[ga] ICANN Travel Budgeting

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

One *has* to take a look at these numbers:

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg04280.html

"India Travel ? It is estimated that airfare for 21 Council members for
this meeting would be US$147,000. Cost for hotel/per diem for 21
Council members for this meeting would be US$205,800."

That would be a total of $352,000, or $16,800 per person! To India! How
many couples went on a holiday to India and spent $35K for a week? The
premium for business travel isn't that high, unless one is staying at
the Four Seasons.

Compare that to the entire budgets of various constituencies, for a
year, and that seems enormously wasteful.

Why is it that no one at ICANN can provide a quote as to what Webex.com
or another videoconference solution that can scale to 200+ people would
cost?

I predict it would cost substantially LESS than $1000 per person for a
week of live feeds using Webex or other systems. And folks could
participate from the comfort of their home/office, and sleep in their
own bed at night. Their carbon footprint would also be much less.

I assume the number of ICANN staffers being sent far exceeds 21, so you
can just imagine the enormous wasteful spending, on the backs of domain
registrants. More bread, less circuses.

If you're going to flush away $50,000 for 3 council members from a
single constituency, I think it would be better to give that money to
the relevant constituency, and then have that constituency decide how
the money is to be spent. I imagine they'll be able to search around
for much cheaper tickets and/or hotels, or decide to use the money to
reduce their constituency annual membership fees, etc.

When something is "free" it tends to get abused, be it the Add Grace
Period, or travel funding. More efficient allocations of resources
occur when one is given the choice of how to allocate those "free"
funds.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/