Dear All, Kevin Wilson, ICANN Chief Financial Officer and Steve Antonoff, ICANN Director of Human Resources, invite you to attend a teleconference to discuss At-Large Travel Support for FY2010. The purpose of the call is to discuss At-Large travel support for the 2010 fiscal year. Currently, ICANN's budget and travel guidelines provide for 15 At-Large members and 10 RALO representatives (two from each RALO) for travel to each of the three ICANN meetings held each year. Kevin and Steve will discuss two proposed alternatives (see attached) to the current arrangement in order to be able to fund a portion of regional General Assemblies. The At-Large community will have the opportunity to ask questions regarding the details of the proposed alternatives. Two calls are scheduled for: Tuesday, 11 August at UTC 03:00 (this call will have French and Spanish interpretation) [13:00 Sydney, 11:00 Singapore/Hong Kong, 06:00 Nairobi, 05:00 CEST, 04:00 London, 00:00 Buenos Aires (Monday, 10 August), 23:00 EDT (Monday, 10 August), 20:00 PDT (Monday, 10 August)] Call details for this call can be found at: https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?community_call_on_at_large_travel_suppor t_for_fy2010_eastern_hemisphere Tuesday, 11 August at UTC 15:00 (this call will have French and Spanish interpretation) [(08:00 PDT, 1:00 EDT, 12:00 Buenos Aires, 16 :00 London, 17:00 CEST, 18:00 Nairobi, 23 :00 Singapore/Hong Kong. 01:00 Sydney (Wednesday, 12 August)] Call details this call can be found at: https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?community_call_on_at_large_travel_suppor t_for_fy2010_western_hemisphere If you require dial-outs, please let us know at staff@atlarge.icann.org. Please remember, when entering the call, to say your name loud and clear and then press ♯. Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart, Heidi Ullrich, Matthias Langenegger, Gisella Gruber-White ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff@atlarge.icann.org ***************************************** Dear ALAC Members: Below please find a note prepared by the staff in order to help inform discussion in At-Large on how to allocate the travel funds available in this fiscal year. When the ALAC Executive Committee met at the end of the Sydney meeting, Steve and Kevin joined them and a discussion about travel was held; one of the take-aways was that the staff would look at the available pool of funds and see what options could be envisaged that stretched those funds as far as possible to (in particular) ensure that each RALO could hold a General Assembly each year. There will be a pair of teleconferences shortly with Kevin, Steve, the At-Large staff, and any of you and the wider At-Large community who wish to attend in order to discuss travel support for this coming fiscal year; as you will see in the below time is of the essence to come to a decision on who to fund, what for, and how. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Travel Support for At-Large FY 2010 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:50:44 +0200 From: Nick Ashton-Hart <nick.ashton-hart@icann.org> To: Cheryl Langdon-Orr <cheryl@hovtek.com.au>, Sébastien Bachollet <sebastien.bachollet@isoc.fr>, Vanda Scartezini UOL <vanda@uol.com.br>, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>, Kevin Wilson <kevin.wilson@icann.org>, Steve Antonoff <steve.antonoff@icann.org>, Denise Michel <denise.michel@icann.org>, Robert Hoggarth <robert.hoggarth@icann.org> CC: At-Large Staff <staff@atlarge.icann.org> Dear Cheryl, Vanda, Alan, and Sebastien: In order to help inform ALAC's discussions about how travel support funds allocated to the At-Large community can be used to support both RALO General Assemblies and ICANN Meeting attendance, Steve, Kevin, Heidi and I have had a few conversations and Kevin and Steve have run the numbers against a couple of scenarios. As you know, currently ICANN's budget and travel guidelines provide for 15 At-Large members and 10 RALO representatives (two from each RALO) for travel to each of the three ICANN meetings. This support includes air travel, hotel, and per diems. We offer two alternatives to the current arrangement in order to be able to fund a portion of the General Assemblies: Option 1: * Support 15 At-Large members and 5 RALO representatives (one from each RALO) for travel each ICANN meeting (to include the same air, hotel, per diem support as before). * Fund five General Assemblies annually (one for each RALO) under the following terms and conditions: o ICANN would support up to 40% of RALO members not to exceed a total of 10 members for each General Assembly as follows: o Site for the General Assembly decided in consultation with ICANN to ensure that the site chosen is economically viable within available resources, whilst facilitating participation by ALSes. o ICANN would pay for a meeting room at the hotel o ICANN would pay for "remote participation" set up as necessary o Round trip lowest cost economy air fare for supported travelers o Two nights hotel accommodations (to include tax but not incidentals) for supported travelers o Two days of per diem per supported traveler (per diem to be established based on approved location in the same method as per diems are established for ICANN meetings) Option 2: * Support 15 At-Large members and NO RALO members for travel to each ICANN meeting (to include the same air, hotel and per diem as before). * Fund five General Assemblies annually (one for each RALO) under the following terms and conditions: * ICANN would support up to 80% of the RALO members not to exceed a total of 20 members for each General Assembly as follows: o Site for the General Assembly decided in consultation with ICANN to ensure that the site chosen is economically viable within available resources, whilst facilitating participation by ALSes. o ICANN would pay for a meeting room at the hotel o ICANN would pay for "remote participation" set up as necessary o Round trip lowest cost economy air fare for supported travelers o Two nights hotel accommodations (to include tax but not incidentals) for supported travelers o Two days of per diem per supported traveler (per diem to be established based on approved location in the same method as per diems are established for ICANN meetings) It is our understanding that the RALO's may look to coordinate their General Assemblies with other meetings in their regions to maximize participation and lower costs - while this is perfectly acceptable to ICANN, it would not be required. It is of course possible to think of other options, however, with the Seoul meeting upcoming ICANN needs to have the list of approved travellers imminently, and the choices made about the above necessarily impact that list. At the same time, arranging regional GAs requires advance notice from the time at which a city and date is chosen. For these reasons, we recommend that you choose one of the above options. Some additional points to consider: * Some regions are larger than others, and this impacts on the number of travellers but also the amount of advance preparation time required to arrange meetings. We would suggest therefore that the larger RALOs organise their GAs for later in the fiscal year. * We propose that the Staff work with the Secretariats of the RALOs, and the ALAC Finance Subcommittee, to help establish the list of GA locations and prospective dates ASAP in order to ensure we can allocate meeting organisation resources. We believe that we would need considerable advance notice (8 weeks or more) in order to organise a GA, from the point at which a city and date is decided upon. * To help facilitate this process, ICANN is working on a draft form which would be used for proposing the date, city and country, and other elements of a GA; we will forward this in due course and in the meantime work informally. * The question has been asked about incoming NomCom appointees to ALAC, and whether or not these would be funded to attend the Seoul meeting from the At-Large travel support 'bucket'. The answer is that this is funded separately, and the new appointees will be able to attend the Seoul meeting. * We understand that the terms of five members of ALAC (from those directly elected) expire at the close of the Seoul meeting. The funding for the new appointees to come to Seoul would have to come from At-Large travel funds. If the community chooses to support travel for additional Seoul attendees for those newly-elected members of ALAC whose terms begin at the close of the Seoul meeting as well as those members whose term expires at the close of Seoul, that would negatively impact the proposal above, and we would have to reduce the level of support for regional GAs downwards, probably quite considerably. Please review and of course feel free to discuss all this in the broader At-Large community as you see fit, and let us know as quickly as possible what conclusions you come to. Of course, if there are any questions, let us know and we'll be happy to try and answer them.