Dear Roberto, thank you for your comment regarding CROPP. Comments inline: On 13/09/2016 14:52, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hi all.
Unfortunately I am in a meeting in the US and will be unable to attend the call.
One of the items on the agenda is CROPP, and I would like to follow up on the discussion at our last teleconference sharing my opinion with you.
I understand the rationale behind Oksana’s proposal to use CROPP funding for attendance to the next EURALO GA, but I have to disagree.
I believe that, even if we could bend the rules to use the CROPP funding for bringing members to an ICANN meeting, it would be a waste of the scarce resources dedicated to outreach. There are other funding mechanisms for participation in ICANN meetings.
I have checked with the CROPP Review Team what the rule is regarding using CROPP money to bring people to an ICANN meeting, bearing in mind that the next ICANN meeting in Europe will be in Copenhagen early next year. The answer is that it is indeed possible to use CROPP to fund someone to come to an ICANN meeting, if a RALO uses it for an ICANN regional meeting. So that would be the case if we were to have our General Assembly in Copenhagen. In fact, this has already been done by LACRALO last year, where it was an exception. This year, it is possible as standard. However, I agree with you that this program is called CROPP for "Outreach Pilot Programme", and sending someone to an ICANN meeting does not sound like outreach at all. Plus a CROPP allocation would not fund a participant for the whole length of the ICANN meeting.
Outreach is one of the activities where we are lacking, for a number of reasons, and we should be putting even more effort to widen EURALO’s footprint and to get new members rather than use the money for the benefit of those who are already members.
Last but not least, I have already expressed my dismay on the fact that if we have a funded travel people can spare a whole week for travelling to an ICANN meeting, but they cannot make up the time (2 to 4 hours) for joining the General Assembly by teleconference.
Cheers,
Roberto
Thanks for your comments. Kindest regards, Olivier