ICANN - Nairobi Open Session - ICANN Board Participation public Committee 10 March 2010 10 March 2010 >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Excuse me, panelists are requested to be on this side for reasons I will explain shortly, panelists and committee members, Public Participation Committee members on this side. I will be seated here. Thanks. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Excuse me, could someone tell me, what are the language arrangements? What channel for what language? >> For all of the languages, folks, on the translators, channel 1 is English, channel 2 will be French, channel 3 will be Spanish. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Ladies and gentlemen, dear ICANN community. Considering that it's ten minutes past the hour, almost 11, I suggest we start this meeting of the Public Participation Committee of the ICANN board, which is being held in public and for the benefit of the whole community, whether in Nairobi or by remote participation. So this arrangement here may seem a bit odd to you. I owe you a word of explanation. It was felt we should not pretend to be the central committee or the polit bureau, and as the room is arranged, of course it would give that impression if we were up there with only five seats, whereas the number of people maybe speaking is a bit higher than that. So this is not a criticism. It is simply that we found out coming here that it was perhaps more convivial this way. And I would ask Katim to come to the panel side. I should have told you a bit earlier. I'm sorry. So to start off, I will ask first each of the committee members and the panelists for today's meeting to introduce herself or himself, starting right away here. >>VANDA SCARTEZINI: Okay, thank. My name is Vanda Scartezini. I am from Brazil. I am an ALAC liaison to the board and member of this committee. >>GONZALO NAVARRO: Hello, my name is Gonzalo Navarro. I am a member of the board and I am from Chile. >>MARTIN BOYLE: My name is Martin Boyle. I am with Nominet who is the dot U.K. domain name registry, and I am here on behalf of the ccNSO. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: I am Bill Drake. I am an academic in Geneva, and a member of the GNSO Council from the noncommercial stakeholder group. >>THOMAS NARTEN: And I am Thomas Narten. I am the IETF liaison to the board, and also on the committee and from the U.S.A. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: I am Rafik Dammak from Tunisia and the GNSO councillor for the noncommercial stakeholder group. >>KATIM TOURAY: My name is Katim Touray from Gambia, West Africa, and ICANN board meeting. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: And I am Jean-Jacques Subrenat, member of the board, and I have the honor of chairing this Public Participation Committee. A few words if I may in guise of an introduction. About the Public Participation Committee, but also about this meeting in particular. This is the fifth time that this committee is holding its meeting in public, and you can guess what motivation lies behind that. It is really an exercise in relating with our community. The second thing is that this time, I think quite aptly, this committee has decided to focus on the requirements, the needs expressed in developing countries. My third point is that the purpose of public participation is not just awareness. Of course it's that. But the purpose of public participation in ICANN is to get those people who are in a position to bring some added value to the policy process to contribute to that process. The fourth point is that you will notice, I hope, through Rob Hoggarth, who is at that corner, but he is behind there just now, that we are using, in this session in Nairobi but also more generally during the ICANN 37th meeting in Kenya, a great proportion of remote participation tools. And the last thing is that this is all about a community. And you will notice, perhaps you will be surprised that the substantial interventions today, apart from that given initially or to be given initially by Nick Ashton-Hart, who is the senior director for this and the support from staff to this committee, apart from him, the panelists are not from the -- this committee. They are from other parts of ICANN. And I wanted to underline the importance of this in my mind. Finally, I'd like to make sure that everyone recognizes on the screen, perhaps, or otherwise, by sound, Nick Ashton-Hart, who is the senior director for this kind of activity. Nick Tomasso, perhaps you could say a word yourself, and then I will ask Rob Hoggarth to introduce himself as well. Thanks. >>NICK TOMASSO: My name is Nick Tomasso. I am the general manager for meetings and conferences for ICANN. I have been with ICANN for about 18 months now, and this is my first meeting and I am very pleased to participate on the PPC committee on a regular basis. >>ROB HOGGARTH: My name is Rob Hoggarth. I am senior policy director with ICANN. And my capacity during this meeting is sitting in for Mr. Ashton-Hart, who is participating remotely, so I will be keeping my eye on the chat. I did want to alert the chair and other folks here in the room that we are experiencing some running brown-outs, so those of you listening in on the bridge, those who may be participating in the chat room, we are having some frequent crash problems with the Adobe Connect. So we appreciate your patience, if perhaps you just want to utilize the streaming functions of the audio, that might be an appropriate alternative for the next couple of minutes. In the room, we can see the scribe feed as well as the presentation, and we'll keep -- as soon as it crashes, we will put Adobe Connect back up. I just wanted to alert everybody to that issue. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Rob. A word about languages. You have the audio equipment at the table behind me, and the languages are as follows: English on channel 1, French on channel 2, Spanish on channel 3. Thank you. Now, Nick Ashton-Hart, please lead off the discussion. Or the presentation. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: I'm happy to, Jean-Jacques. Can I be heard okay? >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Yes. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: It's my pleasure to introduce to you the proposed program of the Public Participation Committee, and also (inaudible) program for the remainder of this ICANN fiscal year, ending the last day of June of this year, and into the next fiscal year, beginning, of course, the following day on the 1st of July. There are four main projects which you see listed here. One is a holistic review of the public participation processes in ICANN. The second being meetings for the next decade. Third, distance communications tools and systems, which we are using now. And fourth, last but not least, a comprehensive outreach and engagement strategy. The document summarizing these four projects is on the agenda page for this meeting in English, Spanish, and French. The first project, the review of the public participation processes, obviously this public participation is the core of ICANN. All policy development happens through a multistakeholder-based system. And after ten years of operation, it made sense to look at how all of them are working, and how they work together. What relationship does the public consultation process have with public forums and public board meetings, and the many ways in which people can be heard on various issues. How do they work, who do they work for, and how can they be improved. The second, meetings for the next decade, is a three-stage consultation which runs over most of this calendar year. The idea with this is that it be completely bottom-up based. In fact, where in the past we have had consultations on meetings which have begun with a paper written by one or more people discussing -- or proposing various options, in this case we are not doing that. We are starting with a dynamic survey in which respondents are able to actually add on to those available at the beginning of the survey, and in this way to gather information on what the community thinks about meetings, what it likes, what it doesn't like. This first stage being focused in particular on the higher level issues of structure and duration of meetings and similar things. And the results of that will then be fed into creating some options for the next stage of the consultations to consider. The first stage of this -- This is obviously a consultation between the PPC and in particular the meetings department. (Inaudible) expected to begin a little after Nairobi. The official public consultation window will be 45 days long. And the survey and supporting materials will be available in the six U.N. languages from the beginning. Next we have distance communication tools. The premise behind this, there was a good deal of work over the history of the PPC on remote participation, and it seemed logical to look at distance communication tools from the premise that everyone is actually a remote participant most of the time when working on ICANN work, whether they are volunteer or staff. We are all on working group and other calls on a regular basis, where we are remote from everyone else. So how can we look at the tools we use every day as well as those that support meetings, like those we have been using over the last few days, find out what works, what doesn't, and what's needed, and come back to the community, of course, more than once during this process to see that we are on the right track. And finally, with outreach and engagement, it's no secret that many communities want to engage new constituents and are, in fact, active in participating -- in recruiting them or, to use a better word, engaging them or reaching out to them. The organization has mandates at varying levels also to engage new stakeholders from the board and from review processes. But there isn't an overall sort of coordination between all of these efforts to help us maximize the way in which resources are used, see if we can cross-utilize material that might be needed for one community for another community, and see if there are any holes in the various different strategies that are being engaged in where we're actually missing out on an opportunity to reach out to a community we may see now underrepresented or not represented in ICANN, with, obviously, the goal of creating a more diverse, in every sense of the word, active stakeholder community. The key premise, of course, being how can we also help existing communities outreach and engagement goals. Again, this is very much intended to be a bottom-up coordination process rather than a top- down mandate. And that's the end of the introduction. I now turn it over to Jean- Jacques. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Nick. Could you perhaps please say a word of the order of the panelists who will now be speaking. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Well, I guess there's no better way -- no more egalitarian way, perhaps, than to go in alphabetical order. Do you wish to have the guest panelists speak first, Jean-Jacques? That's what I am guessing. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Sorry, to have what? I didn't hear you. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: The guest panelists speak first? >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Yes, of course. So Martin Boyle -- >>NICK ASHTON-HART: So I believe -- Yes. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: So Martin, please. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Thank you very much. Certainly, I think, for me, from the developed world, coming and speaking about participation -- in particular, how to promote participation from developing countries -- is perhaps a sort of very humbling task. But I thought I would start off by just saying a little bit about the work that the ccNSO did in trying to increase its participation. And just as a slight measure of success, when they set up a participation working group, and I think it was about two years ago, there were 50 members in the ccNSO. And now, it's over a hundred. There's 104. And a lot of that really appears to me to be the fact that it was about getting to understand what the people who weren't participating in the meetings actually would like to see being addressed at the meetings. So it was all about issues. It was all about being relevant to them and their involvements. And so the participation working group did all the natural things or the normal things. They work with ICANN, the ICANN liaisons. They reached out. But, in particular, I think of importance was they did this participation survey to find out what people wanted to talk about. If I can just sort of divert for a little second, one of the things that my company has been trying to do is to ensure a better involvement of stakeholders in the U.K. in our policy-making process. And the way that we've done that has been, again, to try and look at issues and base things on the issues that are relevant to the stakeholders, because we actually hope that when we do that, those stakeholders will actually come and give us the advice and the support that we really need to make useful policy. And the last point, because I was told to be brief -- and anybody who knows me knows that is quite a challenge -- the ccNSO produced a little leaflet. It's quite short. And it's in quite simple language, quite clear language. And it just sets out on six panels why one might want to get involved in the ccNSO. And I think that is something that you can give to people in other fora that you can just get out so that people are aware of that. It allows you to get quite a big reach. And so something I would just show up as being perhaps a good practice to be adopted more widely. Thank you. And there are more copies of this. If I put them over by the door, anybody who's interested to see can just pick them up. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Martin. I'll call on Rafik Dammak to make his presentation now. A self-introduction, please, Rafik. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: So I am here as -- from the GNSO, but also as -- I'm from a developing country. And I don't know how shortly I want to say that there is clearly a need from ICANN to outreach the communities from developing countries, but also to have capacity and (inaudible) building program toward those communities. Because when I started my involvement, as I am talking regarding my own experience, when I start involving on ICANN community, it was a little hard at the beginning to understand all this process and all of these different supporting organizations. And I think that -- I know that there is a lot of documentation on the ICANN Web site. But I think that there is a need to have more appropriate document or handbook or how-to document for those people or newcomer who want to join the ICANN community to help them to be involved and to participate effectively in the process. And I think that tomorrow, or today, there will be an Internet governance workshop, and I think it's a good example of how ICANN can have more workshop, but not just during ICANN meetings, but to have more specific outreach, outreach efforts, especially if you organize some events at regional level towards those communities. As one of example of, I think it is not failure, but it's that ICANN missed the opportunity, especially for the new gTLDs, it organized many outreach events, but the only region who is missed is Africa. And we are in the process of -- (inaudible) and I -- many people expressed concerned that communities from developing region are not enough aware about new gTLD process. I think that ICANN has to fix that by more outreach effort. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Yes. Thank you. Now, Bill Drake, would you care to speak, please. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you very much. I think it's really excellent that we're having this conversation. But I can't help noticing that it's mostly the usual suspects that I see around the world talking to each other when we're at a conference with a lot of people from the region. So there seems to be some sort of a disconnect. I don't know if it's a publicity issue or not. But I wish we could draw more attention to what we're talking about here. I tend to come at these things from the perspective of an academic and activist who has done a lot of work on international institutions dealing with Internet and telecommunications and so on, including issues of participation. And from that standpoint, I -- you know, I think there's a lot that ICANN can do that would really help and that would not really constitute mission creep. Rather, I think it would be a matter of preserving and enhancing ICANN's ability to achieve its existing mission more effectively. I would just mention three points real quick. And I can expand on any of them at length if we have the opportunity later. One certainly would be to reduce the sort of informational barriers to entry. The sort of information overload problems that all newbies encounter take on a particular sort of set of dimensions when you're dealing with folks who come from around the world, different linguistic, cultural, other kinds of backgrounds. Walking into ICANN meetings, or even approaching the ICANN Web site, one can easily feel overwhelmed very quickly. And I think certainly work could be done on the Web site to make it more user-friendly, perhaps have a track that would be sort of specialized to people who are more entry level. One could think about doing things like having a sherpa or focal point at the conferences, or even some sort of a volunteer buddy system where some people would help people from developing countries sort of find their way around in these meetings. Obviously, more work on translation support, remote participation. The cultural style thing, I think, is an important thing that we have to tackle. We -- a lot of us who come from the industrialized countries, we speak very quickly in English. We say "any questions? Good, no? Okay, fine." And people don't feel quite ready to jump in as fast as we expect. The style of debate can be a little bit more convince me you're not wrong, which is different from what they might experience - - people might experience in other environments. I think, just generally, you know, listening, and showing that ICANN is listening, perhaps having evaluation forms, finding ways to engage people. Secondly, I would significantly expand outreach capacity-building efforts. I don't think, personally, as constructed, roving meetings are sufficient. I think that it would be very helpful if there was perhaps a preparatory day before meetings or if you even could do some annual regional capacity-building seminars. I mean, it's not ICANN's main job, obviously, to be a capacity-building institution, but there are some things it could do that are specific to participating in ICANN that, perhaps in partnership with organizations that do capacity-building, that would be very helpful. And perhaps make better use of other opportunities like the IGF, where right now, the typical pattern is to do an hour and a half quick overview of current issues rather than providing a more systematic introduction to a lot of people who come in who don't have the background. And, finally, I would say, you know, trying to work on the two dimensions I just mentioned won't be enough as long as there are sort of larger political and perceptual blockages to participation. There are a lot of views I think people are aware in various parts of the developing world of ICANN that I think suppress engagement. This is, I think, especially true among government people. And I think we have to work harder to figure out how to overcome those, through sort of soft power and persuasion and demonstrating real commitment and trying to cultivate constituencies within these countries. I would throw those three points out as a starting point. I'll stop there. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you very much, Bill. Now I'll hand over the microphone to Nick Ashton-Hart. It's yours, Nick. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Sorry, Jean-Jacques. I had to unmute myself. Jean-Jacques, do you wish to allow the audience for a few minutes to put their perspectives on this? >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: (inaudible) moderate from here. That's true. Sorry. I didn't realize that Nick is not in the hall. So he can't see who's -- so I'll do that. So go ahead. Ayesha. >>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you. This is Ayesha Hassan from the International Chamber of Commerce. I took away some interesting points from what the panelists so far have talked about. Thank you to the panelists for highlighting some key points of -- for follow-up. One thing I've already started to hear in the hallways -- this is a really practical issue -- but a number of developing country participants have started to say that they were concerned about their visas for Brussels. Just as a practical issue, probably assuring people that that kind of information will be made available very quickly and that the time frames that they have to face to get their visas to come into Europe will be addressed would probably encourage participation. Thanks. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Ayesha. Who would like to speak next? We've taken your point, of course. I'm not taking notes of everything. But I'm sure that Nick is doing that on his side. Who would like to speak now? Sorry. I can't see everyone. Marilyn, please. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. I'm sorry I arrived a bit late. But I want to join with, undoubtedly, what others have said, and that is, how much we all appreciate the work that this committee is doing and the focus that is going into trying to enable public participation and broad participation, whether it is face to face or remote. And I also want to note the -- with great appreciation, the recognition that we must provide remote participation in both narrowband and broadband-supported modalities, because some of the folks we want to reach most are of course still in an evolving environment of the access and infrastructure issues. I would agree somewhat, without going into any detail, that -- I do believe that ICANN can do capacity-building without engaging in mission creep. And we'll just describe a bit of the experience that the business constituency is having in building a -- and trying to support a sustainable outreach awareness-building and perhaps membership recruitment effort. So our goal, although some of our members originally may have thought that our outreach efforts would all be about membership recruitment, that is, whoever we met with, we would want to become a member, I think that, actually, we have found that the broader impact to ICANN is that we focus as much on awareness and education about what ICANN is and why the business community participates in ICANN and cares about ICANN, and if in the course of that discussion it is clear that ICANN and we have something to offer, then the party we're talking to will choose to become a member of the BC. I say that because it's important to understand that when we recruit members in a constituency -- and this is an important message for all of us in reaching out to people -- if we create expectations that if they become involved in ICANN, we're going to meet their expectations, whatever they are, we need to carefully design at suitable levels the services we can provide so that when people join us, they're happy. And once they are there, they will self-select and evolve into the activities. So capacity-building in helping to get people first involved and finding something that is of interest to them and may be helping them translate why ICANN is important is often not at the policy level; it is actually at the level of what does ICANN -- why is ICANN important in its role in the technical management and governance of the Internet. And I don't think we've broken the code in defining that and describing that in a way that is easy for businesses -- not our supplier friends, but businesses -- to understand. So I mention it because, as we look at building sustainable participation, I feel that we need the support and involvement of the global business community, most particularly, businesses from the developing countries. So we have to treat this like a journey and look at every meeting we go to and think about how we can sustain the awareness and at least involvement through online materials, other kinds of suitable activities, so that they feel like their investment in getting to their first ICANN meeting is worth the next investment, which is following what we do. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Marilyn. Sebastian. >>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Merci. (Speaking French). (No translation to scribes). The translation isn't working? >>ROB HOGGARTH: I'm told the streaming English translation is not working. >>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Okay. Then I will turn to English. Sorry about that. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Our apologies, Monsieur. >>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET: That's okay. Then I will repeat shortly. I would like to say that I agree with a lot of things that Marilyn said. I will not repeat. But I would like to emphasize that it seems to me that there are a lot of communities within ICANN who are trying -- and I hope succeeding -- to have outreach. Everybody, business constituency, ALAC, ccNSO, GAC, are trying to recruit new members. And very often, we say in developing country. And that means that at the end of the day, I am sure that if we put together our thoughts, it would be better for ICANN and for the overall community. And I hope that this committee could help in this direction. Because if we leave the outreach in each silo, it will be okay, but it will not be as much as it can be done. It's why, for example, that at the at-large level, we are trying to work more closely with the ccNSO, because we think that there are some valuable assets to share. I am sure that we can do the same with the GAC. And why not with the business community? My second point is that -- and this is a proof of concept -- we need to enhance our tools for public participation and interpretation tools, because it's -- it must work. I remind to try to participate in one meeting in Washington from France. And during the first 20 minutes, it was not -- we could hear nothing. But the meeting was going on. And all -- when you are participating from remote, you are also a member of the meeting, and then you must not start the meeting with all the facilities. Or if you start the meeting, that means you have two type of participants, the ones in the room and the ones outside the room. And I think one single meeting, even if people abroad are outside of the room, it's a must. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Merci, Sebastian. I realize I cannot speak in French. Or has that been repaired? I'm very sorry for that. I think that's not a good example on the part of this Public Participation Committee not to have settled that. A word, though. As far as these facilities are concerned, we had the choice of either waiting for an approved and tested system to be absolutely foolproof and then start this kind of PPC Public Participation Committee meeting in public, but we took the risk, and right from this -- I think it was Mexico, to do this in public. Because I think it gives you some sense, and to us, certainly, the awareness of the types of problems which we are faced with. Because we tend to consider in my country, France, for instance, that access is not so much of a problem. We have big tubes and not a lot of traffic going through that. But I think it's fair to also get a sense concretely, in concrete terms, of what the difficulties are. So we are here to talk about content. But here we are faced also with part of the problems which we have. Now, thank you for all those remarks which were made so far. And I am turning to Rob Hoggarth to ask if there are any people online who wish to come into the discussion at this stage. >>ROB HOGGARTH: No one has yet asked a question in the chat room. We certainly welcome people who are participating remotely to submit questions over the chat room or otherwise raise their hand. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. Now, of course, we could go on like this and taking various questions or remarks in any order. But may I suggest that we solicit answers or remarks or suggestions according to the four themes which Nick Ashton-Hart reminded us of at the beginning, which is the work program of this committee for the coming months, and whether you approve of them, whether you think they are meaningful or completely irrelevant, or if they are not irrelevant, what could be meaningful in order to improve them? I thought, initially, to set these up again. But I think it's -- because of the number of participants, which is rather limited in this hall, and even online, I'm afraid to say, it's not much of a problem going to and fro. So I open the floor to any discussion on mainly the four -- four elements which were brought up by Nick earlier on, the four projects which are now on the left-hand screen, four main projects. I remind you of that for those who are online and who perhaps are not looking at a screen just now. First, a holistic review of public participation processes. The whys and wherefores and hows. Second, meetings for the next decade. Third, distance communications tools and systems. And four, comprehensive outreach and engagement strategy. So the floor is yours. Marilyn, please. >>MARILYN CADE: Marilyn Cade. Speaking in this case as the chair of the business constituency, but my expressed views are not a position of the business constituency, they are in fact based on an extensive research effort I have undertaken over the 11 years that ICANN has existed by attending all but one of its meetings. So I'm -- I want to make a couple of points about what I see that perhaps we could work to improve on in a couple of areas. In looking at meetings for the next decade, if we are able to plan our meetings not just one year ahead, but 18 months ahead, choose locations, and even begin to identify venue contracts, we will both save money and we will provide predictability to the attendees who do wish to participate with us. We will help them to reduce the cost of their investment in travel. The other thing that I would point out is that, as far as I know, there's no present process in front of the U.N. to increase the number of countries or regions. So the good news is -- [ Laughter ] >>MARILYN CADE: So the good news is, we actually know what the landscape is to work with. As we plan our meetings, I will offer two points of view. The meetings that are strongest, the meetings that are most productive in terms of building relationships and networks are the meetings that take place when the meeting location is collocated with a significant number of hotel rooms. That is because the staff who work very hard, our board, who, thank God, works even harder, and our community, who probably feels like they work even harder, are able to interact with each other on an ongoing basis as they rush from meeting to meeting, as they meet in the hall, as they meet at dinner, as they hang out over a cocktail, and work is actually enhanced by those personal interactions. The meetings that don't work well from those perspectives of building the six degrees of separation, where if I don't know the answer, I know a person who knows the answer, because I met them, and I can refer you to that person -- the meetings that work less well are the ones where we have six to eight hotels and the board is in different hotels than the community, and the board is away from the community and the staff are struggling with trying to be everywhere and do their jobs as well as get into transport. Now, I understand the limitations of planning global meetings. I actually did a stint of being a meeting planner. So I got it. So whatever we could do to try to come up with sort of a best practices. And the local host will always have their own preferences. But maybe there are things we can do to try to help in that area. On the issue of comprehensive outreach and engagement strategy, I feel very strongly that we need to develop customizable resources and tools that empower each of us to be an agent of comprehensive outreach and engagement. So we need a core set of materials that we can use, adapt suitably, within restrictions, to the briefings and presentations and recruitment we do, and we need to be the ambassadors of recruitment to ICANN. That doesn't diminish what ICANN, the organization, needs to do. It just means that ICANN just unofficially retained a significant number of very enthusiastic ambassadors to speak in the trade associations they are involved in or in the community environments, to pick up involvement in the IGF and elsewhere. And I think if we think of it that way, that then we think about not -- that we can easily repurpose the materials that are developed on a centralized basis by providing a little bit of additional money to allow an -- sorry -- a stakeholder group or a -- the ALAC to customize those materials and to be part of the distribution. I'm just going to say one other thing. PR, as much as executives love it -- and I worked in a global company. I loved my own share of it -- PR is actually not the way to change minds. So even though we might help people -- >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Now you say that. >>MARILYN CADE: Even though we might help people understand or recognize the acronym "ICANN," it is the interaction that changes people's minds. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Marilyn. I have a list as follows: Thomas Narten, Martin Boyle, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, and I've asked Nick Tomasso to reply to one of the points brought up. So Thomas. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Yeah. Thank you, Jean-Jacques. Let me just answer really briefly, respond to some points you raised, Marilyn. On the question of planning out in advance with hotels and stuff 18 months, everybody agrees with that. This is a no-brainer. ICANN just hasn't gotten there for various reasons. And I think part of what we're trying to do here is make sure we get to that point as quickly as we can. It's not that we don't understand that, you know, waiting until the last minute puts us all in a bind. The second thing, in terms of communication, I think it's worth reminding the group here, we have a new vice president of communications that's just come on board. Actually, technically not on board until April 1st or something. So the whole communications strategy is going to be re-looked at again. And I think we have an opportunity to have some, you know, serious conversations about what's the right balance and what do we want to emphasize and so on. So I encourage you to be aware of that and try to engage. Because there certainly will be some changes, I would expect. The last thing, I just want to put on the table and remind everybody is, we need to think very carefully for any of these -- any mechanisms for improvement or trying to make change, that the cost- benefit actually works out. I say that for two reasons. One is, it's easy to say, let's do X, let's do Y, and then we don't necessarily have a way of evaluating or understanding whether it actually results in anything tangible in terms of better policy, better interaction, you know, doing our work better. So when we think about ways of -- you know, or things to do that might improve public participation, we need to be very careful also to see if there's a way to measure that and understand what the benefit is going to be. And part of the reason for that is, as most of you are probably aware, the current budget situation at ICANN is we are a little bit under stress in that some of the cost for the operating year have run above where we had predicted they would be. And so I think there is going to be a fairly intense focus on cost across the board for the rest of this year and next year as we do the operating plan. So, you know, everything that we do that costs money needs to be justifiable and we need to be sure that we're going to get benefit out of it, or people are going to question whether we can really afford to do so. Thanks. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Thomas. But handing the microphone to Martin Boyle, I just want to say we do have a time constraint and we would like to move pretty soon to the second part of our meeting. So Martin Boyle. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. Since we started off talking about meetings, I thought I would follow that same trend. I think one of the things that really greatly occurs to me, somebody who is a native English speaker, is that trying to explain some of the issues to people who I recognize need to be involved can actually be quite a challenge. And, of course, to get people to take part in meetings, they need to be able to convince people to fund them. They need to be able to prioritize, and they need to persuade their boss, their management, their organization to prioritize the meeting, too. So it occurs to me that there are, perhaps, some very simple and not very costly things that we could be doing. And in particular, in simple language, to publicize very, very early in the meeting preparation process exactly what is being planned for that meeting. And you could almost do it from the end of the last meeting. If you can do it in simple language, then people can understand that, and they can then start preparing themselves, preparing their thinking, doing their prioritization. The other point I think we need to bear in mind is location. And somebody already said that just sort of moving meetings around from region to region isn't itself an answer to improving participation, because for many people around the globe, it's only very, very occasionally that the meeting is going to be conveniently located. And for those of us who might have been coming to ICANN for a while, we might have actually forgotten how long it can take to get up to speed, especially with some of the complexities and difficulties of the language, some of the cultural issues that Bill Drake referred to. And I think that's just something we just need to bear in mind. And perhaps there is some option for trying to use regional liaisons to help people in particular regions prepare for the meeting so that they can then contribute effectively using the remote participation tools, bearing in mind that most of these people will be using those tools in a foreign language for them. And I think that's probably all I want to say. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Martin. I was just going to suggest that you conclude. Thanks very much. Cheryl. >>CHERYL LANGDON ORR: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. And I will be very brief. I want to pick up on a couple of points. First of all, something Marilyn was saying that is very, very important to the at-large community, because you keep hearing it from us every time we talk about meetings or, in fact, some of it is enshrined in where we are going with our ALAC improvements implementation, that's that concept of the development of a unified toolkit, some resources that can be used out on the edges. And it actually solves some problems not just to have that local interface and that preparation that Martin was referring to that's so necessary to get people engaged at meetings when they get here, but it also allows us to perhaps get local people working in local language, but still unified text as the source. And I think a little exploration and perhaps some roundtable work with the new chief in charge of all things communications, along those lines, with community, because a lot of us have extensive ideas, things that are coming off the line like the Podcast, hugely important, hugely important for outreach and, therefore, engagement in public participation. Right now, if I even suggest it comes out in anything other than English, it's no budget, of course, but we could perhaps have a script that can be franchised to be repeated locally. There's ways of doing this, and I think we need to think outside the box. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Cheryl. Rob, do you have anyone online wishing to express himself or herself? Right. I will ask Nick Tomasso to respond to some of these points without trying to be encyclopedic because we have some very strong time constraint. Thank you, Nick. >>NICK TOMASSO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief. Marilyn, I would like to say I totally agree you and Thomas regarding how far out we should be in planning meetings. 18 months would be great. Two years would be ideal. I think there are savings to be had by negotiating contracts with hotel chains, multi-year contracts with hotel chains. I'm very confident that the work this committee is undertaking, meetings in the next decade are going to produce a model of meetings with a bottoms-up input from the community that are going to serve the community best. I will tell you I agree with you and others who have come to me on this topic that having a convention center and multiple hotels is not the ideal scenario, but I will tell you that in Africa, two of the three bids that were received were in convention center. In Europe, two of two were in convention centers. And in Latin America, one of two. So you can see that the bid process is what brings us to this kind of facility. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Nick. I'd like to add that this committee is just now in the process of evaluating the way in which venues are selected, selection process. We're not at a stage where we can say we're against the current model or not, but we're looking at possible improvements or a change in the system. And we will tell you about that later when the work on the committee has gone forward a bit more. Now, thank you for having discussed the first part of our meeting. And as you can see on the left-hand screen, part two is facilitating more engagement in ICANN's work by developing world stakeholders. So Nick Ashton-Hart, please lead this off. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: I'm happy to do so, Jean-Jacques. And my compliments, I believe, to Vanda Scartezini in the first instance for suggesting that the second part of the meeting be focused on this subject, which of course was immediately seized upon by her colleagues on the PPC. The format of this is in three questions. And so we'll just sort of take each in series and see what people's views are on them. I will, at the same time, put the questions that are raised up in a poll that is a part of Adobe Connect, which most of you will probably not have seen before. I don't believe it has been used by ICANN. And so those of you who are on Adobe Connect can actually register your nonbinding opinion on these questions as they are put up, and of course you can see the results live. So the first question will be the obvious: Should ICANN incorporate a greater focus on the developing world in its work? And if so, how? >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Is that a voluntary silence or is there a connection problem? Nick, are you online? Muted? Do you want us to observe a very religious and for how long? >>NICK ASHTON-HART: That was a voluntary silence. I thought the question being asked, I would leave it to you to gather some answers from those on the panel and in the room. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Right. Thank you. Would anyone like to comment on this in the discussion? By the way, before I give anyone the floor, I would like to encourage people who are not at this U-shaped table to either come to it or stay where you are but request a microphone, which the team would -- And there is a microphone which is available in the hall. So please come into this discussion very freely. Just make yourself known when you line up or go to the mic. Thanks. So I had Vanda, and then -- there, yes. >>VANDA SCARTEZINI: Well, I don't know if the greater focus on developing countries is the correct, you know, sentence, but to focus on the developing countries, yes, we need it, because it was a lack of effort during some time to explore what is going on on developing countries and how they can join, and especially from the business side. Because in the business side, what happened is a complete almost ignorance about how to use the facilities and the business that are behind the DNS system and all these issues that we talk here. So when you start to talk with the people, especially in these ideas of the GNSO new gTLDs, it's amazing how people react in the first moment in the -- I can talk about South America, and certainly you can talk about other regions, or -- anyway. But in South America, people, it just was amazing how people could have -- doing a lot of business in other countries with something that they didn't know. Yeah? They didn't know. So it's something important to pay attention where you -- you know, the population of that region to use better the facilities that is being connected with ICANN. So it was really a long time till this year, last year, that we have really the first meeting. I have been using the facility to ask for the staff to give me some of those slides and something, and I translate that to Portuguese. And anyplace that has a chance, I intersperse some of those inside my speech. But it's something that, you know, that's Vanda talking, you know. It's something that's not so posh. When there is someone from the other region that is exploring, as I said, I don't know, in the breakfast, asking for someone from the GNSO or the business community to get some, you know, records about how they are doing business, what kind of business there are around, and we can use this when you contact people, when we contact people. In the ALAC, the at-large community, things are going, you know, a little better because we start to, with all our RALOs, we start to have much more ALSs around. So it's the people that join that spread the word. It's something that once we work together with the CCs, with the GNSO, with the business community that governs together, we certainly can help to focus on developing countries, because in the developing countries you have limited occasions to do so. So we need to work together, because if each one goes separately, there is no room for the last one or, you know, the second one to go there because nobody will pay attention. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Vanda. Adam. I may have gotten the order wrong. It was Bill first. Sorry. Sorry, Bill. Go ahead. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Thanks. I thought you didn't see me. I just want to make a comment, but first I want to pass along something from Olga Cavalli who had hoped to be here and participate in this session, but was not able to, due to illness in her family. She sent along a message with some documents saying that essentially ICANN is invisible -- largely invisible in Latin America, except with respect to ccTLD-type workshops and some security activities, some security-related workshops. And of course this goes back to what Martin was saying. It's very easy to get people from developing countries, or I think at least more easy, to get them interested in questions pertaining to their ccTLDs and especially governments who, I imagine, view it as a sovereignty issue and so on. A lot of the GNSO-type issues, of course, being more complex. I just want to make three quick points, I guess. One, I think it would be worth, as at least an experimental effort, to try adding a session on development in the next meeting that's held in a developing country, developing region and just see what happens. I would bet you that if you had a session on ICANN and the developing world, or something like that, labeled on the program, that people would show up for it, big time. We don't signal through the kind of program that we have where the opportunities to raise their issues may be in some cases. I mean, I know I talked -- had a long time with a guy from Congo the other day about this session, and he said to me, well, you know, "I couldn't tell from the program that this was about developing countries." He didn't look very carefully, obviously. But the point is I think if you do a session, particularly if it was a standard thing on developing country issues and gave people an opportunity to get up and raise their concerns, whatever it may be, it would promote some real engagement, interest and dialogue. Secondly, I would say as a sort of more concrete analytical type issue, it would be useful, I think, at times to factor some sort of development assessment into some of our decision-making processes and deliberations. I mean, I know the GNSO Council, we never talk about developing countries or development issues when we are talking about most of the questions that are in front of us. When the EOI came up, when the pricing of new gTLDs came up, there was a little peek. But otherwise, just generally speaking, it's just not there. And it may be that if were you to look at the range of questions that ICANN is tackling, there are some cases where there are, indeed, distinct dimensions or implications for developing countries that might not be obvious to us unless we at least just ask the question, "Oh, hey, how might this affect the developing world?" So at least having that as one of the parameters of the conversation -- not always, obviously, but where merited -- I think would be a useful thing to do. And the last point I would make, and this again goes to sort of signaling and so on, I understood what Thomas said about budgets and cost/benefit analyses and all these things, and I'm sure that he would probably disagree with the following, but I would say, you know, if you look at other international institutions that deal with information/communication technology issues, Internet issues and so on, they all have some sort of, quote, "development program" or development office or development something, some focal point within the institution that people who are interested in development questions can point to and kind of go, "AH, that's the bit I relate to, am interested in" and want to connect with and so on. And I can't tell whether even having a small thing, even just a staff member whose job it was to sort of raise these issues or be a resource person or whatever, I don't know, but someplace within the nexus that was really demonstrably visibly about development I think would probably have a real impact on engagement attitudes and promoting our thinking about development, making us think that development is a part of what we're doing. Thanks. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Bill. Now we are faced with a problem of time constraint. It's, according to my watch which is very accurate, 17 -- 18 minutes past the hour, and we dispose of this whole until 1730. Is that correct, Rob? And not more. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Well, I don't think there is anything after this. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Right. I did want to point this out all the same. And if you, as the community, decide that we should and can go a bit further than that, that's fine with me, but I wanted to single this out and ask the following speakers to be very brief. So Adam Peake, please. >>ADAM PEAKE: Yes, hello. Adam Peake. I'm a member of the ALAC but it's a personal comment. Nick's question reminded me very much of the strategic plan in the section on the healthy Internet ecosystem, which I think it echoes quite closely. So I want to make sure any discussion on this issue is tied very closely into the strategic plan and, of course, related to that, the budget. Don't allow things to be done in parallel and to have a good conversation here and not feed into the main process that will fund these possible and important activities. And Cheryl and Vanda have both spoken about the ALAC and the work we are trying to do in outreach and participation and contribution, and there are many ideas there. And the other one, of course, and Vanda is involved, is the fellowship program which has been extremely successful. We are seeing some very tangible outcomes, people becoming very active as a result of the fellowship program, not only in ICANN but also in other related activities such as the IGF. So let's make sure, if we are thinking about budgets and importance of activities, then fund these things. And a continued focus on developing countries I think is essential, and working with regional and national entities, which is what the ALAC tries to do and what the fellowship program, the global partnership tries to do, is of course important. We have to do outreach and make sure we are talking to the right people at national and regional levels. And I think as Olga has indicated, ICANN is not so well-known, so allow us to participate and contribute to other ICT. And I think, as Olga's indicated, ICANN is not so well known, so allow us to participate and contribute to other ICT-related events, whether it's IGF's, which is the obvious one, or other events that are taking place nationally and regionally. It's a little disappointing that we're not seeing more participation from Kenya. And I think that's probably due, as was indicated in a comment yesterday in the open GAC board meeting, that there's been distractions in the buildup to this meeting. But there should be more Kenyan people here and they should be better informed about what is going on in ICANN. I know there are some extremely active ICT lists here. You have a community that has volunteered to take the IGF in 2011. It's not a community that is unaware of the importance of these issues. There should be more of them here. And that's disappointing. So ICANN really has to leave stronger footprints of where it's been at the world when it continues to have these meetings. Thanks. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Adam, for those very important points, indeed. Ayesha. >>AYESHA HASSAN: Very briefly, Ayesha Hassan, from ICC. I would support the idea of an experiment that -- that Bill Drake has suggested for an ICANN and developing countries session. I think it could be quite interesting and shaped in a useful manner. Having some conversations with people here from developing countries, some of the issues that they identify are actually beyond the remit of ICANN as being their focus. So it's quite interesting. I would be -- I would welcome an opportunity to find out, as Martin has focused on, what are the relevant topics before launching any new work. I think when we look at the question, greater focus on, I would say it could be interesting to start thinking about how the work that is going on can highlight the implications for developing countries, as a few other colleagues have alluded. I think also highlighting how it would have implications for developing country businesses. We need to start raising awareness across the board in that way. And so I would take it in a staged approach. I think we need some feedback to understand what would work. We need to work on the schedule so that there's actually strengthened participation and greater awareness raising, and a couple of other methods that have already been highlighted. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. And thank you for being brief in addition to your very good content. I have Alan, who wanted to speak. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Just to follow on a bit on what Bill was saying, we are continually -- ICANN is continually sending messages to people from developing countries, usually very negative ones. This meeting's very visible low-bandwidth chat is a marvelous thing. It not only caters to people with low bandwidth, but reminds others that there are people with low bandwidth. Earlier this week, someone asked Kurt about why there are not differential prices for the EOI or for the new gTLDs. And the answer was, you know, we understand the problem. We'll look at it in the second round. The message that many people get from that is, ICANN isn't interested in developing countries. One more little small, tiny one. Up until relatively recently, the travel -- the letter that went out to people that ICANN was funding for traveling to fill in for their travel dates was over a megabyte long, because the travel agent's logo was on the stationery and very pretty. And when it was pointed out to them, the answer was, basically, you know, (Shrugging shoulders) and I think everyone in ICANN, all the staff, have to be alerted to the issue that this is important if it really is important. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you very much, Alan. I think that we have to take this into consideration much more than we ever have in ICANN in general, and certainly in the Public Participation Committee. Martin Boyle. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. One of the things that the ccNSO has started doing is to try and develop a resource center for people to be able to draw on so that people who have done something and achieved something can actually then post that that other people can learn. And it occurred to me that, you know, there is actually quite an important role here of trying to encourage developing countries themselves who have confronted problems that nobody else has confronted to put them up, because almost certainly there will be others of their colleagues and constituencies who then will come across the same problem. If they can learn from your best practice, that's going to make a lot of difference. The second bit I'd like to pick up on was the bit, really, about mission creep. And it occurred to me that when ICANN goes somewhere, they bring an awful a lot of experts from around the globe, a fabulous resource for people to draw on. But, of course, an awful lot of the issues that people might want to talk to them about are not issues that fall within ICANN's mandate. I just wonder whether there is an option for doing fringe events where you can try and get those experts together and give people then the opportunity to talk to the experts to try and address the issues that they are finding of concern, without it impacting on ICANN's mandate whatsoever. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Martin. Gonzalo, would you like to say something? >>GONZALO NAVARRO: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. I don't know if we have Spanish translation or interpretation. Okay. In that case, I will use our tools with great satisfaction, I have to say. (Speaking in Spanish). (No translation available for scribes). >>GONZALO NAVARRO: No translation. Okay. I was saying that coming from a developing region, my answer -- Coming from a developing region, my answer to this question is, yes, absolutely. I cannot say anything else. But I was saying previously that we -- today, we had a really, really good exchange of points of view. And being a new member of this committee, but having coming to ICANN meetings, I have to say that now we have the tools or the vehicles, it's time to put the content to this vehicle and see where are we going. In that regard, I think that Ayesha's suggestion is really, really important. And while we need to know what our people are needing to do with these tools. That's pretty much it. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. Please, I think you asked for the floor. >> Yes. Thank you, Chair. Lee Williams from the financial services industry, or, as I'm trying to develop it, the financial services community. As someone who is relatively new to ICANN, having been to just a few meetings now, I'm still very much struck by how little participation we have from the noncontracting corporations around the world. And it's clear to me that they would have a very great interest if they had a little greater awareness. In the first half of our discussion about the four projects that we might undertake, it seemed important that we bake that element into the comprehensive outreach strategy. And I would assume that that would be a piece of it. And this second part, where we're talking about outreach to the developing countries, I also think that might be a very efficient channel. Large enterprises are nothing if not networks of employees and customers and business partners that very efficiently reach out to the regions in which they live and which they serve. So I would encourage the committee and others who have the role to work on that both in the much larger sense, but also to try to capitalize on it as much as possible in this developing countries initiative. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you very much, Lee Williams. That's a very timely remark which we have not had thus far in this meeting. Now, we've reached 17:30 just now, two seconds ago. And, normally, we should have finished. Now, Martin Boyle has just indicated to me that he'll have to leave very soon, in just a few minutes. So if anyone has a specific question and specifically to Martin, that would be a very good thing. But we can take perhaps one more remark aside from that. And you're most welcome. Could you find a microphone. You have one. And Katim just after that. And then I will try to sum up our discussion. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My name is Walto Ogutu (phonetic). I'm from Nairobi, Kenya, here. This is my first meeting that I'm attending the ICANN. And one thing I wanted to point out is that I am interested in being part of the ICANN community very, very much. And I'll be following up that one with the chairman of the BCO, that is the lady -- I have forgotten her name. But I will do that. Now, what I wanted to say that we -- Kenya is at a crossroads whereby the Internet is going to pick up very, very fast. Over the last five years, the Kenyan government has taken the initiative to bring in two under-the-cable sea. The argument was that when we have the under-the-cable sea, the Internet costs will come down. I'm a participant in the digital village project, which is being sponsored by The World Bank. My suggestion to this forum is that ICANN takes this opportunity to engage The World Bank, to engage the Kenya ICT board for the implementing (inaudible) for the Kenya government sponsors of the project, to ensure that, oh, people like me, who are interested in rolling out services to the population are supported financially. Because what is happening now is that over the last five years, the Internet was the domain of small, small players, and the ISPs. But the development in telecom technology, the big players, Safaricom, or Zane (phonetic), and I would say KTN, have taken over. So the small players actually are being slowly pushed out of the market. As someone who wants to invest in that business, I think that ICANN has got an opportunity to adopt a top -- I mean, a bottom-up approach. And this is what I feel, because ICANN is a nonprofit organization, it can be able to support the majority of the people in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda. And there are very many people who are interested in that. The reason why I am saying this, only about a year, two years ago, we only had about 20,000 people who are having access to financial services. Those are in the lower bottom bracket of the economy. Right now, that number has reached 10 million. So there is actually - - a bottom-up is what Safaricom needed to penetrate the market. They were not leading in the market because it adopted -- I am saying Safaricom is leading because it went to the grass roots. And because of that, the revenues of Safaricom shot up. It's now the biggest company in this African region. And I think ICANN should engage the World Bank, the Kenya ICT board, and to organizations like Safaricom. They have a foundation now, and all these things can -- you know, can bring the membership up. And this hall would have been full if that was what was happening. But the reason why the hall is not full is because the approach has been bottom-up. And Safaricom, that is to say Michael Joseph cannot be here. He has no interest. He has reached the market already. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Walto Ogutu (phonetic). We will have to stop -- Oh, no, there was Katim. Katim, but please be very brief because of the time constraints. Thanks. >>KATIM TOURAY: Thank you very much, Jean-Jacques, and good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be in this meeting, and I was thinking to myself as Mr. Ogutu was speaking that he really, in a very large part, actually blew my balloon, because one of the biggest complaints I have had is I have always implored my friends from the developing world, particularly those in Africa, to understand the fact that we have to actively, those of us who are actually in the game already, actively participate in the process; otherwise, we have to agree or we have to be willing to live with the decisions that have been arrived at by other people. And these decisions might not necessarily be to our liking or in our best interest. So just when I was going to open up my spiel with a lamentation of the fact that people don't participate and open their mouths when they go to these meetings, Mr. Ogutu comes along and has some very wonderful and very pertinent interventions. So thank you very much. And I think what I want to say here is that we need to emulate him and make sure our voices are heard whenever we have the opportunity to present our opinions. I think the other thing we have to bear in mind is I keep getting feedback from people, especially from the francophone community, that ICANN is simply not walking the talk when we talk about engagement, for the fact that we are not really doing a good job of opening the space to them and providing them the tools that they would need -- basically, translation, interpretation services -- so they are actually comfortable in speaking in their native French. I think we really need to pay much, much closer attention to the whole issue of getting the non-English speakers to be able to effectively participate in ICANN's activities. And this is not only restricted or limited to the business of providing translation and interpretation facilities. It also means that when we expect people to make useful, fruitful comments to documents that are part of the policy development process, those documents have to be provided them in the languages that they can read and understand in, and understand in, and also provide them -- provide it to them in time and in a manner and fashion they can easily access. I think I'd also like to -- >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Katim, would you try to conclude? Thanks. >>KATIM TOURAY: Add my voice to the importance of us working through regional organizations like the African union, for instance, inter-American organizations and also United Nations organizations. And finally, I can't overemphasize the importance of international engagement as has been pointed out here because of the simple reason that I believe, as I have told other people, ICANN needs to be able to articulate its place in the international ecosystem of organizations that we need to work with. Thank you very much and for your opinions. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Right. I am afraid I don't have the powers to extend this meeting for another hour, but -- no, I don't know what are the arrangements. The equipment, the interpreters. Thank you again for the interpreters. But I'll take the next two, at least -- or three, sorry. So Rafik, and then Fouad, and then the gentleman at the end of this row here. Go ahead, but please be brief. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: Yeah, I will be brief. So I think it's important to involve more people from ICANN community, and especially from developing countries in defining the outreach and engagement strategy. And finally, I think a specific effort should be done toward noncommercial communities, and ICANN shouldn't limit its effort to the business right community and it should focus on noncommercial communities. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Fouad. >>FOUAD BAJWA: Fouad Bajwa from Pakistan. Just to share an experience which just happened in the past few months since Seoul and now Nairobi. The fellowship program itself is actually giving you some really interesting examples. And I would like to request some of the board members to actually sit through some of our early, early morning meetings which we have, and you would experience some things which you won't believe. For example, today we had a session with one of the luminaries and a nine-year research on IDNs was presented in their languages. And the first-ever book produced on IDNs was also shared with all the fellows. They will be taking this book back and sharing this within their communities. This will generate interest in the issues of IDNs. You will see more people coming in. Second thing, your fellows are your Ambassadors, and when they return to their 20 -- or 50 or 20 countries, they are the ones who are going to tell stories about ICANN back home. And these are the people who encourage more people to come in. Third thing, if you add people from the developing country into your committee, like a regular committee who have participated and who can use the resourcefulness and perhaps reach out to other organizations, there are many funds out there and maybe they can be contributed to the constituencies if proper coordinated effort is made. You can also have -- businesses tend to have some money on their hands for, like, marketing or whatever. And grants can be matched. For example, you can sponsor, like, partially the air travel and they can sponsor the hotels. So there are many ways to work and engage. And finally, for example, I'd like to quote Ayesha Hassan, they have a link with all the international chambers of commerce -- sorry, all the countries chambers of commerce, and they have contact with the associations. For example, in Pakistan I have contact with the Internet Association of Pakistan and the whole telecom community. So the program can actually be promoted. But a coordinated effort is required with the right people in that particular community. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. And the gentleman at the end of this table. Would you care to speak now? >> Thank you. My name is Chris Amunga (phonetic). I am originally from the Republic of Congo, and my thought on this is the awareness of ICANN, especially in the French countries, it's very, very low. Because first the Internet in DRC, the Republic of Congo, it's very, very expensive. And to find somebody who you can only ask -- the only place is small places where you can find the Internet. We get it through the wireless connection and all that. And I think ICANN can probably look at how they can ensure that people in the French country and in -- mostly in those nondeveloping, who are trying to come onto the -- you know, the level of the technology to be improved and all that, you know, to make sure that the population, the people that are right now on the bottom of the pyramid can be aware of what ICANN can provide, that's a small example. On our universities, you find that people, they use old syllabus that have been there for the time, let's say ten years, but they are not sure they can get information from maybe the Internet and trying see what new things they can do. So those are the things -- And all universities, and it's quite rare because you cannot find the student going on the Internet. Where is he going to get the money from. And then all the expenses. So ICANN can really develop that awareness to universities, and also to the -- we talk in French, and it's also another barrier that ICANN should look at through maybe some of the French community or as was said the Francophonie where they can make sure they pass the message and see what -- and people be aware of what ICANN can bring to those French countries, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thank you. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you very much. Of course, you were referring to countries which possess the French language, of which France is only one part. So -- And thank you very much for that remark as well. So are there any other overall remarks? Otherwise, I will ask Nick Ashton-Hart to give us a few replies to some of these remarks, perhaps centering on what exists in our work program of the Public Participation Committee, which are geared to responding or to answering some of these requests or remarks. And then I'll conclude the meeting by saying a few words myself and invite you to stay around so that we can meet each other after this meeting. This we have done now for a few times in these public participation meetings carried out in public, and we always keep a few minutes at the end in order to exchange visiting cards and get to know each other, and of course to continue the conversation we have engaged today, because a meeting is nothing more than a conversation, and we always hope that it will provide fruit later on. So, Nick, I spoke a bit longer than necessary, but that was, of course, you understood, to give you time to collect your thoughts. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Well, thank you very much for that. The amount of sleep I am not getting, the more time I have to collect my thoughts, the better. Well, the first thing I would say is we managed to have a great debate on question 1. We didn't get so far into question 2 and 3, but I did put up a snap poll of the ideas that I heard for specific things that could be done, which I heard in the meeting and a number of you responded. You can see that on the screen, of course, yourself. With respect to -- >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Excuse me, Nick. Nick, I don't hear you absolutely clearly. Could you come a bit closer to your microphone? >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Sure. Is that any better? >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: It is, thanks. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Yeah. As to the development dimension or involving developing country stakeholders in the work program, I think it's certainly included. I think you see an example, which Alan highlighted in the remote participation options to this meeting, where we -- we went out of our way to equalize the services that we had available to try and make it easier for participants without -- with low bandwidth or with any level of bandwidth to participate effectively. We'll continue to expand those opportunities. We continue to invest more in multilingualism. Kristina, if she was there, would quote some pretty good statistics. And we will certainly do more to make that information -- to make the information that is translated more accessible in the coming weeks. All of these projects, of course -- you know, none of them are free. Some are less and more expensive. But my hope is that the -- in commenting on the -- the operating plan and budget, that members of the community, all of you there, will -- will make these points that you have made about the importance of ensuring access on an equal basis for people, regardless of where they live or their relative level of development. And as we go through the process of consulting on the four projects, I have faith that we will -- we will all keep in mind the points that have been made. But more to the point, since those programs of work will be built based upon your input, it will be easy for us to incorporate the level of commitment that you wish for us to make. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Nick. Could you just say a word of the technical aspect of recording either an audio or video or anything else, text. I mean, the records of this meeting, which can be consulted, and in what time frame. >>NICK ASHTON-HART: Yes. The recordings in all three languages will be available within about two hours from the close of this session. A transcript will be prepared in English. The notes that I'm taking, I've taken, once I have fleshed them out a bit, I will also post them as sort of a list of bullet points of the ideas that have been proposed. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you, Nick. Now I'd like to say a few words to bring this meeting to a close with a few comments which I hope will be useful. The first is that this is not the end of a game. This is only one point on the long way ahead to enhancing public participation, the object of which is, of course, enhancing awareness, but more specifically, it is to engage people to contribute to the policy formation process of ICANN, which is very largely a policy body. The second thing is that we did take the risk -- and I personally took the risk -- of these imperfections which were exposed to you today. We didn't plan it that way, but that's part of the reality. Trying to link the world with various bandwidths, et cetera, is not all that easy. The third thing is, of course, that we have taken very careful not of all your criticisms or remarks, and especially suggestions, including some very specific projects or recommendations you have made. My fourth point is that this is not lost, neither this meeting for this all the feedback you are kind enough to give to the Public Participation Committee, whether online or through other means. As Nick Ashton-Hart has just reminded us, this will be online in two hours for most of it. And I think that at least for the Public Participation Committee, this is a first. Generally, we've had to wait a bit longer. So I think that this is also an encouraging sign of the way we are very keen to listen to you and to take on board those concrete suggestions which we think fit into the general plan. Finally, I wish to express the fact that, of course, it is regrettable that the technical side has come into a few glitches. I cannot take direct responsibility for that without being a technician, but I do assume that responsibility. It's part of our duty on the PPC to work towards an improvement and enhancement of those means. This covers languages. As we saw, we were not able to speak in all languages and make sure that they were translated in the others. So we'll have to look at that very carefully. The links were not always perfectly reliable. But, as I said, this is just one milestone on a long way. And you are contributing to making this way more interesting and more effective. By saying this, I am not shrinking the responsibility of our committee. I'm simply underlining the fact that you are as much part of this committee, although not officially members, as we are. So this depends partly on you and very much on us as far as the responsibility is concerned. So thank you, all, for the participation. Thank you for those online who perhaps didn't wish to intervene this time but maybe a bit more next time. And my last word is about Kenya. I think that the participation of Kenyans in this and other meetings of this ICANN week is very important. And I'm sure that, as Walto reminded us -- this is your first meeting, I believe -- and I really do hope that through your influence in your own community, linguistic, national, professional, your network of friends also, that you, too, will contribute to making better known not so much ICANN, but the challenges to the Internet, and on the way, perhaps speak about ICANN and what it can bring to that overall challenge. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] (Meeting concluded)