Yes Evan and Alan some of us were indeed most concerned at the probable costs of accommodation for this meeting... and as far as I know the number of rooms available at the conference venue has also been known for some time (at least back in LA to my knowledge) to also be very limited in total number even if someone can pay the rack rate... Certainly as Stacy knows all too well from my correspondence with her ;-) the points you raise and indeed what the mechanisms may be for getting us to and from the venue from wherever we may be put (and at this stage we have no knowledge at all about that!) is also a major consideration for the meeting planners... Stacy will however, I'm confident be working very hard on these issues as I know she listened quite carefully to the issues we raised in LA regarding accommodation and other related issues... However we do, I believe need to raise these issues with the meeting planning staff for consideration at future meetings and indeed we have requested Wendy as our ALAC liaison to the board, to raise the awareness of our concerns (including the timing with Lunar New Year in Asia) and comments in that fora as well... CLO -----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 2:58 PM To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: [At-Large] Venue Accessibility Hello everyone, We've now found out that the hotels used for the Delhi ICANN meeting are outlandishy expensive: http://del.icann.org/hotels (BTW, the main conference location is IIRC the Taj Palace. Where is ALAC being put?) This has raised a question that has been bothering me for a while... It's one thing for ICANN to claim to want public participation; but is its process really accessible when locations are chosen that are so expensive? When was the last time that "cost to attend" was a factor when choosing an ICANN meeting venue? The Delhi venue may be inexpensive to those who live within India, but seemingly prohibitive to anyone else who's neither subsidized nor on an expense account. Even as a regional venue, that seems unreasonable. I ask, in part, because of the Summit and the need to have a venue (or perhaps ongoing ones) to which we can bring many people together for as little cost as possible. It would serve ICANN's financial interests -- not to mention those of attendees -- if at least one meeting per year was scheduled at a location that had a) a major air hub b) somewhat reasonable hotel rates (ie, not $450/night!) c) fairly flexible entry policies for attendees (preferably visa-free from many countries) (Thankfully -- by coincidence of timing -- Paris seems close to meeting those criteria. Arguably, LA was inexpensive and a major hub -- but as a last-minute venue, advance planning for it was difficult, as was getting visas for some.) As At-Large is the body charged with promoting public participation in ICANN, perhaps this (financial accessibility of meetings) is an issue of interest to us. Well, if it's not an issue to _us_, it certainly won't be an issue to gold-card constituency reps, or those who go at ICANN's expense to every meeting no matter how costly. In the case of the Summit, there is also a matter of keeping costs down for ICANN. I would hope that in moving forward -- if there is eventual wisdom seen in having the Summit as a biennial event -- that the target city be chosen for its accessibility to travellers. We owe it to those who are not completely subsidized -- as well as to potential outside Summit sponsors -- to deliberately choose financially accessible venues for these events. However, I don' t want to limit this as a Summit issue since the matter of accessibility should not only be an occasional concern. What does anyone else here think? Is this an At-Large issue? I'm rather surprised that it hasn't been raised before; perhaps one reason is because ALAC itself is always shielded from the financial inaccessibility of meetings. However, the ALSs and public that it supposedly leads and represents, on the whole, have no such luxury. - Evan (And, yes, I'm aware of teleconferencing and other mass participation mechanisms. But you all know that some of the real power brokering and alliance-building doesn't happen at formal meetings. While podcasts and such are important tools, they're no substitute for face-to-face.) _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org ALAC Independent: http://www.icannalac.org