Delhi will be interesting especially with a huge wedding next door. I've been in Delhi taxis trying to drive through similar festivities and it was exciting and fun but don't try to get anywhere fast and watch out for the elephants that are often a part of the multi-day ceremonies! In fact I wish I could go but wow! those hotel bills!! Hey..maybe furnished apartments are the way to go- includes a driver and Internet, around half of the other places. Don't know how close these places are but... http://india.thepeacocksuites.com/suites/services.html But on the general topic: Personally, I think two face to face meetings a year is plenty. Next, I would remove the burden of the expense from the local host. They can still host but ICANN will pay. Anecdotally from what I remember people saying in NZ etc was that it costs big bucks to put on a conference. I also remember there was a public call for ICANN to buy its own wireless equipment and bring it to the conferences so that the local host wouldn't have to build that net from scratch in terms of equipment. Maybe that has been done by now? Next I would look into outsourcing the logistical planning for conferences, and have a small liaison on the ICANN side to deal with the conference-planning company. Why should ICANN staff have to be out of the office scouting places? Let the conference company deal with that and then a few ICANN people can fly in to see the shortlist. Next I would try to recover some costs. At the very least ICANN could charge for the midweek gala event. Would it disenfranchise people to pay a small amount to register to attend meetings? I don't know but my guess is that it would not. Even the American Library Assn (whose conferences are bloated with loads of venues and meetings) does this better than ICANN, while ICANhas a fraction of ALA's attendees. There are a limited number of hub cities that can host 12,000 library people at one time. We know all the cities years in advance (right now we know until 2014! http://www.ala.org/ala/confservices/upcoming/upcomingconferences.htm ) and hotels more than 6 months in advance. We pay $125 or so if we register "early bird" in January for a June conference. This price goes up the nearer you get to the conference. This covers meeting materials and little else. Everything else is a la cart-- if you want to go to a special lunch or a gala event-- all extra. A big database company covers the shuttle bus system. Other companies sponsor the conference bags and name badges. Coming from years of that, I was very much surprised to see how ICANN did it. There's a better way, I think. Although ideas are one thing, implementation another. "The devil is in the details" comes to mind. Jean (ex NA ALAC, independent NARALO member)