[NCUC-EC] Fast Track Budget Requests

[William Drake]

Hi

Tomorrow Fast Track Budget Requests are due for funds to be spent within the first trimester of FY14 (up to 10/31/2013).  The Board is supposed to approve the budget for these in Beijing.  I've sent several messages about this over the past months to our Finance Team but not much response, so now I'm cramming solo to get something together by the deadline while also swamped with IGF, university and other deadlines, argh.  I will request travel support for two to three people to go to the Bali IGF, where I will propose to organize two NCUC workshops, a trilateral venture with NPOC and NCSG on The Role of Civil Society in ICANN’s Multistakeholder Model: The Case of the GNSO; and a workshop/debate on The Global Debate on ‘Closed’ Generic Top Level Domains.  It seems a number of NCUC folks plan to be in Bali and have access to other funding sources, so hopefully we can get a good contingent on the ground.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of the staff response, whether they'll think well you just need one or two to do a workshop (and in truth it is an issue that IGF workshop panels have to be multistakeholder, so we can't in any event load multiple people onto a panel).  We'll see.  Anyway, I'll of course be happy to pass along the submission when ready.  I'd invite you to help with drafting etc, but there's really no time and I just have to grunt it out.

In addition, I was thinking of putting in a second request for support to produce some printed propaganda on NCUC.  Yes, it's sort of old world, but in some contexts it'd be useful.  IGF is one of them, we could reach out to a lot of folks who won't otherwise be motivated to just go check the website, etc.  There are two options: a simple two fold flyer with six panels of tiny type about what is NCUC, what does it do, how and why to participate, etc.  EURALO, of which I've been a board member for five years, did one of these and it's been helpful at EuroDIG and related meetings.  Surely we could generate the requisite text by the autumn.

The other more ambitious possibility would be to take a leaf out of Ms. Cade's book (yikes!) and produce some sort of Newsletter type thing, maybe once or twice a year.  Ignore the actual content and imagine something civil societyish like this http://www.bizconst.org/Newsletters/BC+Newsletter+v2_October2011.pdf.  Would we be interested in that?  Could we pull it off?

Probably the latter idea is for the longer term, but I would think we can do the brochure this year.

Thoughts?

Bill