Dear RALO leaders, the last conference call of the ALAC Finance and Budget (F&B) sub-committee was poorly attended and I realise that one of the reasons for this poor attendance is the confusion of members of the sub-committee not knowing if they are still members. We wish to have a well distributed committee that reflects the interests of all regions, with a timetable that is even tighter than last year: all requests for funding need to be received by ICANN Finance by 20th January 2012, which means that we need to make sure that RALOs get their requests to us by 10th January. I therefore think that a good dialogue with regions is important and there is no better dialogue than having individuals leading the regions also involved in the ALAC F&B sub-committee. The current membership of the F&B sub-committee is shown on: https://community.icann.org/x/n4XT Please check with your region if you could recommend some of your members to join the sub-committee. We are especially looking for volunteers with a good knowledge of the process (from last year's experience) or a good knowledge in budgeting & finance processes, for our future interactions with ICANN Finance. Please send all suggestions to staff@atlarge.icann.org I have asked your ALAC representatives to help with the process of identifying more volunteers. It is vital that all regions are well represented since they will also act as a liaison between RALO leadership and the F&B sub-committee. Happy holidays, Olivier -- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html