The situation about this Taiwan Regional meeting is quite complex. This is not the first time APRALO is put in a difficult situation: There was actually one Hong Kong regional meeting at the end of July - there, APRALO was somehow consulted, or "invited" to organize a business meeting of APRALO and ICANN paid cost of travel for some ALS reps who could afford to travel, but the regional meeting itself was for registry and registrars. One rationale for ICANN to support this HK RALO meeting was that since ICANN changed the ICANN meeting in Asia Pacific region originally announced to be held in 2007 fall, into February 2008 without any explicit explanation, so we will have LA meeting in October 2007. You know, APRALO was established in March this year, at Bali meeting, and then we postponed our celerbration at ICANN meeting for the coming ICANN meeting in AP region which was, unfortunately postponed into next February. At the APRALO conference call just two days ago, we discussed to have next APRALO meeting at APRICOT, annual large AsiaPacific meeting of Internet community, a week before ICANN meeting which will be located in New Dehli. AND at the same conf call, we agreed to have another APRALO meeting at the IGF meeting in New Dehli in November - a real twist now... This is a good demonstration how the lack of necesarry consultation, coordination and involvement with regional stakeholders will result rather averse directoin, discouraging and leading to less trust. izumi 2007/9/27, Siavash Shahshahani <shahshah@irnic.ir>:
Although I see some benefit coming from regional meetings, I'd like to echo Wendy's concerns(not going so far as 'divide and conquer' conspiracy theory). Specific local concerns of some regions may overshadow controversial global issues which may then be swept under the rug. I'm for regional meetings organized by RALOs with focus on regional issues that should be brought to the attention of ICANN, but such meetings should not replace regular global meetings. Siavash
I very much like the idea of regional meetings, and I hope that the Taipei experiment can show that these can be a substitute for one of the three meetings a year: i.e. for one week a year, everyone meets regionally, rather than at a central location, and regional rappateurs report back to the other groups.
That said, at least as much advance planning should go into regional meetings as goes into central ones, and I would hope that, in the future, participants would have significantly more advance notice and input into the process.
Bret_______________________________________________