Team/Steve + Chris,

Heard from Chantelle that it looks like ICANN’s decision regarding our proposed Outreach pre-meetings event on June 25th will not be approved – or not in time for us to fully prepare and launch the kind of program we had in mind.  After reviewing the program and budget with Jimson, here are my thoughts/recommendations:

1.    I think we should try to go forward with a BC pre-program anyway, outside of the venue if necessary.  My feeling is that a breakfast simply won’t get us the kind of visibility we would want, and that having an event once the shortened ICANN meeting is already going would limit our ability to bring new members to the event, mentor them and make the connection necessary to provide them with a good ICANN experience.  Our progress with membership from the region shows we can have an impact, and South Africa will be our best opportunity this year to make a big splash.

2.    The good news is that changes of venue of ICANN meetings and other factors have left us with more than expected outreach budget as we reach the end of this fiscal year.  We have already identified a number of potential events for the coming year – including some early in FY18 in Africa and Latin America.  With these factors in mind, I would propose therefore that we increase the budget for our Joburg program to enable us to do what we had hoped, then roll unspent funds from 2017 into the coming year.  This plus our expected allocation for the coming year will enable us to do much more to build on recent Asia and Africa work and build outreach in Latin America in the run-up to two LAC area ICANN meetings (Puerto Rico and South America).

3.    The AfICTA team can help us identify a new venue as close as possible to the meeting venue (or potentially even in it if space permits).  Additional costs for the event would then be:

a.    Venue costs

b.    Costs for lunch

c.     Speaker costs – cost of one additional night of hotel + per diem for participating BC speakers if they were otherwise planning to arrive 6/25

4.    We will want to perhaps reconsider the size of the event – I’d recommend considering a slightly smaller event with fewer speakers from ICANN, as they may not be available.  We will still want to highlight our BC leaders and African voices.  I would propose we do this once we have spoken as an Outreach Committee and once we have had a chance to check with possible venues and proposed speakers to confirm their interest/availability.

5.    We would need to confirm additional costs for the event, but we believe we could keep them to $5k, which considering the number of BC resource people we would have at our disposal would still be fairly efficient – and would fall well within our budget (and leave significant funds available for rollover).

We had hoped for both a quicker and a more positive response, but I think this will still give us the opportunity to put together a quality program.  I’d propose we set an Outreach Team call for early next week to discuss as time is growing short, as well as putting other potentials for the next 6 months in the calendar.

Jimson, to your suggestion, if we can talk offline about what info we’d need from the AfICTA side, perhaps we can ask them to help us get that info and wrap them into a future discussion when we’ve made some decisions on the BC side.  Make sense?

Appreciate everyone’s thoughts and happy to discuss on today’s call if time permits.  Chantelle, could you help us with a doodle poll for the outreach team for early next week?  Many thanks!

AAM