1) What's the dress convention?
They probably won't let you into the hotel if you're not wearing shoes and a shirt. Other than that, it's up to you. Vint will wear his usual three piece suit. I'd say the median dress-up level is a golf shirt with the logo of some other meeting and chinos. Keep in mind that although San Juan will be very hot, the meeting rooms may well have the A/C set at about 15.
2) Have Jacob or Nick planned any kind of orientation for newcomers? Tossing us unprepared into a den of bureaucracy and power struggles does not serve our constituencies --
The newcomers lunch is almost entirely newcomers, so it's not all that helpful. The main thing to realize is that ICANN works through personal relationships far more than by its nominal processes, so conversations in the halls and in the bars where you get to know the people who matter (board and staff, in particular) are key. It's easy to recognize the board members, they're the ones with the swarms of people following them around.
3) In the full schedule at http://sanjuan2007.icann.org/schedule/ I note that some meetings are explicitly listed as closed, yet some are explicitly listed as open. To what part of this schedule do we common ALS folk have access?
Should be everything that's not explicitly closed. R's, John