Hi all. We have an excellent opportunity to be exposed to the local musical culture when attending the ICANN meeting in Marrakesh. In Essaouira - close to Marrakesh - the Gnawa Festival (see http://www.essaouira.nu/calendar_festival_gnaoua.htm) will take place from 20 to 23 June. The ICANN meeting will start officially on the 24 June - but some activities are likely to start earlier. Aziz Hilali, whom we all know, told me that it would be possible to organise day trips from Marrakesh to Essaouira to allow people to go there for the festival. The reason why we strongly recommend day trips from Marrakesh is twofold: people who want to attend only one day can do so without changing hotel and, last but not least, it will be extremely difficult to get a hotel in Essaouira during the festival. As a matter of fact, having had myself difficulties in finding accommodation in Essaouira off-season I can well believe that for these hot dates the place will be fully booked already now, three months in advance. Anyway, long story short, I have prepared a Doodle poll and ask you to fill in your preferred dates should you be willing and able to join this initiative. Based on the response, busses could be organised for the popular dates. We need to have a first idea about whether there is enough interest - if this is the case, we can go to the next step: Aziz will announce this option when presenting ICANN 65 later this week and we can start making concrete plans, including scheduling the arrival date accordingly. Of course, please feel free to forward the Doodle poll url https://doodle.com/poll/f4cq8vwnu56uzws9 to your other communities and stakeholder groups. If anybody is not comfortable to put their names in the Doodle page - where all participants to the poll can read them - please feel free to email me directly mentioning the possible dates of interest. Best regards, Roberto