Some quick notes/points on this Delhi hotel issue from ICANN's general manager of public participation. Firstly, no, I am not happy about the cost of hotel rooms in Delhi. There are however a long list of mitigating factors: * It is not within ICANN's power to control activity and pricing in one of the most dynamic cities on the planet. It really isn't. Anyone that told you otherwise is lying. * ICANN holds its meetings around the world as a point of principle because of the global nature of its job. It will continue to do so. Delhi is a hotspot of global economic activity at the moment - a big chunk of it thanks to the opportunities that the Internet has provided (global interoperable Internet means that the experience online can be effectively the same across the planet, so it comes down to innovation and labour costs). There is a huge amount of innovation going on at the moment and ICANN is absolutely right to hold a meeting in India for this reason. It is exactly what ICANN should be doing. * Unfortunately a number of events outside ICANN's control have sent hotel room prices up: a series of big conferences have been booked at the same time and there is a huge Indian wedding of some 20,000 people in the hotel opposite (which should, incidentally, be fascinating to see). Add to this the fact that Delhi has massively expanded in recent years (there is *huge* construction of new venues and hotels across the city at the moment to cater for demand), means hotel room prices are high. * ICANN's meetings staff has been working extremely hard on finding affordable hotel rooms - on the ground as well as in calls, emails, faxes and so on. So please bear that in mind if you are going to start throwing around accusations without talking to people. The hotel rooms on the site are the ones we have managed to sort out so far. There should be more and more affordable rooms added soon. You can actually get hotel rooms for a fairly cheap price in Delhi and meetings staff have been to see a large number of them across the city. They provide, I hear, the ability to reminiscence about student travelling days. We didn't feel the community would be over the moon about these, so the search continues. * Now, in recognition of the high cost of hotel rooms, ICANN is undertaking to lift the economic burden elsewhere. Lunch will be provided at the main venue. Hotel rooms prices come with breakfast. We will be laying on buses from the main hotels to the venue. I believe we are also working on having sponsors supply food for evening events. (It is also worth mentioning that the fears about food poisoning have yet to be borne out in reality by any of the ICANN staff. Just avoid the ice cubes.) It should also be mentioned that the cost of most things remain at typical Indian prices - something that anyone interested in Indian goods such as fabrics, will be delighted to hear. * What is also worthy of mention is that ICANN provides travel assistance to certain groups of people - particularly those that are representative of others. I understand that we will also be hosting a meeting on travel assistance policy at Delhi so that would be good for people to attend and participate in. * And lastly - THERE IS A REMOTE PARTICIPATION WEBSITE - which I set up and run every meeting and to which I would be delighted to see all the people that can't attend Delhi appear on, interact with, and provide me useful feedback on so I can improve it for future meetings. The problem at the moment is that without significant numbers of people using it, I have limited sway in making the meeting take what happens on it seriously enough. At the moment it is largely seen as an online resource for information on the meeting rather than a route of real participation and access. If you aren't able to attend Delhi and your complaint is that you won't be able to participate then PLEASE check out the website and use it. It is there precisely for this reason. The response to my plea here will be: "Well the timezone issue makes it impossible." To which I will respond: "So what possible solutions can we come up with?" So can we just miss out these intervening emails and accept that there will *always* been timezone issues and so we should devise ways to improve participation with that in mind. What about: earlier agendas; questions sent prior to a meeting raised during the meeting; possible recap meetings the next day taking in feedback? Other ideas? http://del.icann.org/ Also - what would be incredibly useful is if you all viewed it from the perspective of not attending and emailed me saying what you would really like to see on the site and I will see if I can get it in place in time for the meeting. You want to participate? You want feedback into ICANN's meetings? Well, here it is. Email me: kieren.mccarthy@icann.org. All the best, Kieren ---------------------- Kieren McCarthy ---------------------- General manager of public participation, ICANN http://www.icann.org -----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 7:57 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 mind-bogglingly expensive. 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