The question, of course, is where exactly will these meetings take place…
The logistics of holding an ICANN meeting are quite daunting, to put it mildly.
The city would need to have an international airport, or be close to one.
Of course you’d also need to have a big hotel to hold all of the attendees, ICANN staff and good conference facilities.
At the technical level the requirements are quite detailed and include specifics of the number of IP addresses, bandwidth etc.,
If you’re fascinated by the logistics of these kind of events you can download the full spec from the ICANN site.
One part of the document, however, did amuse me.
When talking about hotel prices:
Hotels should be available in a variety of price ranges to accommodate those travelling on a limited budget
So what about Delhi?
The document goes on to say:
..past hotels have ranged from USD$130.00 to USD$210.00
Interesting that, when you consider how much it actually costs in most major European cities (Lisbon being an exception, rather than the rule), while the prices in Delhi were more than double that.
So which European cities are likely to step up to the plate?
Past meetings have been held in Paris, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Berlin, Bucharest and Rome.
What about Madrid?
London is obviously a good hub as well.
It would be wonderful if it was held in Ireland, but I don’t think any of the hotels in Dublin are big enough (though I could be wrong) in terms of conference space.
Then again, Europe is a big place, so who knows which country will play host, though I’m pretty sure I’ll attend in any case.
I’ve looked at London as a possible host for an ICANN meeting. Basically, if you can come up with a price to do an event, you have to double or even treble it if you want to do it in London. A lot of the big industry events happen here because they need to attract an audience, but ICANN meetings have an in-built audience, so the added value of using London as a venue is limited.
However, there are plenty of places in the UK that would be excellent for holding an ICANN meeting: how about Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, or Edinburgh? All major cities with nearby airports, plenty of conference facilities (I think that some of the Oxbridge colleges can be hired out during holidays) and loads of tourist attractions, not to mention strong associations with computing and information technology (gala dinner at Bletchley Park?).
But you’re right, Dublin would also be an excellent venue. But I don’t know if my liver could survive it 🙂
Gavin
From what I’ve been able to garner ICANN seem to like the idea of transport hubs, which was why I naturally thought of London, as it is so well served with international airports. Of course you are dead right, the cost of London could be insanely high for little or no extra benefit, while other cities in the UK would be cheaper and just as accessible.
The idea of a gala dinner at Bletchley Park is nice 🙂
Michele
Well… all you need to do is convince IEDR to apply then 😉 With all the large IT companies with EU HQs in Dublin I am sure finding a few good sponsors should not be a problem (Google? Oracle? Sun? Anybody working with domain and hosting companies should definitely be interested).
Alternatively there is obviously always Central and Eastern Europe. Belgrade had applied for the meeting that was then held in Paris.
Prague was a nice venue for the last Regional Gathering, and I think NASK might be interested in bringing an ICANN Meeting to Warsaw soon.
As for the “big hotel to hold them all”, I think another thing Delhi proved was that you can spread guests around different hotels and still get the meeting.
At the same time, I wonder when did ICANN update the hotel price ranges last… since it is obviously getting more and more difficult to find decent hotels in that price range in most large cities of the world.
Francesco
Do you have any idea why Belgrade didn’t get the gig for Paris? Or is that information even in the public domain?
Eastern Europe would be nice 🙂
Michele
Well… they probably did not have the same support, infrastructure and money (and appeal ;)) that Paris could offer.
A more contested decision was actually the Delhi one, since Dubai had applied too and had been turned down “because hotels are too expensive there”. The diplomatic solution was to put a Regional meeting in Dubai just a couple of months after Delhi.
Any idea how much hotels in Dubai were?
The prices in Delhi were insanely high, which is one of the reasons I didn’t go
No idea… To be honest I think it was mostly based on the common idea of Dubai with all these superfancy hotels that cost a fortune.
I did a quick check on a hotel booking site, and turns out most of the 4-5 stars hotel go for around 350 USD /night.
At the same time for the same price I´d probably rather go to India, where there is something to see beyond the hotel, than Dubai…
Francesco
Of course you’d be hard pushed to find low cost hotels these days in major cities (apart from Lisbon) that are that economical…
Unless you like fleas 🙂
Michele
This is my personal opinion and not staff opinion, but I think Barcelona would be a great place to have the meeting in Oct 2009.
I’d love to see a meeting somewhere in the UK – Edinburgh?
Patrick Jones
Patrick
Thanks for taking the time to post a comment
Barcelona would be fantastic 🙂
I haven’t been there since I was about 10 years old, so it would be nice to go there again as an adult.
Edinburgh is a city I’ve always wanted to visit but I never had a chance to.
Michele