Travel Policy Workshop
 Wednesday, 13 February 2008
 ICANN Meeting
 New Delhi, India
 
 Okay.  I think my minute is past.  If anybody just walked into the room, I'm Doug Brent, chief operating officer at ICANN.
 The last presentation had a lot of -- there's been a lot of work in process.
 On this next topic, it really is not -- I think it's an opportunity to start to get, you know, community input on this travel support policy.
 And, I think -- I see Avri, I think she's been sitting through three presentations, but already Marilyn beat you to the first word on this.
 I did want to just provide a little up-front information.  I promise I won't spend more than ten to 15 minutes on it.  We'll leave 45 minutes for community comment.
 And, you know, go from there, see how long the discussion goes.
 So at least what I think the goal on this discussion -- what the goal on this discussion is, I can't remember who said it.  Somebody started this out there -- is to have a transparent and open process.
 I think one of the things that's most frustrating, I'll tell you, being -- you know, taking phone calls in Marina Del Rey, is who should be able to do what under what circumstances.  It is completely not scalable.  It's not, you know, fair to the extent life is fair.  It just doesn't set up a good process where people are going to be happy.
 I think that ICANN has organically grown up.  We've done things for good reasons in the past.  We're at a point of sufficient volume in all this where even though there's likely to be some pain in the transition of what we're doing now to some future world, it's really important to have clear -- in my view, this should be very clear.  It should be outlined, here's the policies we use and anyone should be able to inspect that and know what the answer is for travel support.
 So at least I'll state that as a goal from my point of view.
 As I side, I think this is an opportunity for input and discussion.  I think one minimum step is to provide an online forum.  I would really like to see some other way to energize the discussion around this, 'cause I agree with Marilyn, ultimately, this is a communitywide topic.  But it has to -- it also has to crystallize in some action.  I don't think we can let this sort of drag on for months and months and months.  It's causing pain, you know, for various of us.  You've got to get to at least a first-level decision that, then, like everything else would be reviewed, revised, and go on.
 We'll see if this is the process we agree to.
 In my view, staff would make a proposal to the board that the board would also buy into and that we would then go forward with the travel policy.
 So, you know, what has changed?
 ICANN has more resources now than it's had in the past.  And I think that invites a certain kind of conversation, one of which is, it gives you the opportunity, gives ICANN as a community, an opportunity to do big things that it hasn't done before.  I think, though, there's a little danger.  I've gone through a house remodeling project before.  And when you do that, the danger is that you think, well, I'll just spend 10% more on this one line item and, you know, this thing that's $300, I want to get the $350 version of it.  And pretty soon you find out, you know, you're 15% or 20% over on a really big number.  And you tend to do that little by little.  So I think that when you look at the big numbers that are involved in ICANN's expense and revenue budget -- and it is substantial -- I think it would be a mistake for us to look at that and say, well, I just want a very small part of that to do what I want.
 I think, you know, the board and senior staff at ICANN really are making a serious effort as to ensure that we can represent to the community that we're spending the money wisely.  I think there is this definite ongoing desire to increase participation.  While I don't think we have the absolute measures to prove it, I think there's a general belief right now that the fellowship program right now is being successful.
 I think, you know, we want to look at that and understand why that is.  But this increase in participation is something that's changed even more.
 Marilyn talked about the work on board members, which I think is very substantial.  Volunteers, it's a huge amount of work.  I'll even say those who get paid to do this every day, it's a huge amount of work.  It's an intense pace.  So I think that's a reality.
 And ICANN is becoming a more mature organization, a more mature institution, you know, what's the right approach?  So I think those are sort of -- that's sort of the question.
 You know, at least some of the challenges, I'm sure there's a very short subset list -- is balancing this organizational maturity professional with sort of the volunteer roots and spirit, you know, making sure somehow we don't lose -- you know, lose the way in that balance.
 We have an incredibly diverse group of participants in the ICANN world.  It's unbelievable.  I'm just a little over a year here, and go out and have lunch and see everyone who has shown up at this meeting.  Incredibly diverse.  As we think about rules that we might apply for travel, it's hard to think about how that will work out reasonably.
 I think that we all have a responsibility, and certainly, you know, board and staff, with a fiduciary responsibility to spend the money, that we want to make sure this registrant-derived revenue is going to appropriate sources.
 And there's a lot of different views.  I'll tell you that as we've gone through even recent months, I've gotten a lot of energized e-mail on this topic.  And as passionate as people are on one side of this topic, there's people who are just as passionate on the other side.
 Just to focus this discussion, although anybody can stand up and make a comment on what they would like, what I would like us to focus on is travel to ICANN meetings, not all travel in general, and travel by community members.
 Obviously there's people who are contractors.  ICANN staff, support staff.
 I think the focus of this conversation is on community members.
 We are excluding NomCom meetings which is often related to ICANN meetings because they are adjacent, nor intersessional meetings.
 If meeting structures end up being redesigned, one of the things that might be possible is maybe intersessional meetings will be become more important and bumping the priority of that discussion up may be important up, but just for today, maybe not.
 I am going to put up a couple of slides to give you some idea of numbers in dollars.  This is, again, back to my financial model discussion.  I am not proposing this.  I just want people to get some ideas of what some various costs would be.
 So I just said, first of all, what is the status quo of travel for ICANN.
 You will see a bunch of numbers up here.  Obviously, I put up a number of 60 GAC members.
 I got the number from Donna.  I think there are 37 GAC members here at this meeting.  Some of these numbers will vary, but I thought I would start out by writing down how many people are in various groups.
 I put together some budgetary costs.  Again, we could probably have fun debating all of these, but I said what will be some typical air travel costs, what would be the cost during a meeting.  And I said if you travel business class to a meeting, average might be $8,000, and $4,000 if you travel coach.  If you don't like those numbers, that's great.  Just multiply by different numbers when you do this math.
 This is sort of what the status quo of travel looks like.  We have board members and liaisons that travel and are supported by ICANN to do that.
 We have the NomCom named members of the GNSO council,  ccNSO Council and ALAC.  That's who typically travels to an ICANN meeting, paid for by ICANN.
 And using those multipliers that I put down, you end up with costs that look like this on a per-meeting basis.
 One of the options that people have said, you know, reduce travel.  What would that look like?  We could reduce travel, let's just say to board support.  Any volunteer who is traveling on their own basis would pay.
 I'm not going to go through these different options because I think it's just obvious.  We are taking numbers times dollars equals a total dollar.  And let me skip forward and say -- and certainly I want to make it clear again, no one on the ASO or NRO has been requesting -- in fact, said very vociferously we would not want ICANN to pay for our travel.  CCs, in general, have the same view, so no one is proposing this.  But if you work through these scenarios in terms of numbers of people, it could be anywhere between a couple hundred thousand dollars up to $4.5 million per meeting in travel, multiply times three for the three meetings of the year.  That's sort of the range of numbers we could be looking at in terms of travel support.
 I just thought I would throw out some viewpoints that have been expressed by community, board members and others as this travel discussion has come up.  I'm still within just ten minutes of my 12.
 Travel expenses should be ICANN funded but constituency directed.
 We heard that again in the registrar constituency yesterday.
 I just want to -- without defending a point of view, I just want to say one of the concerns there from sort of a Kevin Wilson CFO point of view is that it's hard as a corporation to budget money outside of the corporation that is spent by somebody else.  There are some fiduciary controls there.  That's something to work on, though, that idea.  And something -- I'm not saying it's always been loved or worked perfectly, but working with different groups, trying to get their needs and representing that in a budget, that could be one way to do it.
 There was a comment, travel support should be proportional to its ICANN contribution.
 Needs-based travel, which I think was something which Marilyn hit on again.  Changing the meetings to reduce the need.  Partial funding.  And an external body to assess needs.
 So I just collected some -- there have been some e-mails going around that I just pulled comments off of.
 So the one next step that's certain is after Delhi we will put up a public forum posting to start getting written comments from people, and let's take it away.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   Hello, Doug.  Bruce Tonkin speaking.
 Considering your budgets, you are assuming physical travel in all those cases.  Have you given much thought to improving the support for having a combination of face-to-face and people participating remotely?  Even potentially linking via video location, video conferencing key locations.  You could have, for example, simultaneous venues, at least for the time zones that are roughly the same.  Maybe a location in Europe and a location in India for this meeting.  Maybe in the U.S.  Maybe you just rotate it through the times of the day.  But at least you can have some periods of overlap.  I see you are only tracking people to a couple of centralized locations rather than bringing everyone to one single place in the world.
 And has ICANN been investigating, I know there's been some complaints about people participating in council meetings and other things here in this venue that we haven't really thought it through how best to support that combination between the face-to-face and the remote.  And because the remote participation is poor, people feel obligated to come.  And therefore, get more and more pressure, because they feel obligated to come, they also feel now like they need some support to come.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   I am certainly not going to respond point to point to everything people say.  But Bruce, you tweaked something in my mind, which is I don't think there has been a lot of thought either from a budget point of view or operationally in terms of simultaneous video.  I think some of the meeting discussions have talked about that.  In this fiscal year 2009 budget, we are actually budgeting for some improved participation tools.  One of the ones we are going to make available to the community as a whole is Adobe Connect.  I don't know if you have used Web X but it's similar, we think, in some ways better for ICANN.  It's in the budget for consideration.
 The second thing is I know conference calling has been so bad, particularly at this meeting and I think in general, but part of the problem is if you don't have Internet connectivity or the power goes down, I don't know how ICANN solves that problem.
 At the same time, I think there may be more we can do in terms of thinking through conferencing solutions that really work for our very unique situation.  And we actually have some investigative effort budgeted in the 2009 plan for that.
 >>BRUCE TONKIN:   (Inaudible).
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Right, right.  
 So I think that is something for us to explore.
 Marilyn.
 >>MARILYN CADE:   I will just comment on the importance of not abandoning face-to-face meetings, and assuming that we will build the same kind of interpersonal interactions and networks that, overall, also have to contribute to ICANN more broadly.  Although, you may be able to engage in an issue discussion, or even a policy development discussion, by using remote participation, there's also a terrific benefit from people meeting each other, building relationships, and deepening their ability to contribute to ICANN, not just on an issue.
 So as we look at strengthening the ability for remote participation, I think there are things we, indeed, to do, and you have identified some, and I know the Web forum you are proposing, the online forum you are proposing, should help.
 Certainly planning earlier, getting things formalized earlier, maybe even enabling discounts on group purchases or discounts on hotel rooms or other kinds of things have been used by other groups, not as smart as ICANN, to lower the cost of participation.  Going to hub cities, going back to some of the things we heard about this morning.  And groups have all done that.
 I do think that those are all good ideas.
 I think we have to keep in mind, while we do that, the unique consideration of this organization and that we must continue to have a reasonable amount of rotation around the globe to those cities that we -- those areas we would not go to.  And the experience of being in India is an experience all of us will continue to treasure as we go forward in our work at ICANN.
 So the balance is going to be important.
 I just want to say something about the importance of building a travel policy and a set of practices that enhance the trustworthiness of the organization and don't ultimately undermine it, because people can misunderstand it and think that -- somehow think that because you receive travel support that your opinion has changed.
 I think there's a way to deliver a balanced, needs-based travel participation program that can avoid those kinds of issues.  But I'll repeat something I said earlier this morning.
 If you accept travel funding to come to an ICANN meeting to participate in a policy development meeting, expect to spend your time focusing on that reason, not to go sightseeing and not to do other business.
 And I think people who are talking about receiving travel funding need to think about what that means.  Does that mean they need to have a partial subsidy or a partial contribution?  Because we want to maintain the integrity of the organization and provide the travel support tools that enable and support participation.
 One final point, and that is, just in relation to policy development in the council, the reason I have strongly supported a set amount of money going to the constituencies and asking the constituencies for a written plan on what they are going to do with it is that in our model of supporting work on policy by working groups, it is going to be 90% more likely that it is a constituency participant and not a councillor who may need the funding.
 A constituency ought to be able to make an informed decision about how they get the right person to the right place.
 >>SPEAKER5:   That's, Marilyn, for all those comments.
 >>GEORGE SADOWSKY:   George Sadowsky.
 I thank you very much for scheduling this session.  I think it took a little bit of courage because this is a very contentious area.  And I consider you and the session part of the solution and not part of the problem.
 I want to make a couple of points.
 With respect to the travel budget, it's big.  You spend a lot of money going from place to place, renting hotel rooms and the like.
 One of the objectives in addition to having a good travel policy is having a good set of policies that minimize that amount for the same amount of output.
 And I would like to stress the importance of forward intelligent planning here.
 This organization somehow decides, almost in the Nick of time, where you go, how you get there, what you do and so on.
 I used to be vice president of conferences for the Internet society, and we were planning 18 months out for venues, and we felt that this was the absolute minimum we could do in order to get good rates, in order to understand what we were getting into, in order to have time for the planning.
 Now, I know the people who do the planning here, and they are all good people.  So I don't understand what the problem is.
 But if you don't do good forward intelligent planning, what you get are hotels that are extraordinarily expensive -- I wonder where that could be?  You get infrastructure that isn't quite what it should be because there wasn't quite enough time to set it up.
 If you tell people where they are going two weeks ahead of time or four weeks ahead of time, they don't get the right plane rates, et cetera, et cetera.
 I think that's terribly important.
 The other thing I would like to talk about is intelligent implementation.
 You can have good travel policies, and if you don't implement right, then you maximize or minimize the wrong thing.
 And I would like to report on somebody who is here who is being paid for is having to go home on Thursday because there was no Friday flight to take them home.  They would have had to wait until Saturday morning.  And the policy was implemented in a sufficiently rigid way so that the person is leaving tomorrow.
 This is an example of minimizing the wrong thing.  If you implement policies in a very rigid way and bureaucratic way, you are not a bureaucracy yet.  You don't have to do that.  If you do that, what you are going to do is get rid of your volunteers.  That will really lower your travel costs, but I don't think it's what you want.
 So I would argue for that as an important part.  Make sure that there's sufficient flexibility so that people feel valued as volunteers and so that you can take advantage of their contributions, given very freely, and they feel good about giving them.
 Finally, I would just like to comment that the Nominating Committee, as you know, has been using Adobe Preview, and it's a step in the right direction.  I would encourage you to investigate very carefully at more advanced alternatives.  As Bruce suggested offline a moment ago, there is a lot of work in this area.  It certainly won't eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings.  It may minimize them a little bit, but it will certainly give you added value and give everybody in the process added value as they participate in the teleconferences.
 Thank you.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, George.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   Hey, Doug, it's Adrian Kinderis from the registrar constituency and also a member of the GNSO council.
 I'll be brief.  First of all, I think you are to be commended on this session, and we thank you for that.  And we also thank you for the access that you have provided us as registrars by attending our constituency meeting.
 I think you are going to hear a lot more from the registrars on this topic, and I certainly won't be putting forward all of the opinions today, but I know that you have heard some of them already.
 So suffice to say, as long as this an open discussion and everything, the registrars will certainly feel a lot happier.
 The point is yesterday, as you brought this up, and I know you brought this up, you were there for it, is the availability to have not a slush fund but an amount of money put aside for each constituency and with some parameters placed maybe on an authorization basis that that money could be spent.  And certainly the registrars are running with this idea and believe it could be something beneficial.  And that's whether the constituency deems that that may be travel or it may be the ability to hire someone to help write a document or statement or something.
 So all good ideas, we think, and we're keen to work with you in this process.
 Thank you.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thanks, Adrian.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:   Hello, it's Philip Sheppard from the business constituency and also GNSO council.
 I must say sometimes ICANN's uniqueness does make me smile, and sometimes impress.
 ICANN's uniqueness has probably, for the last ten years or so, certainly for 31 meetings we have relied on a substantial volunteer work force to do major policy initiatives.
 ICANN's uniqueness also is that we are holding a workshop now on discussions of how you fund volunteers.  I can't think of any other international organization who would be doing it in quite this way.
 That would be a staff and executive management decision.
 So let us note those uniquenesses and move on.  Probably healthy to discuss in general.
 On behalf of council, it's probably just worth reminding that in the statement we made in relation to form in general, the request there was from all council in terms of consideration for funding.  So that's the bigger view.
 Speaking more independently in terms of a view from the constituency, myself, I think -- I have been in a number of other organizations that have looked at funding, and I think there are some very simple rules.  You don't need to have a complexity in terms of administrative systems, you don't want an expenses-based type funding.  The last thing you want is the accounting department dealing with everybody's hotel bills.
 Allowance systems exist.  Allowance norms for every country in the world exist.  Brent, if I sent it to you I certainly sent it to Paul some time ago, a copy of the current U.N. technical allowances rates.
 So I think things like that can make the system very manageable, certainly from a budget perspective it makes it highly predictable.
 And I would certainly encourage you to go that way in terms of the way you look at it.
 I noted on your slide, and I like very much the very careful use of the phrase of "registrant derived funds."  I think that phrase was accurate.  And I hope that we will recall that as we continue these discussions.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you very much.  If I could just quickly respond to one thing you said, Philip, which is today, the way this fellowship program travel is working is through -- it has such a clear goal, which is for a given amount of money, maximize participation.
 So it's very clear for that group of people that coach travel is the way to go.  And we are doing it on a per-diem basis based on the city they are in.
 And while everything you do has some glitches associated with it, it is probably the smoothest working part of this travel element.
 So it's just what you are saying.
 Yeah, thank you.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Good afternoon.  I am Jeff Neuman.  I just want to repeat something I said this morning, in this morning's council meeting.
 You know, when you do provide funding for an individual, I just want you to also realize you are sending a message that -- and especially in light of the council, the GNSO council, you are sending the message that that person on the council is more important than anybody else in the policy development process.
 So it's not just a decision of who you pay for.  Just you pick the council and you are going to pay for all of them.  But you are basically sending the message.  And I want to echo Marilyn's comments that, you know, as the council is being reformed and as the GNSO is being reformed, to include working groups and other policy development mechanisms, that the role of the council hopefully in the policy development will be reduced.
 The other thing I want to just make an observation on is that you have set up some public participation chat rooms and other things during the meetings.  But I just want to say that I have been on the chat room now for four or five individual meetings and almost no one from ICANN is on it, and there's always questions that are put on it but nobody is monitoring it, nobody is reading the questions.
 So if we set up the mechanisms, let's actually follow through.  And right now, I am waiting.  Vittorio is on the chat room and he wants to ask questions but he doesn't know where to send the questions to.  There is no e-mail address provided. 
 I was hoping he would write the questions as I was up here because he does have some things he wants to say but he hasn't written them yet.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Do you have access to those questions right now?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   No, I thought he would send it in these couple minutes.  He said "give me a second," and he hasn't written them yet.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   I would just say to that last point, it's disappointing to here because I know we, as a stuff, discussed exactly this issue and tried to assign someone to cover each one of these sessions.
 It objection like Kieren might have something he wants to say.  I don't know.
 >>KIEREN McCARTHY:   I think it's worthwhile me standing up with regard to that comment.
 We do have systems in praise.
 I think what's unusual this time is people are actually using it.
 I have sat in chat rooms for the last three meetings and tried to force people to ask questions.  And I'm delighted to see people using it.
 >>KIEREN McCARTHY:   I think it's worthwhile standing up with regard to that comment.
 We do have systems in place.  I think what's unusual this time is that people are actually using it.
 I have sat in chat rooms for the last three or four meetings and tried to force people to ask questions.
 I'm delighted to see people using it.
 I have been following as many as possible, and I will prod the staff to make sure that every one is monitored next time.
 I thought they were being largely covered, and I have personally asked several questions in chat rooms during meetings, and I'll continue to do that.  If there's any way we're falling down, I'll make sure that for the next meeting it doesn't happen.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   To add to that, it's not just staff.  It would be nice, for example, during the council meeting, instead of talking on there, apparently they have a separate jabber chat room that they use.  It would be nice if they joined the chat room that ICANN set up for the meeting, maybe even board members during the public forum, so that other people can read it and see the comments so that someone doesn't have to walk up to the mike and say, "By the way, on the chat room, so-and-so is saying this."  That way it can be addressed in realtime.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   I want to quickly say that, you know, one of the things I think as we look toward some of these more integrated tools, jabber is great.  But it is sort of nice also that some of these tools have screen-sharing and chat and, you know, different levels -- different groups of chat all integrated in one place.  So I think that's something we should look at.  Thanks for the comments.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   Chuck Gomes from VeriSign.
 A couple of points.  First of all, I'd like to follow up on something that Marilyn Cade shared with regard to the volunteer issue.  It's important for us to consider as we look at this issue.
 I fully agree that there are tons of volunteers that spend great amounts of time and that it's not their regular job.  But it's also true that a lot of us, as volunteers, are actually volunteering primarily because we want to advocate things that we're particularly interested in and that support our organizations or our beliefs or whatever.  So I do think that Marilyn's right, we have to have some sort of a balance where if there's going to be ICANN funding for something, I mean, I'm not sure that the registrants of the world should be funding special interests of different categories.
 Certainly not in totality.  So I commend her on that point, 'cause I think it is a very important one as we're looking at this.
 Secondly, I just want to share something that I shared in the GNSO Council meeting this morning.  As we look at this, we need to do it in a -- with a good business sense.  As you indicated in the previous session, this could amount to quite a significant amount of money.  And it may be the best way to spend it.  But assuming that there aren't unlimited funds -- and I think that's a fair assumption -- when we look at this, we all, in our various organizations and roles within the ICANN community, need to make sure we decide is this the best place.  If we're going to have more funding for travel, that may mean less funding for something else.  And we need to weigh those things and look at the total picture, not just the travel needs.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, Chuck.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   Hi.  Eric Brunner-Williams from CORE.
 We're -- the jabber rooms, the chat rooms, these are all ephemeral and, of course, subject to interruptions when networks go out, local or remote.  And we're looking for a mechanism or mechanisms to help us do collaborative work, that is, for all of us out here to work together to some useful purpose.
 So ICANN has historically used fairly static documents, that is, some piece of several thousand words published on a Web site which sits there like a rock.  And the alternative is the transient nature of this ephemeral moment now, this jabber going on and my words being captured here on the transcript.
 We don't have any middle ground.
 The ICANN blog is a stab at that.  And I think that it should be stabbed harder.
 It's a way for us to not be stuck in the present, which requires us to either be somewhere all together, or to figure out how to make distributed communications work in realtime.  It takes the pressure off of us for realtime communication.  And it also doesn't commit us to those static documents that lie there like great, enormous, multi thousand-word rocks, which is how ICANN has historically communicated to those of us who aren't here present.
 So I'm not saying that blogging cures cancer or will cause world peace.  But it is a middle ground between ephemera and static presentations of our current mechanism means for working together.  Thanks.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you.
 Can I ask you a quick question, would you think of something as prosaic as threaded news groups to be a partial answer along those lines or is there something special about the blog that's working or started to work for you.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   I've got many years of blogging behind me.  I've run the Koufax Awards, so I basically know, I guess, more about the left-hand side of the blogging dial in the U.S. than many people should.
 It's not the medium; it's the attitude.
 It doesn't really matter which particular content management system you use, which particular -- whether it's a Web portal in the Scoop model or Web portal in the Drupal model, or a more time-organized journal, such as WordPress or Movable Type.  That's really not the issue.
 The issue is, unbutton your shirt-sleeves, roll them up, and start writing, and take the risk of writing about policy, without thinking that corporate counsel is going to come and whack you with a rolled-up newspaper for having said something that's -- you know.
 So we say things, we write things.  And it's really the practice of writing that is the importance here.  So whether it was threaded news groups or blog with comments or multiple blogs with links between them and comments, right now, you actually find out more dynamic, useful information on, you know, circle ID and other blogs which are about us than anything we actually do ourselves.
 So that's what we need to do, is step into the pool and get wet.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   That helped me.  Thank you.
 >>WENDY SELTZER:   Wendy Seltzer.  I came up here as a former member of the At-Large Advisory Committee and now liaison to the board, both of those as ICANN-funded travel positions.  And I think I've been able to do useful things with that and want to emphasize the importance, I think, of funding people to come to these meetings who can share the nonfinancial interests, the public interests, the other interests, so that the meeting is not populated only by those who have the wherewithal or business backing to fly to varied spots around the globe.
 And we all know because we have these meetings three times a year that an enormous amount of the business of ICANN is conducted in the face-to-face discussions, especially the business of meeting across constituencies, meeting potential partners and potential forces of cooperation that wouldn't meet sitting in the silos of constituencies and interest groups and supporting organizations, but gathering face to face for all of the wonders of the Internet -- and we're all here because we think its wonders need to be preserved -- it doesn't yet offer us all of the same immediacy of contact that these face-to-face meetings do.
 And so I think when ICANN hold one of these meetings, it is saying it's important that people come here for that opportunity.  And so, by saying that, ICANN is also saying it's important that the public interest and those without so much money in the pot are also important participants there.
 And I -- speaking on behalf of public, many of whom are registrants and also want their domain name registration fees kept down, I still think it's important to use a small piece of that to bring a broad cross section of the participants.  And I'm not limiting that to a call for funding of ALAC, but to suggest that where it's needed to bring people into these important discussions, that it should be available.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, Wendy.
 George again.
 >>GEORGE SADOWSKY:   Yeah, I'd like to comment on some of my experiences as chair of the Nominating Committee for the last three years.
 The NomCom travel is largely subsidized, and, in my experience, except for some discussions of the relative merits of two candidates, nothing generates more heat and excitement than the class of airline service that you have used to come to the meeting and what you have been responsible -- what you've been able to get out of the airline whatever.
 Now comfort is great.  And if we had more money, we could just buy net jets.  It has a nice name and they send you a private plane whenever you want to go anywhere.  But we don't.  And, nevertheless, we do want to have some rules that allow for comfort in certain situations where travel is really onerous.
 But I would argue the following -- I am not sure everybody in the room will agree with me -- that in addition to the notion of feeling comfortable and being ready to do business, the notion of equity among various groups in the ICANN community matters a lot.  We have multiple groups of people here, some staff, some board, some elected, some nonelected, some volunteers, some not -- from not for profit organizations, and so on.  And whatever solution you have, make sure that it maximizes the feeling of fairness among members of the community.
 That may be more important, in fact, than whether the comfort level is a little higher or a little lower.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, George.
 [ Applause ]
 >>KIEREN McCARTHY:   Talk about using the chat rooms, here we go.  Vittorio's comment.
 I'm one of the unfunded guys, someone who actually had business to do in Delhi, being a volunteer of two active working groups, but for whom the current procedure was sufficiently rigid that no one could find a hole in it to pay for his travel.  I have seen years of ICANN-funded travel for the ALAC, most of them very good.  We've achieved a lot (inaudible) sight-seeing all the time.  So I'd recommend that people stop being funded just for the hats that they wear and start being funded according to what they have to do at the meeting.
 And to whether they actually did it when being funded in the past and how much they contribute to policy discussions.
 Also, partial funding is an interesting idea, though some volunteers will continue to need full funding.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   You know, I was having a hard time hearing everything.
 Thank you, Kieren.
 Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Avri Doria as a NomCom appointee.
 I'm trying to understand some of the things that have both been said and some of the things that were shown.  So do I understand correctly that one of the models that you're considering is a model where you wouldn't pay for NomCom appointees to come?
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Avri, I was not -- I'm not considering any model.  All I was trying to --
 >>AVRI DORIA:   That was one of the models, though?  I did understand it correctly?
 >>DOUG BRENT:   All I was trying to say is there's a whole -- depending on how you think about this, there's a whole big range of expenses that you could pay, from a couple hundred thousand, to millions of dollars per meeting.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   That was the first thing I wondered, is why would a pure volunteer come if someone didn't even or consider their expenses worth paying.
 I consider some of the NomCom appointees to be similar to staff except they don't get paid for their time.  When we talk about equity, I tend to think of that as equity.
 While I've been sitting here listening, certain things have come, like certain people believe that we come just because we want to do some touristing, or we're not working hard enough, or that perhaps we shouldn't have our expenses paid because we might have some of our own viewpoints that while we're here we might wish to express.
 And sort of, I guess, as a NomCom appointee who wouldn't have come here in the first place without NomCom saying, "Hey, come here," I just want to make sure that we remember that most of the people we bring in through the NomCom process wouldn't bother with ICANN otherwise.
 Once they get here, certainly they start caring.  They start having interest, they start seeing how their interests mix with the other interests, and they even start having opinions.
 But they don't necessarily have them before they come.
 So to sort of think of them as just another form of lobbyist because they perhaps happen to have a viewpoint in some other part of their life, I think, is denigrating to some extent the notion of bringing in a NomCom volunteer.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, Avri.
 Chuck, Avri, no?  That's it?
 Go ahead.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   I just have a question.  I know it's not on the -- it's something we kind of haven't talked about.  You had the board up there.
 But do you have a number of staff -- do you have the number that you could give us of staff members that come to these meetings?
 >>DOUG BRENT:   It's been an ever-growing number.
 I don't know what it was, you know, once upon a time.  I think at this meeting, there's probably close to 60 staff members at the meeting.
 I can tell you that certainly one way to cut costs of the meeting would be to cut the number of staff coming.  Many of the staff who wouldn't come would readily volunteer for that, you know, to be in that group.
 And so I think that, you know, from my point of view, you know, it's probably widely known, for this meeting, there was a lot of cost pressure, not just on -- on the ICANN corporation as well, 'cause the venue was relatively expensive.
 So staff traveled coach to this meeting.  As I can tell you as a relatively large American sitting in that coach seat for 20 hours, it was a small fit.
 So, you know, from my point of view, what we have to do, before you -- we could -- I think you'd have sort of a staff response that said, you know, don't fly 20 hours.  Maybe that's okay with me.  As long as we keep the -- this sort of nature of the meetings the way they are today, my sense is that that sort of enables, you know, having the staff that works with various constituents, particularly the policy staff here, that really facilitates the meeting, makes it a better meeting for the volunteers who are here.
 I think if we imagine a really different kind of a meeting, you know, maybe you could do that with a lot less staff.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   I think -- and I wasn't making any kind of -- I was just kind of asking just for numbers.
 But the other point I wanted to make is, people address comfort.  And I saw a number of things, well, we should get business class or I just want people out here to not make any assumptions that because we're in a company that we're allowed to take business class.  That a number of us in companies, you know, ride coach.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Right.  I understand.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Just to clear that kind of misconception.
 If we do ride business, it's because we used our own miles to upgrade.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Which is a good thing.
 Again, -- well, -- George, you're up for the third time.  Okay.
 >>GEORGE SADOWSKY:   Making up for lost time.
 Avri's comment interested me.
 I'm not sure that -- even for NomCom members, that we should assume that attendance and travel being paid for these meetings is an entitlement.  And I'm wondering, going back to an earlier comment about people who don't participate in the activities when they get here -- whether we shouldn't say that activity on behalf of ICANN outside of these meetings is as important as activity inside.  I know that the constituencies have incredibly active processes going on during the year.
 If somebody doesn't participate in those, why should they be paid to come to a meeting here?  I'm wondering if some kind of -- I wouldn't call it a report card, but some kind of assessment of is this person contributing should be a factor in deciding whether travel should be a benefit accorded to them.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Thank you, George.
 It sort of looks like we're running out of gas on comments right now.
 I'm certainly not going to make any effort to summarize the comments that have been made.
 I think that, you know, there's a lot of different views.  Maybe just as a cheap way out of trying to summarize that, what I will say is at least again personally, I think it's very important we be able to write down what we're doing in a way that everybody can inspect so that, you know, we can make it clear what the policies are and what's being done and, you know, get away from sort of a one-off decision-making process and get it to be something that the community sees and can we act to.
 I really appreciate the comments that we've gotten from the group today, and, again, as soon as this meeting is over, we'll open -- did you want to make a comment, Thomas?
 We will open up a public forum to get these comments.  If any constituency -- and I know this has been a discussion in various groups -- wanted to have a special meeting to discuss this topic with me or others on staff, I would be happy to do that.  I think the next step is going to be to extent that public comment, get -- you know, get people's views and try to put that into something that we can make operational.  Thomas.
 >>THOMAS NARTEN:   Okay, Thomas Narten here.  I'll echo what some other people have said, thanks for having this session.  I think this is a good session to have.  I'm glad to talk about it.  As someone who has been here for almost three years now, I have to say my understanding of what the current travel policy is is kind of a mystery.  So I'm looking forward to having this discussion going.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   Great.  Thank you, Thomas.
 And, you know, obviously, if anybody wants to buttonhole me privately and tell me what they want to say, I'd be happy to hear that as well.
 Thank you all.  I think we're done.  Is this the last public forum session for today?
 >> No.
 >>DOUG BRENT:   There's another one?
 So I will just provide a little space between this one and the next one.  Thank you all very much.
 [ Applause ]