See note from Steve Conte, General Manager IS (below) regarding communication equipment problems. Addendum from Steve: I can't stress enough that this is NOT an issue with Morocco (the destination) or the local hosts here. They have bent over backwards to not only adapt to my issues, but have gone above and beyond by calling and working with the Moroccan government and customs here to try to get my shipment in. This is a great group. Update: 27 June 2006 -- The equipment did not make it. Steve is taking steps to ensure this does not happen again. -------------------------------------- 25 June 2006 Greetings, I just wanted to give you a heads up on some logistical issues I'm having for this meeting. The shipment of my video equipment was delayed in the US for four days and then returned to Marina del Rey the day after I left for Morocco. I've had a colleague cavalier this for me while I was in transit and he did a great job on getting the shipment back out. As of last web tracking, the equipment is in Belgium, I'm presuming awaiting a plane to Rabat to be routed here. I'm hopeful that my equipment will arrive on Monday, at which point I'll spend whatever time it takes to get this up and running. In the meantime, since I was aware of the logistical issues prior to departing for Morocco, we've taken some steps to attempt to webcast and/or capture as much of the meeting as possible until my equipment gets here. I've brought a spare camera with us in a suitcase and using our breakout laptop for ccNSO, we're able to provide a webcast stream for the main room events. The webcast will be limited to a non-mobile (ie, no pan or zoom) shot of the stage including the podium. I'll supplement this with a voice-only stream. If my equipment isn't here for the ccNSO, I've brought a portable mp3 recorder (my own personal one) to capture the audio of the ccNSO sessions and will post them as best I can during the meeting so as to minimize the time-delay of them. I'll let Chris Disspain know of my logistical issues as well. To top it all off, my laptop has a bad case of narcolepsy and has decided to go into sleep mode every few minutes, causing me to struggle for every single task I need to do online (my laptop has gone to sleep four times so far during this email alone, with an average of 5 minutes to get it going again.). We're working on getting this problem resolved but being a weekend, it has also been a pretty significant challenge to face. To be very clear, none of the above issues are the result of our local hosts. They have been extremely accommodating to adapting to these challenges and all divisions of the hosts have done a fantastic job here. I apologize for the impact this is potentially causing and I'm making every effort to minimize this impact, but as some of you have mentioned to me, it has already been noticed. I take my role of supporting the board and these meetings extremely seriously and I'm making every effort to make this meeting as successful as possible from an operational/logistical perspective. Sincerely, Steve -- Steve Conte General Manager, Information Systems ICANN