Even though I may not share ALL the points Evan made, I quite agree that this issue is worth for ALAC to consider and discuss with ourselves, as well as with other parts of ICANN. APRALO discussed on our list that having the Asia Pacific ICANN meeting in the middle of Chinese New Year time would pose significant participation problem especially in Eastern Asia where many are affected by Chinese calender system (not only ethnic Chinese people) and we agreed that this concern should be conveyed to the ICANN people. So, there are several factors for our meeting to be improved. I also like to remind that the meeting commitee also tried to listen to ICANN community in terms of how we organize the meetings. I don't remember the details and have llittle time to check, but they held a public workshop on ICANN meetings and asked for comments and suggestions, and was open to criticisms as well. I think they are still very open to suggestions, and aware of the criticisms, too. thanks, izumi 2007/12/28, John L <johnl@iecc.com>:
( e.g. IETF is mainly in the northern countries, no problems about getting visas for people to travbel to the USA,
Hmmn. People who are even modestly familiar with the IETF's meeting planning know that they're quite aware of US visa problems. That's why they're likely to be meeting in Canada a lot more than they used to.
Sure, the IETF and ICANN are not identical, but their meeting issues are more similar than different. Having been to two years' worth of ICANN meetings on ICANN's dime, I can confirm that there's clearly a vast amount of extra expense due to so many last minute arrangements.
R's, John
PS:
What I would like to do is to find out of ALAC believes this is a worthy issue, given that IMO the public is being served worse by the status quo than other constituencies.
Yes, definitely. If I ever go to another ICANN meeting, I'll be paying my own way, so cost matters.
_______________________________________________ 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
-- >> Izumi Aizu << Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo Japan * * * * * << Writing the Future of the History >> www.anr.org