by Fahd A. Batayneh – Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator, Middle East
I spent the period of December 10-14, 2013 in Tunisia to attend three different events. On my way back to Amman, I stopped in Cairo for one night to have a reconvene with Baher Esmat and discuss our plans for FY14; mainly the first 6 months. The reconvene took place on December 15 between 9.30 AM – 5.30 PM in the Maadi area in Cairo. In summary, we discussed the following issues:
- The Middle East DNS Forum – Finalizing the first draft agenda was the main focus of our discussions. Other topics discussed include our target ICANN staff and board members to attend, our target audience, funding, the local host and sponsors, the venue, and the communication with our partners from the other I* organizations; mainly ISOC. The agenda has been circulated to the MESWG and others for feedback.
- 2014 Travel Plan – We felt that such a plan would give us a sense of how our traveling looks like, how to engage and to assist us in creating a balance between traveling and engaging with the local community and between doing our office work and spending time with our families.
- The Arab IGF Process – The Arab IGF MAG (AMAG) has been dissolved, and a call has been circulated to have a new AMAG. Since ICANN is a strategic partner in the Arab IGF process, we look forward to ICANN’s further engagement with the new AMAG.
- ICANN’s engagement in Turkey – Discuss some of the issues that we plan on working on during 2014.
- Brief discussions on the Middle East Strategy, the Task Force on Arabic IDNs, the upcoming Task Force on Capacity Building Activities, and the current discussions on the “Train-the-Trainer” model. An update on these can be found here.
- Capacity building activities targeted for H2 FY14 and the various events we are targeting to have these CB events take place around.
The reconvene was very productive as we were able to cover many topics in a short period of time. Looking forward to our next reconvene.
