[ga] Re: [Politech] How much it costs to attend U.N. "WSIS" Internet summit meetings

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Declan and all,

  It is and has seemed clear to me for some time being a recently
not so active WSIS participant, that unlike some, the UN's role
should be very limited as the UN's performance in a number of other
areas is far less than creditable. Unlike Danny Younger amongst
others, WSIS is in some ways worse than ICANN as you refrenced
link below indicates... Hard to believe anything internet related
could be worse than ICANN, but the UN is, and would be
if their role was enhanced...

Declan McCullagh wrote:

> I've taken the liberty of including a few paragraphs from Robert's blog
> below. Background on the WSIS process is here:
> http://news.com.com/Should+the+United+Nations+run+the+Internet/2010-1028_3-5181327.html
>
> -Declan
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: WSIS meetings - How much it is costing Civil Society
> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:35:55 -0500
> From: Robert Guerra <rguerra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: declan@xxxxxxxx
>
> Declan:
>
> I'd appreciate it if you could forward the following message to politech...
>
> How expensive is it to participate @ WSIS you ask?
>
> Well, I've just put together a few numbers and posted them to my WSIS
> blog.  URL is
>
> http://www.privaterra.org/activities/wsis/blog/wsis_meetings-cs_cost.html
>
> I look forward to comments, specifically on what the exact gains
> (economic and otherwise) one we expect .
>
> regards
>
> Robert
> --
> ###
> Robert Guerra <rguerra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Privaterra - <http://www.privaterra.org>
>
> ---
>
> Costs of attending WSIS meetings
> Last updated: Jan 28, 2005
>
> 1. Cost per Person
>
> Flight
>
>           1. Since people come to attend the meetings from all over the
> world one can either break down the costs by region or use an best guess
> average value.
>           2. To make things easy, let's assume an average flight
> cost/person of 1000 USD .
>
> Accommodation
>
>           1. There are many options.
>           2. To make things easy, let's assume that the participant in
> question stays at a hotel in Geneva that has an NGO price. The Hotel Mon
> Repos is used by many, so let's use their UN rate of 150 CHF / night for
> our calculations.
>           3. # days at event. the prepcom is 2 weeks, let's assume the
> person stays 15 days
>
> thus the accommodation cost is 150 CHF x 15 = 2250 CHF
> (Using the currency converter at www.xe.com that # in swiss francs comes
> to 1905 USD)
>
> Per Diem
>
>     1. These are costs related to expenses, incidentals and meals (see
> below for more details)
>     2. Geneva is an expensive city.
>     3. Where can we find an approx #, well several of the development
> agencies publish per diem rates. Let's use the ones published by the US
> State department as it's a source many people use and are familiar with.
>     4. Let's assume one will be frugal and estimate 40% of the # quoted
> for geneva (169 USD) = 84 /day
>     5. (and yes, normal meals can cost you 30-40 dollars!)
>
> Thus, the per diem cost is 15 x (169/2) = 1267.5 USD
>
> Adding the numbers
>
> 1000 (flight) + 1905 (accommodation) + 1267 (per diem) = 4172 USD per
> person for a 2 week stay
>
> An important # is the average per day cost. let's divide 4172 (total
> cost) by 15 (# of days) . this works out to 278 $/day (we'll use this #
> later)
>
> [...]
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
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