First Report from Tunisia

[KathrynKL at AOL.COM]

All:
Although I have been here at the ICANN meeting in Tunisia for a few days, this is a my first report, and I apologize.  It has been a busy few days.  There are many new faces since my last meeting a year ago in Shanghai, and I have also had many problems with email.  But all is well now.

So I would like to share some of the highlights so far.  First, it is pleasure to be here with Chon representing our Constituency.  As I type, Chon is sitting on the Names Council representing us, and after almost 4 hours of meetings, I am very impressed by how well he can focus on the discussion (I am having a bit of trouble).

We wish there were many more NCUC Constituency members, but we used our Constituency meeting of Tuesday morning to hold the first joint meeting with the At-Large Advisory Committee.  Since they  represent individuals, and we represent noncommercial organizations, Chon and I thought it might be nice to meet with them and see if we have interests in common.

We found we share many similar concerns about WHOIS privacy, the holding back of new top level domains, and finding the time and funding to be involved in ICANN.

We also agreed to explore whether we could provide training classes together.  Since both NCUC and ALAC tend to have new members attend meetings, it might be a useful leverage of resources to combine forces and provide an ICANN Overview Class to all.

More to come.
Regards,
Kathryn in Tunisia