As I was expecting, this conversation becomes to look like one on the Internet Governance list, where people, whose opinion is not immediately faced with "Great!!!" are feeling bad. Let me take a couple of examples: At 15:56 28.12.2007 -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
but perhaps ICANN should consider that the venues that submit host applications may be most inconvenient for the world to attend.
Define "the world". For me such an opinion could come only from West/North citizen. If you ask somebody from South Africa, Romania, Czech, Tunis, Morroco, Argentina, ... you name it, who could have gone to an ICANN meeting exactly because it took place in their country/region, they might probably have a different opinion. So, ICANN gives opportunity for people from countries, which are not in the West/North part of the world, to participate at its meetings, but now you are saying that this is not right?
_This_ is why I am raising this issue at the ALAC level. As ICANN's guardian of the public interest, I believe that it is a legitimate role to assert the needs of At-Large, given that the committee does not seem to be presently interested in meeting venue choices aimed at maximizing participation from those who must come at their own expense.
So, instead of reaching a conclusion, why not ask yourself the questions, which I've put in the previous paragraph above? For example, ICANN has had in the last four years two meetings in Canada, and two meetings in the US; is that enough for the North American users? I think it is. It is good to also not forget that while it may be expensive for them to go somewhere, in Europe there is competition, and therefore the tickets are cheap; so the meeting in France actually may be visited by people from all over Europe for as low as Euro 50 for airplane ticket. It is not ICANN's responsibility to open the US/Canada skies, so that the local airway companies stop charging so high. As for hotel accomodation, there are always risks, if one has a meeting in high season, or in a city where prices are high. But then, if we go to Mar del Plata in Argentina, people complain about having to travel extra 5 hours by bus or car.
OK, can you give answers to *any* of them? Even one of them? You were
I gave you a general answer, but you are not happy with it. This is the problem, not the lack of responses.
The most basic question is: why is it not possible to lock down hotel bookings one year in advance?
This would have been possible, if we choose to have the meetings every year at the same locations; however dates of meetings have to be coordinated with the calendars of the IETF, the ITU, the different holidays in different countries. Plus, if a country comes today to host a meeting for 2009 or 2010, I am sure that it will be easier to choose a hotel. But it is not that easy. Which country are you from? Why don't you ask your community to put an offer two years in advance?
We know that no particular venue will be acceptable to everyone, and sometimes, no suitable host candidates will step forward before the deadlines. So there should be a way in place to deal with this in a consistent and well-understood manner.
And the way is?
It appears that, despite all its history and supposed experience, ICANN is no closer to solving this problem than it has been for years. This is neither an excuse against further debate nor a solution in itself; one can only wonder how long businesses would stay afloat if they used the same decision-making process.
Evan, if I remember correctly, at some point I asked the public to discuss on the ideas, given by the Meetings Committee, and guess how many comments we received? Check the offer here: http://www.icann.nl/meetings/vancouver/captioning-public-forum-ii-03dec05.ht...
While we're at it, it should also be reasonable to expect that a member of the public can deduce the rationale for the actions of the Meeting Committee without needing to dig into the bowels of "the ICANN archives". (Indeed, if one does a Google search on 'ICANN "meeting committee"' there is very little to be found, so maybe such public archives simply don't even exist.)
Really? Why don't you try again? I see quite a lot references. Hope you are not in a country, where there's some restriction on Google? You can also try the ICANN website, there's a search box. Veni veni