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<div>You all should know what I sent to Richard.
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<div style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 2:48 PM<br/>
<b>From:</b> "Mike Hemp" <mikehamp1971@mail.com><br/>
<b>To:</b> "Richard Merdinger" <rmerdinger@godaddy.com><br/>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [UA-discuss] Acceptance of nomination for UASG Chair</div>
<div name="quoted-content">Hello Richard<br/>
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Your email only proved my points of my earlier email correct. You and "your friends" have no respect for election process which clearly demanded nomination email to be sent on info@uasg.tech not on mailing list. Even you have no respect for election process, you are required to accept the nomination after 28th Feb, but you seem to be in haste. I guess you must have approved the election process as Vice Chair.<br/>
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It is disappointing my friend, that you ignored the advise of of a man with 40+ years of experience. You are not as old as I am but you are still an Old Man. I expected some decency from you. If you have faded memory to not to follow the election process, I do not attribute to you for this fault, old age can do that on you.<br/>
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Your acceptance of candidature as Chair after 4 years of Vice Chair not only reflect that how much power hungry you are. it would have been graceful if you left it for young generation with new ideas. People will appreciate this approach from the people like us.<br/>
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You email "I am enthusiastic about working with UASG" reads nice but far from truth. If you can let all of us only 10 contribution in last 4 years which can be attributed to you alone, I will vote for you. Public source of information is UASG.TECH website or google and I see no contribution attributed to you. Yes, I read many articles on behalf of godaddy with you name.<br/>
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Edmon has serious COI as per ICANN policy. He has got UASG business while he was holding the Vice Chair Position and nominated his friend Richard who approved business to him. Its like ; you help me I help you.<br/>
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I have raised the concern to appropriate ICANN authorities. Here is the link for everyone <a href="https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/coi-2015-04-29-es" target="_blank">https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/coi-2015-04-29-es</a><br/>
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Your point 1 to 6 starts with "Continue to work" tells us that you are going to continue whats going on and nothing new. This is loud and clear that we should not expect anything exceptional from you.<br/>
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Your statement on uasg.tech “It’s imperative that all registrants have equal opportunity and this Universal Acceptance initiative is important for choice and diversity on the Internet. GoDaddy is fully behind this initiative." whereas you have told me yourself that GoDaddy is not interested in this at this point of time. So it proves that you have false claims. I found this statement from <a href="https://uasg.tech/people/" target="_blank">https://uasg.tech/people/</a><br/>
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Since you have accepted your nomination bypassing the election guidelines, give us chance to know you better by sharing your 10 achievements in uasg last four years. I would expect Ajay, Dennis, John, Dusan and other nominations please share once you have accepted your nominations.<br/>
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Gracias<br/>
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Mark<br/>
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<div style="margin: 0 0 10.0px 0;"><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 10:24 AM<br/>
<b>From:</b> "Richard Merdinger" <rmerdinger@godaddy.com><br/>
<b>To:</b> "ua-discuss@icann.org" <ua-discuss@icann.org><br/>
<b>Subject:</b> [UA-discuss] Acceptance of nomination for UASG Chair</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">All,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">I humbly accept the nomination for Chair of the UASG. My thanks to Edmon Chung for putting my name forward as a candidate for Chair for the upcoming term, and also for the endorsements from group contributors on the discuss@ list. I am honored to receive this level of support for my candidacy by people whom I respect and have had the privilege to collaborate with over the past four years as Vice-Chair of the UASG.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">With the solid leadership and guidance from UASG Chair Ram Mohan the UASG is at a transition point. The preceding years have seen the UA effort evolve from an aspirational goal to a focused effort that has created a solid foundation on which to build due to the hard work of the Secretary General, the electorate, and the many, many volunteer contributors and vendors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">I am enthusiastic about working with the UASG community to promote the development and adoption of recommended practices and deployable assets that will enable the currently disenfranchised to get online and experience the wealth of opportunity that a natively accessible internet can provide.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">I’d like to take a brief moment to share with you my perspective on the accomplishments of the UASG and where the focus should be in the coming term.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The mission for the UASG has always been to support the concept that all domain names should be treated equally and has evolved to include email addresses (including Email Address Internationalization). Through the extensive support of ICANN, the UASG have engaged with qualified experts, commercial organizations, and groups such as ICANN, IETF and ISOC and the resulting efforts are embodied primarily in the document repository on <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://uasg.tech" target="_blank">https://uasg.tech</a></span>. These foundational documents do not address all open questions and the effort thus far does not reflect a “mission accomplished.” Rather, the efforts and deliverables to date simply provide a solid footing and core set of tools to continue to develop and which can be applied to expand our reach and effect an increasing impact within the internet ecosystem.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">As with other initiatives designed to improve the experience and reach of the internet ecosystem (e.g., DNSSEC, Internationalized Domain Names, Email Address Internationalization, etc.), creating technically sound solutions and making those solutions available to the world isn’t enough. Despite strong efforts and various approaches, the UASG has yet to effectively impart the value and potential benefits of adopting UA outside of a small set of engaged providers. We had hoped that by explaining issues surrounding UA, measuring the potential impact of these issues and by providing recommended practices to address them, we would see material adoption. Experience has shown that this is not the case. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Briefly stated, over the next two years, the UASG should:</span></p>
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0.0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Continue to focus on a global solution that encourages interoperability across cultures and regions rather than primarily focusing on specific regional solutions. Failing to maintain the global view may result in increased usability within targeted regions but risks the creation of a fragmented internet where communication and usage across regions is problematic;</span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Make concerted efforts to judiciously and efficiently apply resources to drive changes to widely used source code repositories so that we effect improvements not by encouraging work, but instead help to solve the problem for the general population without requiring a nuanced understanding of the topic;</span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Continue to evolve our Ambassador program to engage with peripheral organizations to evangelize the concepts of UA and encourage the adoption of recommended practices and to identify opportunities where the UA can apply its resources to make material improvements;</span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Continue to support IDN and EAI. These are very important efforts within the UA agenda and should continue to get substantial resources to further expansion of supporting technologies. There are specific challenges around both of these topics and continuing to engage with industry experts to develop materials to provide quality guidance for implementers and solution providers should continue;</span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Continue to include and enhance in our outreach and communications and awareness component. By awareness, I mean increased awareness that IDNs, EAI, and non-traditional TLDs exist and must be accepted. We have touched on awareness over the past four years but are seeing that a lack of awareness has led to a lack of concern on the part of many, many solutions providers. By including awareness in our strategy, we should be able to expand our reach;</span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 0.0in;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Continue to work with ICANN staff and our UASG constituents, evolving our mission and efforts to be inclusive of the community’s ideas and needs.</span></li>
</ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">My experience and background at ICANN, in the domain industry, with IDNs and at GoDaddy qualifies me well, I believe, to provide leadership and guidance to the UASG. I have run global multi-stakeholder efforts before, I understand how to engage with global communities, and most of all, I remain humble in approach but relentless in execution. These are essential traits, I believe, for continued success of the UASG and its mission.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">I hope you will consider supporting my nomination to help me serve you and the internet community on bringing the mission of Universal Acceptance to a strong and successful outcome.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Sincerely,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Richard Merdinger</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
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