[NCUC-EC] [IMPORTANT] Virtual ICANN Meeting

[Bruna Martins dos Santos]

Dear EC,

On the hope you will read and reply to this email, I would like to offer
you all some updates on the upcoming icann meeting.

As you know, ICANN org decided to call out the cancun meeting and host a
virtual one. Since the decisions, Stephanie, Joan and Myself have been
attending a few calls on how to organize - in two weeks - a schedule that
would be able to reproduce the ICANN67 schedule as much as possible.

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the great efforts being taken by
the Meetings Plan, Tanzanica, David Olive and ICANN Staff to achieve the
first ever virtual meeting. If I can say one thing is that staff has been
deeply dedicated to adjusting all our schedules into this new and limited
model of meeting.

But, as you can imagine, there were a few gaps and failures at this
process. Org has decided on the timezone - Cancun timezone - and that tech
services would only be provided from 9 - 17h local time - that gives us a
slightly reduced meeting time. Secondly, there will be no translations from
english to languages other than Spanish - with that you can already see
that our african community will have an even harder time following this
meeting.

This meeting is shorter, some parts of the community + the Org decided we
should no longer use weekends. So, for those of us volunteers with day
jobs, I assume there will also be some difficulty in following some of the
discussions.

With regards to our meetings, under some advice shared on the leadership
group that we should only stick to strictly necessary meetings, I decided
to drop all NCUC meetings on this schedule to host them one or two weeks
after. The same has happened with groups such as the ccNSO which has
dropped all meetings but one. In our stakeholder group I think we are only
sticking with the NCSG - Board meeting and the Members meeting.

Finally, I would like to state that while I do understand COVID-19 as a
serious issue. I dont necessarily agree with the way this virtual meeting
is being organized. It is not fair to push for parts of the community to
cut down on their interactions - whether online or onsite - and as I
mentioned before we tend to be the ones more affected by such decisions.
Additionally, the idea of hosting a virtual meeting and leave it for the
community leaders to organize within two weeks is definitely asking too
much from us - Stephanie, Joan and Myself are yet to have another call
today on schedule, staff is overworked and I truly fear that this
experiment is not truly embodying the Multi stakeholder spirit -  I just
hope we get to have a meeting in June and go back to doing the actual good
work.

As of now, while I value all the efforts being taken by staff and
community, i do not agree with the way this meeting is being organized or
how fast community is being forced to take decisions.



Best Regards,

-- 
*Bruna Martins dos Santos *

Skype ID: bruna.martinsantos
@boomartins
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