Re: [ga] ICANN Travel Budgeting

[jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

George and all,

  Very good point here George!  But not a new one.  Back in 
1999, I recommended and offered to the than ICANN interem board
to hold meetings via Internet video conferencing, to no avail.

  Seems that ICANN would rather spend huge unnecessary sums
to meet in various locals simply because they are of the
belief that person to person meetings are "Better" than
remotely via video conferencing.  Seems that spending these
huge unnecessary sums for such face to face meetings in person,
are far more important than doing their oversite of their
own RAA contracts of their registrars and registries at the
detramental expense of registrants.

-----Original Message-----
>From: George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Dec 5, 2007 4:14 PM
>To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [ga] ICANN Travel Budgeting
>
>
>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/
>
Jeffrey A. Williams
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