Notes on Yokohama Retreat

The meeting was chaired by Dr Shigeki Goto of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

Seminar Tour

It was noted that we had had previous seminar tours which would now be run jointly with APNIC (Anne Lord). The organising officer was to remain Y J Park who had done a lot of work on seminar tours in the previous year although it was recognised that she wished to be relieved of this duty eventually.

Azumi and Peter Dengate Thrush had volunteered as speakers. APNIC would be organising a training team. Further speakers added were Wu Kuo, Choon, Hiro Hota and Pindar Wong.

Fares were paid by APTLD/APNIC, with local expenditure hosted by the local organising committee.

A list of contact points in countries was started as follows:

• China - Hualin Qian
• Taiwan - Kenny Huang and Wu Kuo Wei
• Laos, Myanama and Thailand - Kamchana
• Japan - Marayama and JP Secretariat
• Korea - BK Kim
• Cambodia - Norbet
• New Zealand - Sue Leader
• Pacific - Stafford Guest
• Philippines - Joel Disini

A schedule of speaking tours and conferences was prepared as follows:

• Cambodia - April 3-4
• Philippines
• Fiji - shifted to New Zealand (September)
• China - November
• Indonesia - August 21-23
• Nepal
• Laos
• Malaysia
• India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka - December
• UAE - December
• Vietnam/Cambodia - November
• Korea - November
• Japan - December
• Australia - October 24-26

(Note A complete list can be obtained from Y J Park.)

Peter and Azumi were delegated to attend the Indonesia meeting, August 21-23. APTIA are doing local organising.

Thai, Laos, Cambodia - There was to be a Friday seminar in Bangkok October 20-21.

Malaysia - It was felt that the calendar was already very busy and it was noted that the Apricot meeting was to be held next year in Kuala Lumpur which should provide contact with that territory.

Secretariat

Kamchana Kanchanasut had been appointed as the CCTLD secretariat assisted by Sirrin and Abishack Chulya (Deputy Executive Director). Assistance was also being provided by Anne Lord of APNIC.

Kamchana had taken up the secretariat of the ccTLD constituency. It was agreed that APTLD needed to participate in the ICANN process, and make its contribution to the process in ICANN. As for an AP secretariat, although an attempt had been made to establish it, it had not succeeded. Individual organisations were to continue with their separate secretaries for the future.

It was recognised that there was no joint secretariat any longer. A one page coordinated website at APSEC may still exist to provide links to the individual organisations.

Translation

Professor Chon spoke about translation which was being co-ordinated by Abishack. Asian languages were relatively straightforward, and it should be possible to get others to do European languages. For China, Walter Wui was suggested, for Korea, KRNic (B K Kim) and for Japan, Yumi, JPNic and Hotta were nominated.

ICANN at Large Membership

Japan had signed up 15,000 members. Some of this was "top down", by which the government had organised a large sign-up. Some of it was also "bottom up", through a JPNic taskforce (talks, regular meetings with good press coverage).

Professor Chon posed the questions: "how do we overcome ethnocentrism" and "how to come up with a good candidate". There was considerable discussion as to whether we wanted to play the game of signing up large numbers of members. If so, ultimately only China would win. Perhaps the default position was to get China to match all that Japan had achieved.

PSO

There was considerable discussion about the PSO. Asia/Pacific was taking little part in the PSO or the ASO. In the end, there was no agreement to take any action to deal with this.

Apricot 2000

There was to be a first Executive Committee meeting tomorrow. Someone was required to run Apricot. It had USD$150,000 in funds from the last two conferences, and needed a legal entity to hold the money, hire the staff and assist in running the conferences. It was important to keep the cost of establishing this entity as low as possible, and it was suggested that an APNIC company in the Seychelles be used as the vehicle. Apricot Limited could then fund other activities in the Asia Pacific region.

Apricot Limited would have a single shareholder, of a bearer share. It was more or less concerned with providing training. Pindar Wong was to write a report with a recommendation.

APDN

There was general consensus that it was more important to establish a constituency of ccTLDs at present before expanding to provide for the interests of other constituencies in the Asia Pacific region. Other than the non-commercial constituency which had been active (especially by Y J Park), there was not a lot of activity yet in relation to those other constituencies.

Multi-Lingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC)

The organising committee of MINC had met, and had formed rules and an election committee. It had been joined by or formed an alliance with the Chinese domain name consortium and would be reporting further at the workshop the following day.

Next Meeting of the AP* Retreat

This is to be 20, 21 October with a half day on AP* matters, half day on Apricot and half day on other issues at AIT Bangkok.

It is agreed that it is important that we have some discipline, order and process before such meetings, so that real progress can be maintained at these meetings.