[At-Large] The visa to Canada and fall of participation

[Evan Leibovitch]

If there is indeed a genuine search for solutions....

The most obvious answer for years has been to not require anyone to have to
physically travel, and to have Summits which by-design are meant to be held
virtually.

Not only does this eliminate visa problems completely, but it also vastly
reduces logistical challenges for both organizer and participant:

   - No lost luggage
   - No health insurance issues
   - No missed flights
   - No hotel booking problems
   - No currency-exchange issues
   - No issues with airport-to-hotel transportation

Having a virtual Summit also reduces the travel and settling-in time
(making more time available for meetings) and eliminates delegates' burning
fossil fuels to congregate in one place. More importantly, it also means
that expenses are drastically reduced, so organizers don't have to go
through an arduous task of determining who can or cannot be funded to go.
The original ATLAS concept of one delegate per ALS doesn't have to be
binned because of cost considerations.

The technology exists to do this -- the move from Connect to Zoom
completely enables the capacity -- and we even has a proof of concept in
the ISOC InterCommunity events which have been running for some time now.
The cost of providing subsidy for short term reliable Internet access, to
participants with connectivity challenges, would be far less than the cost
of airfare and hotel.

Indeed I have previously advocated that all ICANN meetings should be mostly
virtual as a matter of equitable access (ie, not only those with financial
interest in ICANN decisions get to participate fully). Especially for
At-Large ... think of how the money saved could be spent on public
education and surveys that would legitimize our standing and serve our
mission. But that's for a different thread.

The simplest way to deal with visa problems (among many other problems) is
to eliminate the travel component completely and meet virtually.

- Evan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/attachments/20191027/f8550a27/attachment-0001.html>