[Icann-see] Possible limited funding opportunity for SEEDIG/EuroDIG

[Sorina Teleanu]

Dear all,

The IGF Secretariat has just informed us that they might be able to fund four (4) people to attend the SEEDIG and EuroDIG meetings. This would mean the UN would make the travel arrangements and would provide for a DSA to  cover the accommodation and meals in Sofia.

Given the short time left until the meetings, and the UN rules and the formalities that need to be taken care of (both by the UN and participants), the IGF is kindly asking us to give them the name of four potential participants as soon as possible (ideally by tomorrow, Wednesday COB, Geneva time). Any delay would negatively affect the possibility for funding.

Because of the short time frame, we are not in the position to launch an open call for applications and run a selection process for the four participants. Although this is unfortunate and not the ideal situation, we think we should take advantage of this opportunity and try to find the best possible solution given the circumstances.

We, in the executive committee, have discussed about this and our proposal is the following:
- identify the four possibly IGF-funded participants among those who have contributed to the SEEDIG preparations (activity on the mailing list, contribution to preparing the programme, participation in virtual meetings).

We have gone through the archive of the mailing list and the summaries of our virtual meetings, and we have a list of five people that could be considered as "the most active members of the list" (outside the executive committee and the BG team): Naser Bislimi, Aleksandar Icokaev, Narine Khachatryan, Valentina Pavel and Oksana Prykhodko (in alphabetical order). As Valentina seems to be the only one who at this point has some partial funding already from other sources, our proposal is to suggest the following four names to the IGF Secretariat: Naser, Aleksandar, Oksana and Narine.

We would therefore like to kindly ask you to please let us know whether you agree with the proposed approach.
We will take silence as agreement and, unless we receive any strong and motivated objection by tomorrow noon, CET, we will forward these four names to the IGF Secretariat. If the funding is confirmed, the UN would then contact the four participants to start the procedures.

Please note that, if the funding is confirmed, the four participants will have to actively participate in SEEDIG and EuroDIG and they will be asked to assume at least the roles of remote moderators, and, if needed, rapporteurs for the various sessions. The UN might also ask for some sort of post-meeting reports.

Thank you all and we hope you will find this approach acceptable.

Best,

Sorina