I hope that all of you also looked, as I did, at who is involved in Afnic.

Sebastien Bachollet is a member of the AFNIC Board.  I know that some of you do not know him as well as I do, so I will share, but please, treat this as a confidential comment. Also, Matthew is of course, affiliated with AFNIC.  

So, I have a question about whether it is possible that this is something different and perhaps an overreaction that does not include facts about who we are makes it look like we would agree to require language diversity in candidates for office. 

ICANN working language is English.  Now, of course, we want to encourage various categories of diversity, but if we start making speaking other languages a requirement to stand for election and accept the vast amount of work that is required of the officers, we will start looking like the ISPCP in terms of numbers, or like the NPOC in terms of effectiveness. 

Sebastien worked for an association in Paris, when I helped to found the BC.  After a year of not having any dues, the decision was taken to establish dues. ICC volunteered [NOT any staff you know] to provide some of the payment processing and they did a very very and very bad job on that,as they were not set up to deal with such small amounts of money. And they especially did not effectively collect the dues from their members, as things got confusing and companies started saying: wait, I pay ICC membership dues of $XXXXXX, and so why did you send me an invoice for $1,000 US?

The agreement of the then officers [I WAS NOT ONE] was to recruit Sebastien, who was then a member, and agreed to resign, and to do certain administrative work for the new constituency.  They agreed to pay the association that Sebastien worked for for a part time management of the administrative functions. In the end, the three Councilors who were also the officers -- we had a very slim jim organization back then -- did not pay what they [we] clearly owed to the association he worked for because the uncollected dues amounted to almost $80,000. ICC walked away from the support that they had volunteered to provide. 

Some of us then had to become involved and get the BC on solvent ground. It took a few years and was very challenging.  Sebastien left the association he worked for and wanted to join as a small business entrapreneur. Again, I had nothing to do with this decision, but he was rejected, as he had a business idea but not a business. 

Things became very challenging for him for some years within ICANN and he finally developed and marketed the idea of .paris, in a much earlier introduction of new gTLDs. He developed a very strong  proposal

and had a good strategy.  After making the proposal public, another company swooped in and started lobbying ICANN, with a good deal of $ backing, and dissing his proposal. 

He eventually won election to the ICANN board via the ALAC, and that is probably when most of you really became aware of him.  I am not sure how much standing that this suggestion will have, as when staff do the analysis, they will say: posted, only three comments were received. 

IF we submit a fact based submission, I am okay, but I do not agree with part of what you proposed, and I think that we have to be careful not to damage the situation that we enjoy with the ICANN staff of needing support for our outreach activities.

Now, again, why are we hinting that if you speak French, you are qualified to be elected as an officer? I thought that we want our officers to be able to do real work, and carry a huge workload.

Now, that might include being able to chat in the UN languages, but it is not a requirement of ICANN. English is the working language at ICANN. 

Should we do more to have documents translated? We do when we go to a particular country when we know that it is worthwhile -- e.g. spanish when we are in LATAM; French when in Switzerland, or France; Chinese when in China. 

I think that we need to be careful not to overreact and read too much into a single comment that essentially is not particularly well documented?