[Euro-board] Follow-up on Collaboration with CENTR

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

Dear colleagues,

earlier this year the follow-up to our signing of a MoU with RIPE
brought me to attend the RIPE meeting in Marseille. A recent action item
from our EURALO monthly calls noted:

>   *    Olivier Crepin-Leblond to explore collaboration with CENTR  with the goal to sign an MOU in Barcelona 2018
>

Earlier this year, I followed up with Peter van Roste, General Manager
of CENTR and forwarded him examples of MoUs that RALOs had signed with
their respective local Regional Internet Registry or Country Code
Regional Registry association. CENTR is the association of European
Country Code Top Level Domain Registries.
http://www.centr.org

CENTR members span the whole of Europe. https://centr.org/about/members.html
I shared Dev Anand Teelucksingh's excellent stakeholder tool with Mr.
van Roste ahead of a call this week and explained that EURALO's aim was
to have at least one At-Large Structure in every country covered by
EURALO's region. The Stakeholder tool is very useful to find out in
which countries does EURALO not have an ALS, but also how many Fellows
and NextGen have travelled to ICANN meetings from each of these countries.

On Thursday, Mr. van Roste, his legal counsel Polina Malaja and I had a
30 minute call to discuss the next steps toward a MoU.
Mr. van Roste was interested in the proposal of signing a MoU but as a
matter of policy CENTR does not sign MoU with any organisation that does
not already have some relationship with CENTR. He proposed that EURALO
signs up as an Observer member of CENTR. There are no fees to pay and
one can attend some of the meetings remotely, but it is a good first
step towards a MoU.

As a result, I am awaiting instructions from Mr. van Roste this week on
filing an application with CENTR for EURALO to become an Observer member
of CENTR. Once this is filed, Mr. van Roste does not see any problem
coming from existing members, but suggested that I attend the CENTR AGM
in Brussels on 10th October, to (1) support the application for Observer
and (2) propose CENTR members that EURALO signs a MoU with CENTR. For
your information, the current Board of CENTR has members that have
historically been supportive of EURALO.
https://centr.org/about/board-of-directors.html

I have therefore filed for funding to do a day trip to Brussels - costs
in the region of $500.

Mr. van Roste then sees no barrier in being able to sign a MoU in
Barcelona two weeks later. This would be based on the collaboration we
have with RIPE but most specifically at helping us finding local
organisations in countries where we have no ALSes which could qualify as
At-Large Structure. I have spoken to Heidi Ullrich and a potentially
suitable time for this signing could be the end of the EURALO AGM on
Wednesday afternoon.

Kindest regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
EURALO Chair