[At-Large] At-Large Summit update

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi Adam,
> The summit is a great idea. Agree with Ross, it's not something to 
> let drop. But I'm also not well up on events so far, what's been 
> planned and discussed and what's not.
>   
The details that have been done to date are on the ICANNWiki at
http://www.icannwiki.org/index.php/At-Large_Global_Summit
and something resembling a summit outline is at
http://www.icannwiki.org/index.php/ICANN_Ensemble


> How many people might be expected to attend?  How many parallel 
> sessions (i.e. how many rooms for how many people for how many days.)
>   
The original plan was for one person per ALS to be funded.
After staff objected on a number of levels, we suggested that
it may be reasonable to only fund delegates from ALSs which
had demonstrated they had done at least minimal
preparatory work to familiarize themselves with relevant issues.

> What's ICANN's and the ALAC's budget cycle?  The only ICANN 
> organization I've worked with closely is the NomCom, and budget for 
> that runs July to July.  How would something the Summit get into the 
> budget planning process?
>   
ICANN staff have repeatedly refused any budget related
inquiries.

> If not Paris then the next stop would be somewhere in Africa, which 
> makes travel more expensive (less of a hub.)  After that Latin 
> America, Asia Pacific and Europe as the three meetings for 2009.
>   
Indeed, one of our considerations for holding it at the Paris
event was the city's status as a major airline hub, meaning that
holding a summit there would be far less expensive than at
most other cities (indeed, how many African delegates would
need to fly through Paris to anywhere else?)

Asia Pacific is only suitable if the meeting is in a major hub such as
Hong Kong or Singapore, and even then would be more expensive
for travel overall compared to a major city in Europe or North
America. This essentially means that, if Paris doesn't work the next
opportunity to _economically_ stage a Summit would be late 2009.

- Evan