All, I have been abroad for the last few days, and I have been trying for a while to find the time to draw some personal conclusions from the last days of discussions, before we actually get to the vote. I am somewhat concerned by how difficult it is for many people on the list to work together. I have been knowing most of the people in this group for many years now, and I know that, while they might differ in background, attitudes and views of the world, they are all very capable and brilliant. It is known that election time is never a good time to build consensus, but I really hope that, over time, we can build better reciprocal understanding, and remove this sense of "we against them" which makes it difficult to advance things. I was the one first proposing that we could adopt appointments by consensus, as other Regions did. I really believed that we could have reached agreement, but it turned out that there was little desire to do so, possibly as a consequence of the fact that different people have different concepts of diversity and balance, so what seemed balanced to me did not seem so to others. There's nothing bad in going to votes to solve these difference, but I urge everyone not to see these elections, however they go, in terms of "someone wins and someone loses". Personally, I have been working voluntarily for years to build this thing, viewing it as a huge online space for dialogue that could create connections among organizations so diverse - in many terms, such as internal culture, geography, objectives etc - that value and new brilliant ideas could arise from this melting pot. We live in a society where all cultures come in touch the one with the other, and learning to live together with new cultures is one of the top problems for many European countries. I really expect that we will enroll several more organizations in the future; this will require effort both in reaching out to them and in accommodating their views, but this effort will be rewarded by the incredible energy and progress that stems from networks when they grow. This is why, by the way, I want to continue being involved in the EURALO process, and I decided to put forward my name for the Board. It would be a pity if this became a small playground for a few known faces that have been involved in ICANN since its beginnings; we have to be open and inclusive and encourage many new faces to come on board. I also found many constructive messages on the list, and I really hope that, past the elections, we can start working together on actual policy objectives. I'm looking forward to that moment! Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------