[APAC-Discuss] APRALO Report at ICANN 41 Singapore

[Charles Mok (gmail)]

*The following is an expanded report from me as APRALO Chair in the Wrap-up
meeting this morning at ICANN 41 Singapore. (Because of time I was only able
to give a brief verbal summary of the following in the meeting.)*

I will make a brief report for APRALO about our work in the last several
months as well as during this ICANN meeting.

We had an election held with voting conducted between May 11-19, 2011, and
the result that I (Charles Mok, of Internet Society Hong Kong) elected as
Chair, Holly Raiche (of Internet Society Australia) elected as Vice Chair,
and Internet Society Hong Kong (represented by Pavan Badhrani) elected as
Secretariat, with the term until Jun 30, 2013.  Our other Vice Chair remains
to be Fauod Bajwa (of Pakistan ICT Policy Monitor), with his term until Jun
30, 2012.

I am the third chair in one calendar year before my election, succeeding
Hong Xue, our last APRALO Chair, and certainly someone who leaves a big shoe
for me to fill.  It was unfortunate for APRALO that Hong cannot continue her
service as Chair for us, but we know she will continue to contribute greatly
to our community.

The biggest issues we face in our Asia, Australiasia and Pacific Islands
community are continuity, stability, outreach, and policy work. Currently we
have twenty-one ALS member organizations, in a region with more than seventy
countries/regions.  Some countries/regions in fact have more than one ALS
members in APRALO, such as India, Pakistan and Hong Kong, so we have a long
way to go.  We are continually challenged by our large and wide geography,
diverse language and cultural differences, and relatively little
participation from the Arabic world, Central Asia, etc.

In the past, under Hong's leadership, we developed a system dividing the
leadership duties of our two vice chairs into outreach and policy works.  It
was unfortunate that our two vice chairs cannot join our meeting this time,
even though it was held within our region.  Yet, it is clear that outreach
and policy works are closely related -- no good policy comments can be made
without wide and deep participation from our ALS members, hence we need good
inreach effort in addition to outreach.  It is always a worry on my mind
that we lack substantive inputs from ALS members for ICANN policy comments
we are to make, hence the responses may not be as representative of all
views as APRALO likes them to be.

I would also take this opportunity to report that, since the last ICANN
meeting in San Francisco in early 2011, APRALO responded in March to the
Draft Proposal for the Study of Issues Related to the Delegation of IDN
Variants TLDs.  We urged ICANN's recognition on the work done by the Asia
Pacific community on various related major Asian languages such as the
Arabic, Indic and Chinese languages.  We also urged ICANN to adopt the
bottom-up-developed IDN Variant policies, and to consult APRALO to identify
members for the case study team.

In the months preceding this ICANN meeting, we also made a budget proposal
to ICANN, requesting funding support for holding a much-needed face-to-face
general assembly, and other plans for outreach and promotion.
 Unfortunately, we did not receive any funding alloted to APRALO, as the
ICANN Finance Team explained that since this current ICANN meeting is held
in Asia (Singapore), they considered this already an opportunity for us to
have a regional summit.  However, judging by the number of ALS members of
APRALO who are present here, this was clearly not the case.  I have made
clear our strong comment of disapproval to the ICANN Finance team, and to
the ALAC community.

On the other hand, I am happy to report that the two new ALS applications
from our region have been approved by ALAC in this meeting, and they are
Internet Society India Kolkata Chapter (of India) and NetMission.Asia (of
Hong Kong).  In fact, supported by DotAsia Organization, over ten young
representatives of NetMission.Asia -- the youngest of age 14 -- are present
in this ICANN meeting and have joined our APRALO activities here and some of
the ALAC meetings.  Their number may have set a new record of the number of
attendees from one ALS in Asia.  Going forward, NetMission.Asia will report
back on its participation in ICANN in Hong Kong, elevating the level of
awareness.  On the other hand, APRALO will continue to encourage more youth
participation and volunteering.

Back on the topic of outreach and inreach, we made efforts to warm old ties
and build new ones at various regional events, in order to promote APRALO
and recruit new ALS members, for instance, in APRICOT-APAN 2011 held in Hong
Kong in February, where more than 1,500 people attended, and the Internet
Society Regional Workshop in April in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  We renewed ties
with ALS members from Taiwan, Pakistan, Pacific Islands, etc. and build
links to potential new ALS.

I would also like to report that our APRALO Showcase was held successful on
Monday afternoon here in Singapore.  It was unfortunate that at the very
last minute we were informed that ICANN scheduled a briefing on new gTLD at
the same time as our event, which has caused the attendance in the Showcase
to be less than my expectation.  However, all who attended agreed that it
was a great event, with keynotes from Rajnesh Singh (the first APRALO chair)
and Dr Peng-hwa Ang (well-recognized Internet leader in Singapore).  We also
have received attention from many remote participants over the audiocast.  I
would like to thank the Working Group members who have worked hard in the
last couple months putting this event together remotely, with participate
gratitude to ICANN staff and Pavan, who was my co-chair for the working
group.

Looking to the future, in order to strategically improve our outreach and
policy comment works, we will focus on driving volunteers participation,
raising APRALO and ICANN awareness, etc.  In fact, with the new gTLD
program,. we will face more attention as well as challenges and
opportunities.  We will start to do that in Hong Kong, regardless of the
support from ICANN.  We will encourage the newly-formed Internet Society
Singapore chapter to join as an ALS, and I will also propose to target
specific major Asian Internet economies, such as Malaysia, Philippines -- to
join.

Thank you for your attention and support.

Charles Mok
Chair
Internet Society Hong Kong