IGF 2017 - Day 2 - Room XXVII - IGFSA Annual General Assembly

>> Live transcription of the meeting.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: As Chair of the Executive Committee, I would like to welcome old and new members and extend a special welcome to those who made a financial contribution to the Association.

We have shared with you a draft agenda, displayed now on the screen. Are there any comments, suggestions? This does not seem to be the case. I take it then that we can approve the agenda.

As regards time management, I suggest reshuffling the agenda slightly and start with the election of the Executive Committee. Now, we have two sitting members who are standing for re-election and one of them has a conflicting commitment and will need to leave before 2 pm. Let’s therefore start with this agenda item. We have another candidate for an open slot on the Executive Committee who is also an incoming IGFSA member. He is on the way from the airport and in his absence I understand that someone  would also like to say a few words on his behalf  to present the candidature.  You have a statement you would like to read out. And please state your name.

>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. I'm NiilminiRuben. I previously worked for the US Congress where I worked closely with the State Department. And I'm happy to read his statement of interest from Manu Bhardwaj who is now the Vice President at MasterCard Center for inclusive Growth. He is standing for the IGFSA Executive Committee open seat.

Reading the statement on Manu’s behalf:

I'm asking for your support for my election to the IGSFA Executive Committee for the open seat. I regret that I am delayed, due to travel challenges, including upon my arrival in Geneva.  I am a long standing supporter of IGFSA’s purpose, from my years as a diplomat at the US State Department, before moving to the business sector and financial services, at MasterCard's Center for Innovation. I was privileged to practice directly in the IGF actively the private sector and the civil society and the technical community. I fully support IGSFA's mission and want to contribute to significant improvement in memberships and syncing new and broadened sources of funding.

The mission of IGSFA is critical to support the IGF. Ideally, we will see a significant increase in the members in 2018.

And if all of this pledge to approve two new members as IGF, we can see it tripling membership in just one. I'm committed to raising the profile and the visibility of the IGFSA. And to be more actively engaged to contribute to achieve the IGFSA mission so we can continue to make vital contribution to supporting IGF itself.

Particularly important in my view and I'm very well aware of the critical interdependency of seeking the local policy aspirational changes to ensure the metastable democracy. But also to change policy ‑‑ I believe between IGF itself and engagement with themselves is a unique and critical platform through increasing contribution of memberships must impact even further. I would welcome your support to my nomination and support my election to IGFSA executive committee. I'm happy to respond to questions from IGFSA members later.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much for that. We have to members of the Executive Committee whose term is up and who are standing for re-election: Tarek Kamel and Jimson Olufuye. Both will say a few words to present their candidature. Tarek first:

TAREK KAMEL: Thank you very much. I've been delighted to serve on the executive committee of the IGFSA. I see supporting the IGF, but more importantly, the national and regional IGFs as a vital part of our mission. I am very happy about the process.It introduces newcomers to the spirit of the multi‑stakeholder cooperation and the multistakeholder model on a global level. I think the mentoring that the IGFSA is doing is something that will be recognized for a long time. I want to mention the work that Anja is doing in this direction for supporting her since it is really a handholding process for many new players as we were handheld one day.

I would like to continue to contribute to this process in support of the multistakeholder model.

So, once again, I'm happy to put my name forward. And I hope that I would get the support of the General Assembly to be, again a member and serve at the Executive Committee for the next couple of years, thank you very much.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much Tarek. Now,  over to you, Jimson.

>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Thank you, very, very much. Distinguished chair, members of the executive committee, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jimson Olufuye.   I have the privilege of being the chair of the private sector led membership of the African ICT Alliance. I'm also the CEO for Kontemporary Consulting - we build data centers and also mitigate information security issues among other things. I'm happy to be a member of the Executive Committee of IGFSA. I have the privilege of being also a past member of the CSTD Working Group on Improvements to the IGF. I'd be happy to see this sustained. It has broadened capacity across to all.

 It makes me very happy that the dream is sustained.  Putting forward my name, hoping that you support me for election. Let us keep the momentum going forward. Thank you very much.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much, Jimson. So we have three candidates for three open slots, but for good order and good form, I think I have to ask, is there any other candidate who is interested in standing for election? And in order to stand, you have to be a member and, also, we have a little bit of a gray zone in our Articles of Association.

You may recall, last year, we changed the Articles of Association. Originally, it said if you don't pay your annual membership dues, you get expelled automatically. That's not really our objective. Our objective is to grow our membership. We simplified the procedure you are automatically admitted as a member upon payment of your membership dues and you are expected to pay your annual membership dues every year. But we don't have any specification now to say what happens if you don't pay. It doesn't say specifically that you don't have the right to vote.

We have had this discussion and it's our general understanding that in order to vote, you should be a member in good standing and that would mean, also, you pay your annual membership fee. If you're interested in standing, only do so if you have paid your membership due. And the same goes to voting. We can check, should it be a question of one vote or two. Whether all of the votes are in good form.

But we know that you're all honorable people and expect that you would abstain from voting if you're in arrears of paying your membership due, and we hope that all of you paid. And many of you came to our booth just to pay physically in cash because sometimes the online payment can be complex or difficult or rejected due to an algorithm PayPal has to prevent fraud and bona fide payments can get rejected. There are additional complexities in Switzerland for a transfer for PayPal. Having said all of that, I assume that you are all people of good faith and have fulfilled your obligations. Anybody else willing to stand?

>> Vint Cerf: How do I know if I am a paid up member?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: We can check. Yes, and a question, please?

>> Can you speak into the microphone? Because otherwise, we don't have you on the microphone. Thank you.

>> PARTICIPANT: I know better, thank you. What is the question?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: He didn't know if he was a member in good standing. And the answer was, we can check.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: It can be negligence, oversight. It's a small amount, but it can be bothersome to run after to make sure you pay it. Anybody willing to stand? I count to two, one, two, three, we can approve all three candidates by acclimation?

>> Yes.

[ Applause ]

>> MARKUS KUMMER: We have a committee of nine members and the incumbents have been reelected. I didn't expect otherwise. And we have a ninth member who, hopefully, may join us before the meeting ends. ‑‑

>> MARILYN CADE: Manu has alerted me that he is arriving in about 15 minutes.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: So the opportunity to meet our new executive committee member. We very much appreciate it. We're very happy to have him onboard.

So then, let’s move to all of the agenda items we have to go through. The agenda is on the screen. The next slide will be approval of the part of the 2016 general assembly. It has been on our website as a draft for some time. It needs to be approved by the General Assembly. The Executive Committee approved the draft and agreed to put it forward to the approval for the General Assembly. Is there any discussion? Anybody wish to have discussion on the record on last year's trend of assembly? I can't see any hand up. And I then, take it that this is not the case.

 And can I also take it, then, that we approve the summary record of last year's General Assembly? I see nodding in the room. So I take it that this record has been approved. And we have done with Agenda item 3. That brings us to the discussion that will be the adoption of the contents of the report and financial statement. And I would like to ask can you pull it up on the screen? And then, we can walk you through it.

 I have, also, sent out an email. You find it on the IGFSA website. It is up in the reports’ section. It is there on the screen available to read from this distance. Is it possible to increase the font size? In any case, it goes through the structures of the association and refers the General Assembly, that we held, General Assembly in Guadalajara. You make it bigger?

 And it says General Assembly approved the budget allocation. It goes on to explain the change in the Articles of Association regarding the membership that I have mentioned before regarding nonpayment of membership dues. And it goes on, can you scroll down, to the election of the IGFSA Executive Committee. Eduardo and myself were elected new members of the executive committee. And then, further down, here's the composition of the executive committee as it was last year.

 And it adds that Subi Chaturverdi resigned in the middle of the year. It goes on, can you keep scrolling down to show the meetings that we held? And then, we have the new individual members that we accepted. 12 new individual members and one organizational member .

And then, going through the activities, it gives a picture of the fundraising we had done last year. The funds received:  USD 50,000 from NRO,USD 50,000 from ICANN, USD 2,500 from Amazon, actually pledged but not payed to date. We talked to Amazon's representatives. And that will be done.

And we received USD 670 in membership dues that gives us a total of USD 103,170. This is clearly not enough, and we have to recognize that we fell short of our expectation. And an effort needs to be done to bring in more funds.

This brings us to the budget allocation of funds. These are temporary figures. We get the consolidated financial statement in early 2018. So these are the balance, USD 47,000 at the end of 2016 or first of January 2017.  And then, we had the contributions and the contingency fund. This gave us disposable funds of USD 209,000.

 Scrolling down to the next page. Last year, the General Assembly adjusted the formulation of funds that have been agreed for dispensing for the previous year. The General Assembly decided to allocate 35% of all the funds to the UN IGF Trust Fund and 40% to the NRIs. We recognized the growing demand of the increased number of NRIs. Can you scroll down to the actual expenses to show our expenses, yeah, that's fine. And this is the money we spent. And it shows that the in terms of figures, we allocated somewhat less to the UN and we gave more than we had said we would to the NRIs. Total expenses were USD 163,000, so 48% went to the NRIs and to the UN, 28.7% of the total expenses of 163,748.

This means, as of now, we have disposable reserves of little over  USD 45,000. And we still have the contingency funds. That means, we have more than that in our bank account.

Regarding our contribution to the UN Trust Fund, we do ‑‑ you may remember we had some discussions. Initially, there were issues about whether or not the UN was in a position to accept IGFSA contributions. That was sorted out last  with an exchange of letters between IGFSA and the UN. Now, IGFSA is a recognized donor to the UN Trust Fund.

 In total IGFSA has transferred to the UN  USD 260,000. And then, as we said already, we heard from the statements of our old and incoming members of the executive committee that we have recognized the importance, the growing importance of NRIs and giving them stable support as the number of NRIs from developing countries is growing.   We supported  10 regional and sub-regional and 33 national Initiatives with a total amount of USD 102,500. The list of the NRIs we funded is on the following page. And the list is, also, on the slide. We have a booth here at the IGF and I encourage you all to pass by. You can pay your membership dues if you have not yet done so and use the IGFSA flyer to encourage friends to join our Association.

And the very last passage in our annual report refers to outreach and communications. We conduct informal NRI engagement events at the ICANN meetings, and our thanks go to the ICANN team to make it possible to support, give us meeting rooms and serving breakfast. We held an outreach meeting at ICANN58 in Copenhagen in March of this year and that was well attended. We held similar meetings at ICANN 59 in Johennesburg and at ICANN 60 in Abu Dhabi.

And I would like to invite you to comment. Are there questions or comments? Or approval or disapproval?

>> ANDREA SAKS: I want to ask something.

>> Yes, I can see, Andrea.

>> ANDREA SAKS: I want to ask if the group or you or what the procedure would be to have new classification. Last year, through an anonymous donor, you got some money so that some of the persons with disabilities could attend. I would like to see a placeholder for an accessibility fund that people could contribute to that would be dedicated for that.

Because there's a lot of problems in finding not only here we have (?) With the captioning. Or that person with disabilities do not have the funding. I would like to a placeholder for that so that members know they can do that if they wish. So I just wanted to make note of that and let the group decide if it's possible.

And if it's the right time to do it. And thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. I don't see any objection. We would just have to give some thought on how best to implement the suggestion. If I understand it right, you think about a budget line which will be open for contribution for accessibility issues. I think this will be very important as we did last year when we had this anonymous contribution.

And I don't see any problem. I think it's more a question of how best to do it.

>> MARILYN CADE:  I think, in general, I'm not raising an objection, just a question, please, to the chair to explore the implications of our ‑‑ I'm sure we can do it. But I think we also because we do have supporting and accounting responsibilities, I personally understand that there have been  anonymous donors: I'm personally uncomfortable with the anonymous donations that the board doesn't know who the donor is. I don't think they have to be made public to everyone. But I would ask you to check if there are tax implications or reporting we would need to add into our submitted reports due to our incorporation status.

 But, again, not raising objection, just a question to check a few boxes.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Yes, we'll check with our lawyers what the requirements are.

>> PARTICIPANT: Yeah, on that, having a representative, maybe you the anonymous ‑‑ what if it turned out to be drug money or something like that. We wouldn't want the organization to appear to be associated in an inappropriate party. And sorry to be so blunt, Marilyn, I think that's the point she was making and I would submit that's important.

>> MARILYN CADE: I'm sorry, Markus, I'm saying there was an incident in an international organization in which I'm very active when they didn't realize they were accepting somebody's contribution from a company, from an entity that was on the sanctions list.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Depends on the sanction list. For Switzerland, UN sanctions, that will be relevant. If it's on a UN sanctions list, obviously ‑‑ that's why I said whose sanctions list. These are valid points, but also, understand you would be comfortable if the secretariat knew who it was but it would not be made public.

>> MARILYN CADE: It's Marilyn speaking. I would be comfortable if the board knew, it didn't need to be made public.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: We can sort out the details.

>> AVRI DORIA: Just to clarify, we're looking for a name withheld, not an anonymous donation kind of situation?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. That's a very elegant explanation. Yes. Tarek Kamel has to go. He has an urgent commitment. Yes. Thank you. Good luck. Are there other comments? And maybe it's, actually, tightly linked. The next agenda item, which is the budget allocation for next year. And there, given  the current situation, we are very reluctant to come forward with any percentage to go for that.

Because, also, we don't know what yet we're going to have in terms of income. And there is one ‑‑ if you recall our budget, our disposable reserves right now are USD 45,000. And we have a request from the IGF Secretariat to make an in kind contribution as a fellowship ‑‑ form of a fellowship for a vacancy that will arise under UN rules.

It sounds a bit complex. But currently, the person in the Secretariat that serves as the NRI Focal Point is on a consultant contract. She's reached the end of the contract and is in need for a break before she can be issued another contract.

And it is the hope of the Secretariat to give her a permanent contract after six months period is over. We have been asked whether we'd be willing to consider giving her a fellowship to fill that gap. We have been talking to UN; this would not be a stealth operation, but UN DESA would be fully aware of the fellowship and it will be open as a contribution. The idea that the IGFSA makes an in kind contribution in form of a fellowship for the IGF Secretariat is aligned with the objectives of the Association. And the officer in question has been instrumental in forging the NRI network. She's been a very diligent officer.

Our Articles of Association foresee the possibility of supporting the IGF Secretariat. But we don't know in terms of percentage how much that will be of the 2018 budget. It will eat all the disposable reserves we currently have, that is USD 45,000. And one contribution we have already approved is for the Trinidad&Tobago IGF, so there isn’t much left. In other words, we really have to do some serious fund raising. And we look forward to Manu joining us shortly here in this room and contributing there.

 But so my ask to the General Assembly is to approve this suggested way forward, that we don't go down in rigid percentage figures for this or for that purpose, but really focus fully on the NRIs. At this point, we cannot give percentage figures because it's in the clouds, we don't know how much income we will have. Are there comments? Yes, Marilyn?

>> MARILYN CADE: Markus, thank you for recognizing me, and I'm going to surprise a couple of people by asking ‑‑ instead of me giving the endorsement of Anya, I'm going to ask, perhaps, Omar who in working with Anya in launching the Afghan IGF had particular challenges and the tremendous work that Anya did to help to bring remote speakers, fill in, et cetera, all working remotely. And maybe we could keep it short, a minute and a half each, but I think it would be good for some of you to know how much work she does.

>> OMAR ANSARI: Thank you so much, Marilyn. The first IGF of Afghanistan, with the support from the IGFSA business, and ICANN and Facebook and through other local resources, as well as the Afghan Regulatory Authority in Kabul. The event was our first experience of doing an IGF at a national level. We had about 200 participants from all walks of life. We were supported by IGFSA through funding for the events. But also, by providing numbers of speakers, Markus was there connected with us, as well as Anja, we had several ICANN speakers as well, remotely and also ISOC speakers. We really had a great experience. And the best thing we were able to then connect with these international activities more successfully ‑‑ the time after the IGF Afghanistan there were about 19 applications for the ICANN program and that was the largest for ICANN 60.  In addition, the Afghanistan government is very actively engaging in the IGF now.

Previously, the announcements about how people in Afghanistan can get involved with this we wouldn't see a lot of response. But through this engagement that IGF Afghanistan, we had to really make an impact on, you know, how people perceived it, their role as members of a digital economy, a digital world.

My other colleagues ‑‑ IGF Afghanistan is here, the ‑‑ and a board member, must be here around, we all work together as a team strongly supported by Marilyn was physically in Afghanistan for the three days. And this was her first trip to Afghanistan this year. In 2018, that's the second for us, very important event. And we would like to invite all of our international friends and collaborators to give us a hand, once again, and help us do an even more successful meeting.

Other people were discouraging us in our eyes that it's really hard to do a three days' event as your first event and run parallel sessions, which is ‑‑ we took the challenge and we were so successful doing participation active, as well, from the support of the IGF secretariat connecting us to the WebEx. There were multiple people from across the world connected with us.

So colleagues from IGF very much look forward to working with you on IGF Afghanistan 2018. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for this testimonial. And congratulations on your meeting. I participated only remotely, but I could see that there was a very vibrant meeting well attended. Yes, please.

>>PARTICIPANT: Good afternoon supporting the continuation or the funding of Anya's post. I just want to certify that I've been working in the African (?) And as I've been getting full support from the IGF Secretariat, especially Anya since joining, really, the ‑‑ I support that she be funded and serve as long as she's needed. Finally, I'd like to indicate that we have been getting the support of IGFSA since its inception. At the African regional level.

And also, at the level because you have some IGF, like West Africa, Central Africa, North Africa and so on. The national IGFs, also, are getting support. And most of the IGFs are running thanks to IGFSA because we know that some of them, the meetings are organized from IGFA, and really taking the funding of that national ID. Thank you, IGFSA, and we support you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Okay.

>>OKSANA PRYKHODKO: Thank you, from Ukraine, thank you for providing this opportunity. We initiated this year a youth IGF as a pre‑event o ourIGF Ukraine. And not only the financial side, from IGFSA, but first of all, help and advice from Anja's side. Anja provided us remote participation. She participated and Marilyn participated. Unfortunately, I have to say that we have some problems with this Initiative because of some challenges, but still, Ukraine IGF benefitted from IGFSA support.  

We are working through challenges. They are doing everything to avoid any contradiction. And just today, I participated in the session organized. But did not provide me a floor because I am old. Yes, unfortunately, I am old. My young colleague tried to participate remotely, but she also did not receive recognition. That is why, again, I will ask for help and advice and I propose to organize maybe workshop for new initiatives.

Because, you don't want to have substitution in Ukraine. You have to find the real substitution. And you would like to ask everybody to help us in solving this problem. Thank you very much.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. We only support national or regional IGFs that have been validated by the IGF Secretariat and are listed on the Secretariat website. We are agnostic, we don't judge here, we just rely on the checklist the Secretariat goes through. Thank you for your contribution and I take it you support our approach.

>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you very much, I'm Mary from Nigeria. And I want to say thank you to IGFSA for supporting us for the two years running receiving support. And for that we'll use it to organize of the IGF. We are bonded with the youth and IGF. We do it ‑‑ they're there joining, as well. And this year, we have a training for law enforcement. And we were supported, not only the IGFSA, but also the Secretariat.

Speaking remotely, apparently she tried to  to speak and we had a challenge. But we're able to record what she sent. It also supported African IGF. And most times, we use the support to bring our focal points from countries within West Africa to attend the IGF. It's been very, very helpful. It's been very, very helpful. She has the experience, she's been doing fantastic work. She's been supporting ‑‑

I would support that she been kept (?) That will happen. So thank you IGFSA.

>> ANJU MANGAL: I'm Anju, and I represent the Pacific IGF. It was quite successful. And I would like to thank IGFSA for the funding. Anya, I do ‑‑ I would like to also echo the sentiment of others. It was instrumental. And also, she was able to bring in  information about funding. And also, able to link us to a few of the donors and she was good in responding to queries. We are working on the next ‑‑ sorry IGF, and I'd like to acknowledge support from our donors. And also, we would like to continue this and, hopefully, get more support in terms of organizing the next IGF which will be linked to the Asia‑Pacific IGF. Thank you to IGFSA and Markus and Marilyn. We were able to do a lot of things in terms of Pacific IGF. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Do I take it there is, in general, approval of this way forward and obviously, if you want to be more specific, how much we give. And we hopefully will be able to give as much next year to the NRIs as we're giving this year and give this in kind support to the secretariat. No we come to the next agenda item: discharge of the Executive Committee. This is a term, which is translated from the French. I think it sounds like he wants to get rid of us or has a dangerous disease. But neither is the case. It basically means approve of the activities and say we've done an okay job and you don't need to get rid of us.

The wording can be misleading. But we don't have a contagious disease, and we don't want you to get rid of us. All we ask you is to approve of our activities and ask us to continue to do so. Legally speaking, it is important under Swiss law that the Association says we have looked at the work carried out by the Executive Committee. And we are okay with the work. Do we need to vote on this? Or do we need a discussion on this anybody would like to ‑‑ not as formal as we are in US proceedings that we ask someone else to pass a motion. We don't need do that. We can take silence for agreement.

And no, we don't have silence.

>>VINT CERF: Mr. Chairman, I want to point out that taking silence for agreement means that if everyone is asleep, they must agree with everything. Sounds like a bad practice to me. I will put on the table a proposal that we, in fact, adopt and endorse the Executive Committee's efforts for the year.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. Yes?

>> MARILYN CADE: = I will second it.

>> We've ‑‑

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I'm not sure Marilyn is entitled to do that. You're a member of the Executive Committee.

>> Sorry.

>> Ask a member of the IGFSA.

>> PARTICIPANT: May I second?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. So I take it, then, all the other members will support this motion. And we have concluded this agenda item.  

[ Applause ]

Thank you for that. Is there anything on any other business? Yes, please?

>> AVRI DORIA: Now that you've discharged us, it occurs to me that in a sense, all of us on the executive committee as fundraisers have not done very well. And, in fact, we could have been discharged in the other sense of the word if that was a criteria. I look around this room and we have to do more. And one of the things we have to do. And I don't know how to ask for money for anything. And it's a surprise for an executive committee. But that's what I was told when I was first talking ‑‑ is there any way to get more going in terms of fund raising that is really just the executive committee's role?

I mean, yes, we've all given ourselves USD 25 --is it our goal to fund raise? Or is there some way to enlist others of you that may have the fundraising gene but not one deal with executive committee nonsense? And therefore, you can put yourself forward for executive committee to sort of get involved in, perhaps, doing? And is it a reasonable thing for us to do? And is it a possible thing?

And I wanted to put that on the table. Because as I look at year‑by‑year and we're not meeting our original goals, we're not even meeting our secondary goals, it's ‑‑ if we don't start fund raising and we just rely on the two organizations and our members, which is great. And more members, which Martin said we're going to get a bunch more members. But still, that does not give us a significant amount of capital to be able to help both the ‑‑

The idea of doing sort of crowd funding, many small contributions also make a big contribution. We had talks with folks on Facebook, the idea would be to have a Facebook comparing the way Facebook campaigns they raised a significant amount of money that way. And also, young people care about the Internet. I don't think it's impossible as we said in the executive committee, like the expertise. The executive committee. But that did not really take up live up to its name. So we could maybe have a fund raising committee with members of the association who have these skills in their DNA. Or have the contact. It's not just the big money we need. We would also need this crowd funding idea and maybe some of the young people have been involved in the crowd funding and knowing how to go about.

This is something, we don't need to come to closure today, but this is a good discussion to have. I think you wanted to say something.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: So, yeah, I actually have the sense as Avri. A question, is there a terms of reference for executive members or committee members? That's one. Is there, like, an outward strategy we can look at?

>> VINT CERF: Well, of course, a strategy doesn't necessarily translate into action unless you actually have an implementation plan. That's an important point. Let me take this little flyer here and suggest to you, I'm reading this as an executive at Google. And I think I would be looking for more substance about what the NRIs are contributing to the Internet landscape.

And so, it would help a lot ‑‑ I know this is intended to be short. And the picture on the back is pretty persuasive when you see all of the NRIs that are taking place. But I think it would help a lot if there were a little bit more substance in here about why those turned out to be important. And that would help a company say we're a multinational company. We offer many of the places where the national and regional IGFs take place helping us understand, helping me be able to show something to other executives would be very useful.

I must say, there's one other thing, which is truly funny. On the page which reads in large font, the bodies of the association and then, there's a list of people's names. And I find it mildly amusing those are the bodies that we talk about in the association. Was that intentional?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: The general assembly ‑‑

>> VINT CERF:  I understand, but the bold types says the body of the association and it has a list of people's names. And my first reaction is, are they still alive? What happened to them? I'm sorry. I have a very bizarre sense of humor.

>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you, I'm going to respond to ‑‑ when we set the association up, we had ‑‑ I don't think we really ‑‑ we were kind of working groups. Never really evolved into big committees. And I did outreach and communication and Cheryl Miller from Verizon did fund raising. One problem was that we didn't, actually, create process, a strategy or a structure, but we also had those tasks separated.

 We do outreach and awareness. And that, we do have a plan for and we're pretty successful at that. I'm going to make a comment. We have an agreement that we are going to substantially reform this two‑pager. But we didn't do it before because we were going to have a new ‑‑ new executive committee members, et cetera.

 But there, you see, larger publication that the secretariat that Anja prepared that you can pick up at the ‑‑ NRI booth. And finally, Anja and I have been working on the stories of the NRI event, which will ‑‑ and I will send you, actually ‑‑ Dustin with the ICANN WIKI did a little prototype for us at the last ICANN meeting with five or six kind of case stories about half page each that's still not the marketing material we need. But here's what they're doing, here's what you're doing, and here's what's in it for you to support them.

So we'd love to have more input from you as we start on the communications materials. What's clear is those communications materials had been more designed for awareness than they had been to support fund raising.

 To me, having done fund raising and having managed to gain funding for IGF-USA over many years, I know we have to customize this. And we also ‑‑ many entities: they want a letter, not an attachment.

 MARKUS KUMMER:  And I was going to suggest ‑‑ make a contribution in kind one of your communication guys from your company to help us with that. Just a suggestion.

>> VINT CERF:  Well, I can certainly offer you a set of what might be persuasive in your materials.  

>> The first question, is there (?) With the contributors? For example, the individual contributors, how much are they contributing? And maybe helping ‑‑ maybe we could work out a little more for the offering, the communication department for communication materials and stuff.

>>PARTICIPANT:I would invest a point of crowd funding ‑‑ doing a very successful crowd funding, which is (?) And I think what really interested me to become a member of IGFSA is that people (audio cutting in and out).

 Fundamental value, which is the spatial diversity of inclusion. So you won't get a bigger space or won't have ‑‑ it's not commercial in that sense. It's more about contributing to supporting each other. Supporting each member.

 I think that the act of crowd funding for the community ‑‑ (?) The organizations being in a position of support. The capacity. (Audio fading in and out).

>> ANDREA SAKS: I said I'd be happy to organize the accessibility and the group is to create such a task. And that would certainly raise awareness because everybody knows ‑‑ and I would also ambience. (?) A lot of people out there support this group if they felt they were being supported. I'm happy to be involved in that aspect if that's something (?) Thank you.

>>PARTICIPANT: I'll take the statement coherently and put it on the list so we can revisit the conversation. Get people to sort of volunteer to be active and see what comes out at that point. Tell me what to do quite competently when I was speaking incoherently. So, you know, I'll do that just to keep it ‑‑ just to keep it going since we're obviously not resolving the whole issue at this point.

>> MARILYN: If I may suggest that perhaps Manu can work with us on outreach on funding for larger companies.   I'm sure he would be interested, but I think, also, and I'm probably not going to volunteer to do that, but I would volunteer to do is to make sure that as we update the communications and awareness materials that we are beginning to reflect all of the work and input we may end up with fund raising package and member and awareness because we can do awareness and membership at various other places.

So we keep the work kind over flowing, but like an H.

>> MARKUS KUMMER:Thank you. Yes, I think that's clearly the way forward. It's a good discussion to have, but we don’t have enough time to come to conclusion at this stage. But we do have offers of people to volunteer. Let’s involve the membership and not just keep it to the Executive Committee. And also is this discussion on our membership list would, also, I think be positive effect of having more of a committee building effect that we work together.

Is there any other item anybody would like to bring up under any other business? It does not seem to be the case. So with that, I thank you. We had a good show up on our General Assembly, I think many more people than last year. So thank you for that. And thank you for your confidence. And I look forward to future cooperation and see you in the Internet and the next meeting wherever that is. There's still two days left. So thank you.

[ Applause ]

We also have to thank Kyle. Now we move to Asia and Hong Kong as dotAsia is taking over from ISOC.