Having been part of the Meeting Committee, I think I can add a further bit of information. ICANN relies on sponsor organizations to organize meetings: we issue a call for proposals, related to a geographic area and a time frame, and we evaluate the responses, taking into account various elements, including the cost. The organization of the planned 2007 Asia Pacific meeting has been particularly troublesome, due to unavailability of suitable proposals. For this reason, it had to be cancelled, and an alternative venue has been established in Los Angeles, while the calendar has been modified to allow AP not to miss the turn. While I do agree that there are other locations in Asia where lodging could have been less expensive, the fact is that we had to choose among the (very few) proposals on the table. Cheers, Roberto
-----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch Sent: Thursday, 20 December 2007 18:14 To: Nick Ashton-Hart Cc: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] Venue Accessibility
Hi Nick,
Just so you all know, the APRALO ALS community will be having its General Assembly in New Delhi, and one rep from each ALS is being invited to attend with travel support provided from the At-Large travel budget.
Understood; this is like how the NA and LAC ALSs were invited to San Juan. I also assumed that, Summit or not, EURALO will be meeting in Paris.
In other words, the costs of handling these trips affect ICANN's own finances; isn't that another reason to choose venues based on accessibility?
I haven't travelled as much as some of you, but I seem to recall Hong Kong having significantly less expensive (but decent) hotels -- and it certainly has an airline hub. And I've stayed in four-star accommodation in Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi that were a fraction of the prices quoted for any of the Delhi ones. Certainly other well-travelled folks here will have other ideas; indeed the travel industry surely maintains stats on the cheapest cities in each region in which to hold events.
My point is simply that even within regions, there are some places that are less expensive than others. One can be global without being needlessly extravagant in travel expense.
- Evan
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