APTLD83 Communique

The 83rd APTLD Members Meeting and AGM (APTLD83) for the first time in APTLD’s history was held in Vientiane, LAO P.D.R., on 20-22 February 2023. Hosted by LANIC, an ordinary APTLD Member, the Meeting gathered over 160 members and guests, including over 100 on-site participants.

The APTLD83 agenda was once again developed by the Members Standing Meeting Program Committee and featured traditional pre-meeting training sessions, which were held both online and on-site.

The Meeting was conducted in cooperation with the Lao Ministry of Technology and Communications and sponsored by CentralNic.

APTLD83 welcomed 3 Fellows from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea, all of them being first-time Fellows; meanwhile the 4^th Fellow’s participation due to technical reasons was deferred to APTLD84.

To meet the local community’s demand for an adequate access to the Members’ expertise, APTLD83 featured simultaneous English-Lao interpretation and was streamed live onto a dedicated Zoom room, thereby enabling a meaningful remote participation for the Membership..

The Meeting was conducted in the traditional 2-track mode, which enabled the community to discuss both non-technical (policy, administrative, marketing matters, and legal) matters and technical ones. A number of sessions were once again conducted in a panel discussion format, and one session also included team exercises and interaction with the audience. Also, during the Meeting, the attendees were offered a number of brief online surveys to measure the temperature in the room and a dynamic of perception of matters under discussion.

All that and new faces as moderators became a manifestation of the community’s growing maturity and keen interest in evolving Members meetings’ format to match the community’s present and prospective expectations.

To further a recently established tradition, the Meeting featured a blitz session with the ear from them about their impressions and takeaways from APTLD83.

At the beginning of the 2^nd day of the Meeting, the ordinary Membership convened for the 2023 Annual General Meeting to elect new Board Members, endorse the Board Chair’s report, approve the 2022 Accounts and select the auditor for FY 2022.

As a Members Meeting’s traditional component, the APTLD community and guests were treated to a dinner hosted by LANIC, which also included a brief journey into the Lao music and dance, while the equally traditional post-Meeting guided Networking Tour allowed the community to enjoy the country’s rich culture and nature.

At the closure of the Meeting, a new destination for the 84^th APTLD Meeting in September 2023, namely, Seoul, South Korea, was unveiled. The milestone event , which should also include a celebration of  the 25^th anniversary of APTLD, will be hosted by KISA and the Government of South Korea.