Dear all,

I have to say that I am personally going to sign it, as I am part of ICANN fellows. I am not sure that EURALO should sign this petition, but should have position if and what should be cut.

I do not know how many of You knows that first fellow jus become member of ICANN board, on ICANN conference in Copenhagen most of discussions, questions at open meetings with ICANN board were created by ICANN fellows. On my first ICANN conference in Nairobi, there were lot of criticisms among experienced ICANN participants. So new energy comes from fellows. ALAC, EURALO and GNSO were trying to find new members among fellows, where are they (or we) going to find supporters now?

On the other hand I am not surprised that this cut has happened. On the conference in Johannesburg I made a question to ICANN staff (do not remember name but responsible person for creating budget plan for 2017.), how many income comes from endusers. Nobody answered, after a session one of ICANN registrar owner told me “ Zero”, it is the same answer like all registrars are talking around the world, whole income to registries comes from registrars. Until this opinion is valid and main, situation will be the same. And nobody did not request to get the answer, although the first statement You can hear on ICANN meeting is that everybody has right to make question and has to get the answer.

ALAC and RALOs are established and works in according with ICANN policies, until internet users do not have independent organization, the situation will be the same. So, if ICANN will be the organization of registries and registrars, fellows and endusers will never have decent position there in spite of fact that one fellow become the member of ICANN board. ICANN will be corporation, just like “C” stand in the shortage. So before I register some domain name, I am going to calculate a lot if I really need it as registrars do not respect me at all. And I am not surprise if domain names business continue to slow down.

Kind regards

Nenad

From: EURO-Discuss [mailto:euro-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Stéphane Van Gelder - Milathan
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 22:15
To: Andrei Kolesnikov; Discussion for At-Large Europe; Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond
Subject: Re: [EURO-Discuss] Should EURALO sign a petition? Should you?

Completely agree with Andrei. I oppose the signing of a petition to oppose cuts. I would add to his reasons the fact that the Board Chair and the CEO have both laid down extremely well articulated arguments for why budget cuts are needed. I would worry that a EURALO response through a petition would not only look political, it would look immature.

If we have strong arguments as to why some cuts should not happen, let’s produce them through the usual ICANN discussion channels open to us.

Thanks,

Stéphane

On 21 Feb 2018, at 21:24, Andrei Kolesnikov <andrei@rol.ru> wrote:

I'm against signing any petition on change.org, because it sounds political. If community is against the cut, this must be articulated with facts, numbers and names. I don't like personnel cost increase, but this is another issue. --andrei

2018-02-21 20:06 GMT+03:00 Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com>:

Dear colleagues,

on yesterday's EURALO monthly call, the following Action Item was recorded.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond Olivier to follow up on the EURALO mailing list on the suggestion from Oksana for EURALO support the petition against reduction of the ICANN fellowship as well as to write an EURALO statement against the CROP elimination.

As you know, the ICANN FY19 budget is undergoing to reduction. This will mean that some programmes are frozen, whilst others are actually reduced. The current draft of the program is showing drastic cuts in community engagement and policy. The Fellowship is being slashed, and so is the NextGen program. The Community Regional Outreach Pilot Program (CROP) which was confirmed into the main budget as it was seen as being so helpful, is being cancelled altogether. It is a terrible state of affairs, as it appears that ICANN has targeted community initiatives for outreach and engagement to a much greater extent that other programmes and the cuts, as a percentage of the budget for outreach and engagement initiatives are way larger than for other programmes.

You might has seen a petition out there, entitled "Stop the ICANN Budget Cuts and Save the Fellowship Program!"
On last night's EURALO call, Oksana Prykhodko asked whether EURALO could be inclined to sign this petition:
https://www.change.org/p/icann-stop-the-icann-budget-cuts-and-save-the-fellowship-program

The signing of a petition is highly unusual for a RALO. I can recall several occurrences of a RALO releasing its own Statement. I can also recall EURALO supporting EuroDIG as a partner - and this translates to the EURALO Chair (previously Wolf Ludwig and now yours truly) being active in the organisation of EuroDIG. If my memory serves me right, the only time EURALO has signed a Petition, might be the signature for support of NetMundial outcomes. Perhaps can Wolf help with other potential occurences?

At the end of the day, there are no rules on whether EURALO may or may not sign this petition. So the decision is in your hands, the EURALO members.

Should EURALO sign the petition?
Should your ALS sign the petition?

Kindest regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
EURALO Chair

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Andrey Kolesnikov

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