Hi Bill, > > I heard a story in Prague that the latter was actually a screwed up effort > to apply for the former. Seemed rather funny at the time but may be > apocryphal, would be curious to know… > > I guess that dotafrica from dotconnectafrica didn't have governments endorsement and probably a geographical gTLD it will be doomed. dotafrica is controversial topic since a long time.mistake or not , I hope that will end the polemic. It's easy to assert that the demand just wasn't there, but in the absence > of any effective outreach that might have affected thinking it'd hard to > know, so then it becomes a matter of adding layers of personal > interpretation about they don't need gTLDs, they have other things to do > with their money, etc etc. I can't see how that takes us very far. > > +1, > Leaving aside the kind of applicants we as civil society types might have > liked, there are a lot of big and even multinational companies now across > the developing world for whom even the full $185k and operating costs could > have been manageable and the business case for doing it would have been > comparable to what the Northern firms saw. Absent any real dialogue with > such potential applicants or assessment of what ICANN did and didn't do, we > won't really know what we're talking about. So rather than projecting our > respective viewpoints about the process generally onto this as purported > explanations, why not get an assessment done so we have a little more > datato go on. We asked for one in our board meeting (but not in writing), > and I believe GAC and ALAC did too. Would be nice to hear something > concrete from st > aff about next steps. > > yes for written request, ICANN board rarely answer directly our questions during the meetings, let's push for accountability :9 Rafik