<html><body><span style="font-family:Verdana; color:#000000; font-size:10pt;"><div>Stephane, et. al.,</div><div><br></div><div>The date for a decision to make the trip to Senegal is quickly arriving. I am up in the air about it.</div><div><br></div><div>To help make me make the decision, I wonder if there are other Council members who are equally unsure at this moment? Based on the technical support for the Council specifically and the meetings in general, it should easily be doable to participate from Saturday thru Friday at Council and related meetings. </div><div><br></div><div>I have talked to a few folks (not on the Council) about the possibility of creating a U.S. East Coast hub (in DC or NY) for overall, remote participation in the meeting and still engender a sense of coming together. The time shift would not be egregious (4 hours).</div><div><br></div><div>Would that be of interest to any fellow Councillors? </div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div><br></div><div>John Berard<br></div></span></body></html>