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.)