but also on some kind of risk and cost calculations et cetera of the Swiss business sector. I think it is a promising model.
We will most probably at our next call in December, can make a broader summary. But as Sandra said already the timeline is very tight, not so much for the business sector because the business sectors over the last years since we've involved in all these discussions, in all the conflicts and divergences, the business sector is very well organized with a capacity and expert people to follow up. But the public sector besides the government especially on the city level is not very well staffed as Sandra said before and this application period in early spring next year may prove to be very tight for the public sector.
This is foreseeable one of the difficult points. We will in a common declaration, resolution will communicate from the Swiss event to ICANN and we have to see whether there is still an option to make a prolongation of the application period or whether there will be the pragmatic approach simply to say okay the first round of applications in the given deadlines and afterwards there will be a second opportunity for applications.
Let's say wait and see how many applicants we will have in the first round. If they are not too many we can sooner open a second round for applications. But it's a very interesting example at the moment also from the point of view from EURALO for the user representation in our region in collaboration with other stakeholders like government representatives and people from the business sectors. These are my comments to agenda Item 8. Are there any immediate questions, we are running out of time but you are still welcome for comments or questions. I see no hand raised on the Adobe Connect.
As I mentioned before this is not the last opportunity to talk on this, we will have another summary at our next monthly call in December. And we can try to make a sort of roundup on this event in our region what is something very interesting and promising in my perception. If there are no questions and comments, let me continue with our last point, it's just a short outlook on EURALO key projects in 2012. This is a very provisional information or announcement at the moment.
We still have some time in December and early January to do our annual planning for next year. As indicated already before I had called this Silvia and I had some exchanges with At-Large staff and Olivier, et cetera what could be the key projects for our region next year and in my opinion and my personal opinion because it's not consolidated by the community, by a community consultation and it's important but as many of you know there will be the next European ICANN meeting end of June in Prague. And since of us after the last ICANN meeting in Brussels the next opportunity to organize our next GA in line in time with an ICANN meeting but would be clearly my preference.
As you may recall the last EURALO GA took place in 2010 in line with the last European IGF and this year in Belgrade end of May in culmination with the last EuroDIG in Belgrade, so my preference would be using the next opportunity having the next ICANN meeting in summer in Prague to organize our next GA there. But just somehow depends on the support we may receive from ICANN to mobilize more of our membership to attend this meeting.
And the next big project of course as you may imagine is the next EuroDIG middle of May, EuroDIG is 14-15 June in Stockholm and the ICANN meeting to my memory will start around the 26th, 10 days after the end of the EuroDIG. This will be the presumable key events for our region next year. Are there any questions or further suggestions for the EURALO planning for next year? As I said before we will keep this on the agenda for the next call.
Sandra Hoferichter: I just would like to quickly announce that the next EuroDIG planning meeting is going to take place in January probably around the [inaudible01:05:05] of January. And everybody because I know many people on this call are heavily involved in EuroDIG so this might be an opportunity to meet again in Stockholm. Maybe all who are interested can keep this in their mind and it will be announced soon but it's going to be mid January probably 17th, 18th something.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes it's still an ongoing [inaudible01:05:32] at the moment. It hasn’t been accomplished because there are still some key people missing to announce a preference of dates. But as Sandra said most probably it will be between the 17th and 18th of January. There are people on the call like Yrjo who participated in the [inaudible01:05:56] and let me suggest we want the date will be decided and the date will be communicated via the EuroDIG newsletter. We can make a parallel posting on the EURALO list to announce the dates for the Stockholm and to announce this as well and to invite as many people who are interested to participate. Thanks so much Sandra for this hint. Are there any further questions, if this I not the case, we are 12 minutes over time.
The last point on today's agenda is Item 10 AOB. This is the last opportunity for today otherwise you can immediately post whatever you want at the EURALO list as usual. I see no hands raised, no comments, no further information. This brings us to the end of today's call. It was a very interesting and exciting call I think with a lot of participation and three apologies for today.
I would like to thank all of you for your active and constructive participation, the variety of information about the Dakar event, thank you again Olivier for very important in-depth information. It's always of great value to have on the call. I would like to thank all of you and I wish you a good night. And we will stay in touch, thanks everybody and see you soon again.
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