Dear Community Members,

Happy New Year to all of you. 

We would like to draw your attention once again that we are looking for suggestions to improve CONFER Tools or to find a better way to ensure remote participation in the consensus making process.

Thanks to Lu Heng for your comments.


Sincerely,

Sumon, Bertrand, Ching-Heng
APNIC Policy SIG Chairs



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Sumon Ahmed Sabir <sasabir@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 7:21 PM
Subject: Use of Confer in APNIC Policy SIG Meeting
To: <sig-policy@apnic.net>



Dear Community Members,

We have been using CONFER (https://confer.apnic.net/) in the Policy SIG sessions to gauge consensus primarily from remote participants but also 
onsite. From our perspective it is a helpful tool to gauge the  “temperature” of the participants in the room as well as those who have joined remotely, if it’s being used rationally. This tool allows participation in the PDP by those who cannot afford or have time to attend the meeting physically.

In the past and at the most recent meeting, we received some concerns from few community members about using CONFER as a tool for gauging consensus and we would like to explore this further.

As part of the PDP it is always preferred to encourage bottom-up 
participation from all. At this moment, we don't have another option in place to get opinions from remote participants other than the CONFER tool.

We are seeking comments from the community to improve the CONFER tool or suggestions of any other similar tools or other means of gauging consensus from remote participants.

Your constructive feedback will really help us to improve the bottom-up policy development process.


Sincerely,

Sumon, Bertrand, Ching-Heng
APNIC Policy SIG Chairs