Dear Community: Since the Lisbon ICANN Meeting is almost upon us, I thought I would recap events and provide links for all of you. Firstly, everything about the AFRALO meetings - agendas, preparatory documents, etc - can be found from the www.afralo.org site. The quick link is to https://st.icann.org/afralo/index.cgi?icann_lisbon_meetings. Note that all AFRALO meetings - indeed all At-Large meetings - allow for remote participation. The details are on the page for each meeting at the bottom. If you wish to participate, but there is not a freephone number for your country, we can arrange for the service to call you - send an email to staff@alac.icann.org and tell us which date and time you would like to be called, and what numbers (one primary, one backup) to use. The meeting will also nominate those willing to serve for the two elected ALAC seats. In order to allow all African ALSes to participate in the vote, I anticipate that the meeting will decide to use our online election tool to hold the election over a few days period. Note that there will be a signing ceremony in front of the entire ICANN meeting on Thursday, at the public forum, where all ALSes present will physically sign the MoU alongside Paul Twomey the President and CEO of ICANN and in front of the entire ICANN Board and community present. The European groups will likely be signing their MoU at the same time, and the Asia-Pacific ALS community will announce that their MoU is complete. Those ALSes who are not present will be able to digitally sign, or adhere, to the MoU via a procedure as determined in the MoU text itself. All ALSes will be able to vote for ALAC and other regional leadership positions, whether they are in Lisbon or not. These two points are important: the process is deliberately designed to include every ALS and respect all points of view and the remote participation possibilities help to ensure that this is the case. Note that there is a nominations page for you to nominate (either self nominate or nominate others) for the two ALAC seats: it is at: https://st.icann.org/afralo/index.cgi?nominations_2007. Further information is available at https://st.icann.org/afralo/index.cgi? nominations_for_alac. -- Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart Director, At-Large ICANN PO Box 32160 London N4 2XY United Kingdom Main Tel: +44 (20) 8800-1011] USA Tel: +1 (202) 657-5460 Fax: +44 (20) 7681-3135 mobile: +44 (7774) 932798 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart