The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Good afternoon, everybody. Hi. We are very close to start this assembly of the IGF supporting. Our bylaws don't require any specific core room for the chair assembly. So we will start with the members that are in the room. But we will wait for 2 or 3 minutes unless some other committee members are arriving. So for a while, we will publish the agenda for the meeting. We will start very soon. Okay, everybody. We are starting. So please, can you ‑‑ can you make silence, please. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Okay. Let me introduce myself. I'm Raul Echeberria. I work for the International Society. We were waiting for you, by the way. I'm the chair of the executive committee of the IGFSA. Here around the table we have several executive committee members. Edmond Chang here. You can raise your hand? Avri Doria. Okay. So thank you very much for attending this meeting. T
he purpose of the meeting is to review what has been done by the foundation in the last year since the last IGF. It was when we held the last general assembly and to elect the members of the executive committee. We will talk more about that during the meeting. We published an agenda for this meeting, but we have real organized the agenda now because there was no order of the points that we had proposed before. So now we have the report of the 2016 activities before electing the new executive committee. That's what makes much more sense.
So the agenda is ‑‑ in fact, we have a Point 0 in the agenda of the adoption of the agenda itself. So I ask you to review the agenda. I will read the points and if there is any comment, I will appreciate.
I forget ‑‑ I forgot to mention something very important that here on my left is Marcus Kummer, very well-known person. Doesn't need too much presentation. He has acted the last two years as the secretary of the IGFSA. And kept Schumann as part of the agreement we have with the international society is providing the services of supporting this secretary of the association. Currently, the executive committee has to approve all the new members and it doesn't make too much sense. We are proposing that just with the registering as a member and pay the membership fees will be enough to be accepted as a member, but we will go through the proposal later in the meeting.
Point 4 is the chair of the activity of the committee. This is the requirement because IGFSA is incorporated under Swiss law in Geneva. There is legal requirement in every one. What that means, Marcus can explain later when we get to that point, but it means in general terms that the association is not only ‑‑ it takes off the responsibility from the executive committee members of what has been done in the past year.
Point 5 will be the election of the members of the executive committee. We already have a list of people that have put forward the names for the elections as candidates. We will speak about making the election when we get to the point.
Point number 6 is the annual approval budget for next year. It is a point recommendation by the executive committee.
And, finally, we have any other business. So any other recommendation for the agenda? Any change? Marilyn? Can you speak closer to the mic? You cannot move it?
>> (speaking)
>> I just have one clarification under AOB. Would it be helpful are it me to mention a topic I would like to raise under AOB?
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA AOB is for any other business. You can commission whatever you want.
>> MARILYN: So I don't need to tell you now?
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA No. Okay. So any other comment on the agenda, proposals? No? Okay. So we can proceed with .1 of the agenda that is approval of the record of the previous channel assembly. As usual, I will rely on the secretary Mr. Marcus Kummer for the details of this.
>> MARCUS KUMMER: Thank you, Raul. There is nothing to add. We sent the summary record of last year's general assembly which has been approved by the executive committee, but it is up to the general assembly to provide the general record and have not received any comments. I presume that the membership is okay with summary record of last year's general assembly.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Okay. Any question? It happened many ‑‑ much time ago. So I don't think we have too much for discussion. If there is no other question or comment, we will proceed to approve. All the members in the room who are in favor of approving the records of the last general assembly, raise your hand, please. Okay. Anybody against approving the records of the last general assembly? Thank you very much. Attentions. Okay. So it's been approved. Thank you very much.
So we move to Point 2 of the agenda that is the presentation of the approval of the report of activities. Financial statements. So 2016. You have this report in the list if you are subscribing to the IGFSA list. But I will go through it very quickly through the report. In 2016, the executive committee members of the IGFSA have been Vita Battia from AT&T, Marilyn Kate from MK, LLC, Edmond Chang from Dot Asia. I hope that I'm pronouncing it well. Thank you. The executive committee held six meetings over the course of the year. All physical meetings had remote participation available for the remote participants. And beside that, we have had also some other informal meetings that some of the members are taking advantage of some of us being together in different meetings.
And the executive committee is supported by a secretariat responsibility for day to day activities, preparing for meetings and other regular office requirements. Marcus Kummer is the secretary. We have two categories of members that agree on the channel assembly: Membership and individual memberships that pay $25 per year. And organizational members and annual membership of $100.
In 2016, 13 new individual member and two organizational members joined the association bringing up the total to 128 active members and 116 organizational members respectively. They come from 50 nations representing all the groups. The executive meeting is the least of the members that is organizational and individual members that join the association in 2016. In terms of embracing, the executive committee consists embracing a high priority. This is why we have been negated.
And since the inception of the foundation, we have raised almost $500,000 to be more precise, $492,677.32. While they're not the primary source of founding to fulfill the IGFSA mission, $654.14 were received as a membership dues and individual donations. I will add here at this point to please remember if you want to renew your membership and you have not done it yet, please take advantage of in this meeting for doing that. And in order to facilitate it, we accept also payments in cash with Kyle that is here to my right. The breakdown of the contribution received as of 21st November, 2016 are an amount in dollars $86,000 advanced year market for UNIGF transferred from 2015. And this is because you remembered that we make the contribution to the U.N. IBM trust fund and I will speak a little bit more about that in a few seconds. So we have all 39 ‑‑ oh, you see the numbers there. Almost $40,000 beginning in January 2016. The 654 that I already mentioned, 50,000 were contributed by international site. $57 by ICANN. $25,000 by ISITA. 5,000 from Fair Century folks and 25,000 from Amazon. The total incomes totalizing the end of this year was 21st of November is $198,035.63. I think that's how you pronounce that well. But is it is well worth taking the notes. Thank you.
The allocation of funds, the executive committee in consultation with the membership adjusted the formula for allocation of funds having agreed on the 2015 general assembly. Let me tell you why we did that. If you remember, for some reason and it is explained in the .1 in the table that in January UN in Dessa, they were not in eye position to receive money from us. They required legal advice to the legal team of U.N. It took a long time. We have a very positive change with the UN. We clarified situations.
Finally at the end of this year in able, we signed a new agreement that clarified all the problems. Basically the main concern of UN was that we would not be raising funds on behalf of UN. Clearly that's not our intention. And it was clarified in this memorandum of understanding between the two organizations and now everything is very clear. But so due to the fact that we were not making the contribution to UN and we had a lot of requirements from national and original IGFs, it didn't make sense to the executive committee to keep that huge amount of money hold while we were having requests for other activities.
And so we proposed to change that to the members and basically on the field to receive from the members that we just made this slight modification and we decided to take 40% from the funds for contributing to the UN's IGFSA fund and supporting analyze. Remaining percent was kept and had been decided before. 7% for our region activities and 8% for the contentious fund. So the situation as 28 of November, 2016 is the following according to the 40% that we allocated we have. The $89,000 or remaining for being transferred to UN in the IGS trust fund, 45% is the funds that are allocated in 2016 are $89,216.03. We still have some funds remaining. That's the $21,116.03.
You also see the funds from outreach activities IGFSA contingency is due to emphasize in the IGFSA contingency because there was a correction with regard to the first version of this report and the right amount of funds that we have at this moment on the contingency fund is $41,531.36. The original ‑‑ we had the original IGF initiatives we have supported ‑‑ I'm going very fast her ‑‑ but we have eight original IGFRCC that are the A46 an IGF, Asia and Pacific, original IGFs, central Asia IGF, and city and west Africa and IGF. 18 total. We provided $3500 to each of them. We also approved and implemented the support to 29 national IGFs and at least I will not read all the list. They were her ‑‑ it was already saving the list a couple of corrections and Nigeria is included. It hasn't been included in the first version of the report. There was a mistake with Bolivia that we had not provided funds to Bolivia and IGF. We included now Uganda. Uganda has the list of countries that we had supported in the brochure and the version in the brochure hasn't always been right. Our mistake when we passed the information to the report. But the number's okay. It's always been okay.
And the total amount of money that we have spent supporting national and original IGF is $68,500. The support for original and national IGFs included travel funding for 2016 IGF meeting for 4 coordinators to support sanctions for the IGF secretariat. They provided fellowships for the combined abilities. But the funding came specifically for a donor who wished to remain anonymous and was year marketed specifically for this purpose of funding from the Dynamic Coalition accessibility and disability. I think this is something new for the IGFSA that we have not done before that's beside allocating funds. In this case, what we did was just to make available our possibilities for managing the money that's donated to the organization within a specific purpose.
I think that we can do more of that in the future if there are new possibilities for doing that. Outreach and communication, the IGFSA secretariat and community has national and original IGF. It is high events, summit and committees. IGFSA held information luncheon during May. 40 people participated. Funds were used and are the promotional materials were distributed in all these events. IGFSA contingency the funds allocated under this category covered the daily operation of the IGFSA such as banking fees and other costs associated with running the IGFSA secretariat. While this is the formality, we have not spent money from the IGFSA contingency because those are things covered with the support of the Internet society. So we have 100% of the contingency fund.
What we find very useful. This year under the leadership of Avri Doria, we had negotiations for renewing the corporation agreement. Can you mention something?
>> AVRI DORIA: Avery speaking. We had administrative costs and administrative procedures and we have a contract with them that covers a certain number of areas. So this has been basically negotiated each year. This year when we negotiated it, we also negotiated that it seemed like it was time that we start thinking about the IGF support organization starting to support itself in these administrative activities as opposed to continuing to rely on ISOC for that. So what we have done, one of the changes in the contract this year in the MOU this year is that we will have a check point at halfway through the year to then start planning how we would evolve and not need that the following year though it is not necessarily agreed that we won't have the support next year. But that is the plan at the moment that we spend this year trying to become more independent in that respect as much as we've appreciated the help. It gets to a point where we need to find the our own self‑sufficiency for that. In terms of the MOU itself, it's basically the same as previous years though we did drop a couple of the items that we hadn't been using such as liability insurance costs and the filing costs for a corporation because obviously that's been done.
So I think that about covers it. It's very much the same agreement, but we are looking at trying to find a way to no longer need that particular kind of administrative support from ISOC, though it has been greatly appreciated.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much, AVRI. I think it is very important and those $4,000 will be very useful in having to transition IGF secretariat for 2018. So on this fund, we still grow with the contributions of 2017. There are no plans. We will discuss it later. But there are no plans yet to allocate money from this fund for the 2017 operations. Okay. I think that this is all from my side with regard to the presentation of the report of activities and numbers from 2016.
Now the floor is open for questions, comments, complaints. Please don't insult, at least publicly. You can do it by Twitter. Okay. So the floor is open. Nobody wants to speak? Okay. Okay. That's very good.
So if there are no comments or questions, I will put the proposal forward for approving the report. What's the formality? I should say something? So I will put for your consideration approval of the report and financial statements of 2016. So those members in the room of favor of approving it, please raise your hand. Okay. So members against approving the financial statements and report, please raise your hand. Nobody? And abstentions. Thank you very much for approving.
[APPLAUSE]
So coming back to the agenda is .3 the modification of the articles of association. I already explained briefly. I think that's Marcus can provide the more formal explanation.
>> MARCUS KUMMER: Thank you, Raul. The original articles of association provided for the executive committee members approving new members. Let us prove the other procedures and some what awkward and sometimes members had already paid their membership dues, but still had to approve to become new members. So we propose now making membership automatic upon payment of the membership dues and at the same time, we ask the new members to take a box that says that they approve and hear the objectives of the association that is mainly promote and support the IGF open stakeholder policy dialogue. And I checked with our lawyers and the language that we propose is up there on the screen that we replacing the old language which made it dependent on the approval of the executive committee saying that it's automatic upon payment of membership fees. And at the same time, we propose deleting that non‑payment of membership fees with me to lapse of membership because we found especially in developing countries, it's not always that easy to pay via PayPal whereas it is much easier to pay in cash at the annual assembly. So we don't want to make that restraint.
We are here to recruit new members. We don't want to lose members and such and we assume that they will pay whenever they have the opportunity. So it's not as tight as it was before. As I said, I checked with our lawyers and the IGFSA incorporated in Switzerland and I just received confirmation that post amendment would be in accordance with Swiss law. So I suggest then putting that up to approval for our membership that we approve the new proposed language and change the bylaws accordingly.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Okay. You? You?
>> OMAR: Hi. My name is Omar. I'm President of Technician which is a member of IGFSA, an organizational member. My question was: How was the executive committee approving members, the criteria, what did that include? Was it only the membership dues or was there anything else you were looking into and then approving based on that?
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA So far, we have approval by majority, but in the executive committee, but to be Frank, all approvals were by unity. We didn't reject any member. But since we have approval for all the requests, we're fulfilling our responsibility and we take a look at the list of people in order to see if there was something that called our attention, but it never happened.
>> Do you suggest if there are developing countries, the fee structure, I guess, is the same in developing countries. If there is some sort of thing or two to bring in some more members from the developing countries especially from the organizational members and if possible for the individual members, some discounts or something for the structure, very specifically for the organizational members, that would be great. And for the dues, it's difficult. You're right to make wire transfers and all people is not working in some developing countries including Afghanistan. But still for IGFSA's sustain act, it will be important to have to dues members pay their dues. I think for that if we can give them some time like three months after the expiration, that would be good. And after that if they don't pay or you don't receive it, then that would lead to a cancellation.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you. Please?
>> Thank you. I would just like to address the proposition. I note that the material distinction here is that there's a shift in how people joined IGFSA in terms of one you just pay your subs and automatically you become a member of the IGFSA as opposed to discretion with the executive committee. So that's a material distinction. There are all kinds of rationale that can be behind it, but it would look as if ‑‑ it would seem to be some form of control. Having said that, in terms of ‑‑ in terms of the concerns that have been raised in relation to members from countries that may not necessarily have access to some of the prominent or prevailing online payment methods, whatever these may be, I would suggest that the secretariat make a list of the countries that might have the challenges and potentially look at how this could be met one. I think you have already mentioned it.
Secondly, I would say that the membership fees are already affordable. They're not exorbitantly high. U.S. dollars and $25 U.S. for an individual member is affordable on any scale of things. And yes. In terms of discretionary censorship ‑‑ not censorship, but it would seem to me that the power would rest on the executive committee to choose whether or not they would accept somebody as a member. If that the case, I would suggest that alternatively what could potentially discussed would be some sort of guidelines limiting some of those consensus and some of those fees. The other thing I wanted to mention and perhaps I will bring that up later.
>> (inaudible)
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Like I said, speak in the mic.
>> As you know, we want to bring new people, new members and August materials in English. It is so hard for some people in countries to learn on this material. This is my idea to translate in English, in French or Arabic to respect the diversity of languages. Thank you so much.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you. Marcos ‑‑ Marilyn, would you like? Marilyn first.
>> MARILYN: Marilyn Kate speaking. I'm going to respond from an experience that aye had in setting up an NGO and being on the board. And also a couple of other organizations where their bylaws guide membership criteria and numerous trade associations. I think one of the things about our membership application is not that is not really a membership application. It is your name in e‑mail. One thing we can think about is including enough information that you are ‑‑ we can tell you're not a robot, so to speak. And have the definition that says, you know, here are the entities that are on the membership that are eligible.
And then it's really kind of quick check that the secretariat is able to do all the boxes are checked, the information is filled out, and we have not as Raul said, we have not ‑‑ we just tried to make sure that we knew it was a human being apply or it was a real organization. We were not in any way blocking anyone joining, but perhaps a slightly more defined membership form, which had a little more information which would not be made public would meet the suggestion you were making about guidelines. Something like that.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Mike.
>> MICHAEL UGIA: My name is Michael Ugia. I for one support the amendment. I think it makes a lot of sense. I also wanted to add two points. The first is it would be really good especially to alleviate the second point or the point that's being removed to alleviate any kind of members with that. I suggest we have an e‑mail reminder that our membership dues have expired or our yearly subscription has expired. Sorry if this falls on you, Kyle or if this falls on the executive committee. I know when I signed up in general, but I don't know what day it was necessarily approved and when I need to renew my subscription.
The second is speaking of recruitment period, I was actually recruited by Marcus at one of the NRI events and I think especially if these NRIs are being funded by the IGFSA, it's a great opportunity to also recruit at the event. I see it almost as kind of catalyzing on itself because yes. The dues are going to help the NRIs and we are putting that money back into the system so they can help others as well around the world. I definitely support this proposal and I hope it continues to expand.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA We are doing that. We send the reminders. So maybe we didn't send to you, but we have to check. You will pay double.
[Laughter]
I have Edmond and you. I want to close the list of speakers on this point. So anybody else is interested in speaking about this point? We have two speakers. Marcus will make some comments for trying to address some of the things. Please.
>> Edmond here. Just a quick response. I want to make sure that to clarify, we are actual ‑‑ the amendments are taking away from the executive committee, the need is to actually control or vet these new members. I think is that is important and I think the suggestion from Mark ‑‑ Michael. Sorry. It is very good. Again, I think making it more open. This is the idea of the amendment and not trying to create more control from the executive committee. I think ‑‑ and the reason for that is in the last couple years, we've realized that we never kick anybody out and there's no need for that additional administrative process. Rather than that, we want to open up the process of that more members can join more quickly and we won't need to know when the renewal time would be when you become a member.
>> Thank you, chair. As somebody who draws legislation contract agreements, the way the people worded it, it means the executive committee has the discretion here. "to become a member must be addressed to address the executive committee. They admit new members. The original is they admitted upon payment of membership due. Oh, my apologies. I got it wrong. Blame it on jet lag. Thank you, Edmond. And the of the thing I wanted to point at is I wanted to thank Marilyn for the clarification in terms of eligibility criteria distinguishing robots from actual persons. I haven't read the bylaws. I just wanted to ask whether there was some eligibility criteria woven into the bylaws or would this potentially come in through the guidelines? Thank you, chair. And that's it for me.
>> You shouldn't read too much into all this. It is essentially an attempt to simplify membership. What we have found is most members pay their membership dues in cash at the annual meeting or at one of NRIs. I was attending one of these meetings and it's proof that the people are interested in the IGF and the objectives of our association. To be formal, we make that ‑‑ you have to take the box that you adhere in the purpose of the association according to the bylaws to promote and support to global IGF as well as the national and international bylaws.
By being here, you show up and you prove that in person you support this. It is really a simplification of the procedure and we refrain from making membership expiring if you don't pay your membership dues. Pay it the next time and again, as to ‑‑ we had the lengthy discussion in the beginning what would be the appropriate fees and what we said then is $25 sounds reasonable. Also for someone from a developing country. If you're able to attend the annual meeting, maybe it's a few drinks less to pay for the membership team, but it is not unsurmountable.
[Laughter]
To cut a long story short, I hope you can approve this and move on. Thank you.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA One more thing. I think that's I will recommend to executive committee on, once they form it, to consider your proposal. I think that we can not approve that idea in this general assembly because we will have needed to have the proposal in advance. So I think as the executive committee, I will recommend to the executive committee to consider your idea of making this for some kind of countries and also our proposal about study specific cases of countries that are facing barriers for Spain or lines and membership fees.
Okay. Closing this. I will put this for your consideration. So those in favor ‑‑ I don't think we need to read it, but those that are in favor to the modification of having proposal in place, raise your hand. Anybody against? Against? We are keeping a good record of approval by anonymity. Any extensions? Thank you very much. So we can proceed to the next point of the agenda.
This is a strange thing we have to do according to Swiss laws. That's our Swiss representative will explain what this is about. Expert in Swiss.
>> It may be a translation issue. This charge is fairly literal translation from what is in 47 (foreign language) and that is basically that the general assembly gives the green light to the executive committee having fulfilled its function in due form and proper form and that there's no issue remaining that has not been resolved. So it is essentially approving of the activities and making sure there's no hanging issue between the general assembly and the executive committee.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Any question? If it is crystal clear for everybody. Okay. So please ‑‑ all of you in favor? Please. Anybody against? Good. Perfect.
So now we are coming to an interesting point. The election of the members of the executive committee. Let me explain what the situation is. When the association was formed, we elected nine people for forming the executive committee. And so the executive committee discussed how to rotate the members and we decided that three people would have a first term of one year, three of two years and other three years. We had a renovation, partial renovation of a few members that weren't reelected and they were Marilyn. Who else is in the report? It is Edmond and Marilyn Kate. And they were reelected. And this year the three members that agreed at that moment to leave the seats in the executive committee after the second year Avri Doria, sherry Miller and myself. We have another vacant because Batia from AT&T, he resigned from the executive committee to job responsibilities from his company. He said he could not fulfill the responsibilities of the executive committee. So we have four seats open in the executive committee. From those, Cheryl, AVRI and myself has expressed her intention to run for reelection. We opened a call for candidates for this election for filling the four seats.
So far, we have ‑‑ okay. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The administrative plan developing (foreign language) Avri Doria, Mark Well from Canada, Marcus Kummer has the executive committee as IGF secretariat. Now he's running for member of the executive committee. Karen McCabe from IEEE USA. Eduardo Santoyo. I'm sorry we misspelled your name in the ballot, but you can recognize your name there.
[Laughter]
We will make last call in case anybody else wants to put their name forward for the election. I will give 5 seconds for anybody who wants to raise their hand for saying me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. What we will do is the following. I will give you the opportunity to each of you ‑‑ first of all, who of the candidates in the room, can you raise your hand? 4?
>> Mark is there.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Mark is remotely. I have five candidates. I will give you the opportunity to speak no more than one minute, please. We have other two candidates that are not in the room, but if somebody knows to speak in their favor introducing them, you are welcome. So after that, we have those beautiful ballots that we have prepared. Don't pay attention to the three places. It was just in case somebody else wanted to run election. But it is not the case. And so we will distribute the ballots to the members. I think that we have to trust in the people. We have to trust you who are the members and who are not. And each of you will have the possibility to mark up to four names. Okay. We have the names. So you cannot vote if you are not members. We will catch you.
[Laughter]
>> (low voice)
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Yes. You will mark your names and you will bring your ballots here.
>> Ask them to come here to get the ballot.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA The opposite. You have to come here to get the ballot. So you have approximately 45 seconds for thinking and voting. And so Kyle and myself will be responsible of counting. Maybe if somebody else that is not running the election and wants to volunteer. We have a third member of the election committee. Because now we are committee. We are three.
[Laughter]
So please those of you that are members and are interested ‑‑ oh, sorry. First of all, the speeches. So, please we can start with you.
>> MARCUS KUMMER: My name is Marcus Kummer. I am running this time to be a member of the executive committee. My main note vacation is actually to facilitate the decision making as I was on all the calls, but my vote didn't count to reach a quorum. It should make it easier to reach a quorum. Was I in the time? Okay. Thanks.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much. Avri?
>> AVRI DORIA: I had waivered on whether I was going to stand again or not. The reason I decided to is one, I do want to see this transition through in terms of becoming more independent from the Internet society. And the second I really regretted that we never got a program going for actually ongoing contributions from small donors. It was something I wanted to work on, something I wanted to see done and I still want to see it done. So I want to try again.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Who is in the room? Eduardo?
>> EDUARDO SANTOYO: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Eduardo Santoyo. I come from Colombia. Many people don't know where is Colombia. I'm currently the manager for the ministry and the organization of Latin American and Caribbeans. I want participating in local in real level in the IGF discussions for almost five years. We are very active at trying to get more people involved in these discussions. And my intention is to serve this association in order to enhance their activities in the region and to help people from the Latin American region in this IGF discussion. That's my speech.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you. (foreign language) I pronounced it well?
>> (pronunciation) I am proud to recruit new members from around the world and from developing countries also and to bring also the diversity insides of our organization. Thank you so much.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you. So Marilyn, you want to speak in favor of Karen?
>> MARILYN: I'm not going to introduce Karen. Some people know Karen McCabe. She is the senior director of strategic marketing and product development at I triple E. IEEE is the world standard organization and has 350,000 members world wide, scientists, engineers and researchers and they are ‑‑ they are increasingly active in the Internet Governance space. I think sometimes that may not be as visible to some of you.
I see a member here, a key leader here, but they are doing extensive work particularly in the area of outreach where a key catalyst to the creation of the global Connect initiative, which is now endorsed by a very large number of companies and by organizations helping to advance the access for the underconnected and the unconnected. Karen conversation with me was that she hoped they are a global organization and that she felt that their focus could be on bringing in, drawing in awareness about the IGF particularly from the countries where there's not enough participation now and using also their networks to be able to reach the research scientists and engineers who are particularly interested.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much. I knowledge that's Mark. Are you online? Can you hear ‑‑ I think that's Mark. Are you online? Can you hear? Go ahead.
>> (no sound)
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much, Mark. Anybody interested in speaking on behalf of Cassy?
>> I think we need to remind people ‑‑
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA I say that in the beginning, but I will refresh that. Anybody interested on behalf of Crosse? No? So the remaining members of the IGFSA executive committee are Sooby from India, Marilyn Kate and Kate LLC, Edmond Chong from Asia and for last but not least, Simpson from AFITA. Those are the five remaining executive committee members. Okay? So we can close this part of the process. Please come to pick your ballot. 27 members voted. It is very high voting. People elected, I will not say you ho many for each. They are available here if you want to review it. People per serving in 2000 for three years starting right now are Avri Doria.
[APPLAUSE]
Marcus Kummer. Karen McCabe, who is not here. Eduardo Santoyo. Congratulations. Best wishes. Okay. So now I think we will continue. There are two ‑‑ okay. We have the next ‑‑ the next point is the approval of the annual budget. Sorry. I forgot to thank all the people who ran for the election and that is who expressed and decided to run for the executive committee. It's great that we have people to volunteer on this work. Be sure to come back next year because there will be a need for more people to ‑‑
>> (inaudible)
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Yeah. Okay. Next point in the agenda is the approval for the annual budget for 2017. Basically upon recommendation, by executive committee. The recommendation is very simple.
The former executive committee brought for your approval is the following. It is to allocate 35% of the incomes to the IGF trust fund. If you see that this is a change with regard to the amended budget of 2016, that was 40, 40%. We are proposing now 35%. We are proposing 40% for the support team national and original IGFs. 10% for supporting IGF secretariat in things that they need. We have, for example, funded trips of volunteers of the IGF secretariat to IGF is meetings or things that they need in a week or have time for going through the normal channels for approval.
So what we will ask the IGF secretariat is to be a bit more formal in the request they make to will IGFSA for things to be funded. 8% to the contingency fund and 7% for outreach and communication activities. Fortunately, they make 100%. I will repeat. 35% for the contributing to UN IGF trust fund. 10% for supporting the ‑‑ I forgot. Edmond had asked me to present together the two. 35% for the IGF frust fund and 10% for supporting IGF secretariat directly. 8% for contingency fund and 7% for communication and outreach activities. Any comment or question? No? Okay. So please for the approval of these, please raise your hand if you are in favor. Okay. Thank you. Against? Abstentions? Okay. It was approval. So the last point in our agenda is any other business. So any other business? Marilyn, please.
>> MARILYN: Thank you. I had two quick comments. One I just want to remind everybody that the NRIs are hosting their main session on day 2 and to remind all of you there will be 41 NRI's coordinators speaking. Now let me come to my second point. IGFSA actually exist because of the commitment that Raul and Issac contributed to help us stand up the legal structure and to make contributions and I can attest as having been there from the beginning what a fantastic chair he has been and the diligence and commitment that he has brought personally as well as the support that he has brought as a formal representative of ISOC. But I want to you recognize his personal commitment and leadership as well.
[APPLAUSE]
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much, Marilyn.
>> Second one what Marilyn has just said, I have known Raul for many years and he has been very, very patient to executive members when they were often and not necessarily on time on the calls. His leadership and dedication has helped us a lot. So I want to thank him as well and ask a question now since this election you have decided not to run again and we are without a chair starting the end of this meeting. So procedurally, how are we going to go forward for not to wait for a month or whatever? Can we do it as an executive ‑‑ new executive committee soon?
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA We have discussed this morning with some of the former executive committee members was that the new executive committee can have a brief meeting this week. I think Kyle can help to schedule the meeting. Maybe you can meet 5, 10 minutes and elect the new chair on the secretary if needed. Mostly Karen is not here.
>> Yeah. Karen is not here anyhow the whole week.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Oh.
>> So it will not ‑‑ yeah. And some of the other members as well. So Kyle, can you make ‑‑ make sure we come together this week and remote participation as much as we can.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Yes. So no any other business? Please.
>> Quite a few things. I'm very new and probably these are already there, but I wanted to know if they're not, then I suggest we discuss it at some point. With the membership, there's not much awareness created on local levels except people who are engaged in the IGF already who come here, they hear from other friends who are in fault in IGFSA. So, I would suggest if we can go to the regional levels, if we can do like membership committees on reasonable levels who can do two basic things.
Number 1, create awareness about IGFSA and number 2, help with collecting the membership dues on reasonable levels. It's gonna be sometimes difficult and normally people in the region meet often and they can collect dues there and send it to the headquarters.
Number 2 was the voting rights. If not in this general assembly meeting, probably for the next one if we can discuss some organizations would be interested to see what the benefits are. Right? The membership benefits. If we can enlist that and voting rights would be one or rights based on individual members in the organizational members. And number 3 would be committees that could support the executive committee with the work related to the IGFSA's business, that would be another suggestion. So these three basic suggestions.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA Thank you very much. Any other business? Okay. So we will adjourn the meetings. Before doing that, I want to thank all the people that have renewed their individual memberships and all the organizations that have contributed to IGFSA this year. I think it's now that we clarify the relationship between IGFSA and this. We will not be distracted and we will be more active in raising funds. So I hope the organization will continue well and the basis are set for the work of this foundation. What the mission is very important. We have to continue contributing with that. Personally, I want to thank the people that have supported me for being in this executive committee for the last two years and I will stay around. I already paid my renewal.
[Laughter]
[APPLAUSE]
meeting is adjourned.