[At-Large] ICANN regional meetings -- good or bad?

[Izumi AIZU]

The situation about this Taiwan Regional meeting is quite complex.
This is not the first time APRALO is put in a difficult situation:

There was actually one Hong Kong regional meeting at the end
of July - there, APRALO was somehow consulted, or "invited"
to organize a business meeting of APRALO and ICANN paid
cost of travel for some ALS reps who could afford to travel,
but the regional meeting itself was for registry and registrars.

One rationale for ICANN to support this HK RALO meeting was that
since ICANN changed the ICANN meeting in Asia Pacific region
originally announced to be held in 2007 fall, into February 2008
without any explicit explanation, so we will have LA meeting
in October 2007. You know, APRALO was established in March
this year, at Bali meeting, and then we postponed our celerbration
at ICANN meeting for the coming ICANN meeting in AP region
which was, unfortunately postponed into next February.

At the APRALO conference call just two days ago, we discussed
to have next APRALO meeting at APRICOT, annual large AsiaPacific
meeting of Internet community, a week before ICANN meeting which
will be located in New Dehli. AND at the same conf call, we agreed
to have another APRALO meeting at the IGF meeting in New Dehli
in November - a real twist now...

This is a good demonstration how the lack of necesarry consultation,
coordination and involvement with regional stakeholders will result
rather averse directoin, discouraging and leading to less trust.

izumi

2007/9/27, Siavash Shahshahani <shahshah at irnic.ir>:
> Although I see some benefit coming from regional meetings, I'd like to
> echo Wendy's concerns(not going so far as 'divide and conquer' conspiracy
> theory). Specific local concerns of some regions may overshadow
> controversial global issues which may then be swept under the rug. I'm for
> regional meetings organized by RALOs with focus on regional issues that
> should be brought to the attention of ICANN, but such meetings should not
> replace regular global meetings.
> Siavash
>
> > I very much like the idea of regional meetings, and I hope that the
> > Taipei experiment can show that these can be a substitute for one of
> > the three meetings a year: i.e. for one week a year, everyone meets
> > regionally, rather than at a central location, and regional
> > rappateurs report back to the other groups.
> >
> > That said, at least as much advance planning should go into regional
> > meetings as goes into central ones, and I would hope that, in the
> > future, participants would have significantly more advance notice and
> > input into the process.
> >
> >          Bret_______________________________________________