Minutes of the Meeting: X-Media Committee

May 20th, 2022

The Cross-Media committee met on Friday the 20th May, on the board’s direction, to reconsider whether to continue with Archers and Nishe and Co as the two main consultants to the Cross-Media project.

The Committee deliberated on the pros and cons and discussed an alternate proposal to go without the two consultants, and instead appoint a technical auditor to the POC. The outcome of their discussions are as below:

• The committee feels that doing an RFP for both the consultants will add considerable strain and time on the project which they do not recommend.
• The committee also feels that a change of hand at this stage of the project will add considerable strain on the committee and will require substantial heavy lifting of onboarding of the new parties.
• The committee also feels the continuation of the two consultants, albeit with a payment for the POC phase, does by no means suggest any lack of transparency on behalf of the committee’s conduct.
• The committee feels that there might be a need for a full-fledged technical auditor, but that completely depends on the scope and breadth of the POC – and the participation of a number of publishers and platforms.
• The committee recommends reviewing the need for appointment of the technical auditor once the POC scope comes into full force.
• The committee will go ahead with final negotiation with both Archers and Nishe and Co for the POC Phase. Since Shadi Kandil led the last round of this negotiation, Shadi and Asad will carry that on with Houda and Nishe and will report back to the committee and the board.
• The committee recommends the same method and mode for making the payment to the consultants by ABG as done for the last round, splitting the fee among members and invoicing member organizations.
• As advised by the board in the last meeting, we will put this decision on our website to ensure the industry is in full view of transparency of this decision.