[NCUC-EC] Who Can Come to Singapore?

[William Drake]

Hello

I know it’s the holiday season but I really need to hear back from people on the following.  As I’ve mentioned a number of times on the ncuc-discuss list and at Constituency Day and related meetings, last year I applied for and received budget support to do two special events in Singapore just prior to the meeting: 1) $6,950 for a new NCUC EC ‘retreat’ of sorts on Thursday 20 March to discuss working methods, set plans, and get people up to speed a bit on ICANN and GNSO; and 2) and $11,100 for a policy conference on 21 March.  After an extended bit of bugging staff I’ve finally just received confirmation that we do have a conference space on the 21st for 150 people, so that’s on, and we’ll need soon to start getting the word out.  

The next things I'll need to do are discuss with Fadi and senior staff 1) possible budgetary adjustments for travel, 2) logistics for the two events, and 3) finances regarding the conference—I’ve had prior conversations about focusing the meeting on IG @ Brazil and beyond (perhaps including the High Level Panel, which is no longer calling itself that, but I can’t get into the new acronym for the Panel on the Future of Internet Governance Cooperation and Mechanisms) and making it more open to the wider community in exchange for increased financial support, and need to follow up with a concrete proposal.

Against that backdrop, this message concerns item 1. 

Since last year, ICANN provides NCUC with three fully funded travel slots per meeting (economy flight, conference hotel, per diem).  One goes to the chair, who has to be there to run Constituency Day and do other stuff.  The other two have gone to EC members--- although in principle if there was a member involved in other stuff, such as a ‘hot’ policy process that would be debated at a given meeting the EC could decide to fund such a person instead.  That didn’t happen last year, but we did dip into NCUC’s a bit for some support (I’ll send a separate message about financial/budgetary stuff).  In addition, NCSG receives slots 3 per meeting, one of which would go to a NCUC rep on the NCSG EC (could be the NCSG PC as well, I suppose).  

Bottom line: for the retreat, at present we have a special budget allocation that would cover the logistics (room, comms, transcription, etc.) and the extra night of hotel; and regular travel support for at least two of the five regional EC members to come to Singapore.  An additional extra night of hotel is also possibly coverable through conference support, or we could do something through NCUC existing funds or some new fundraising, TBD.

The immediate question is what to do about the other three EC members flights and hotels for the week.  One option we’ve pursued in the past is to split up the travel allotments, e.g. someone takes the plane and another takes the hotel and then we try to find cheap alternatives for the missing parts with NCUC funds, but ICANN Accounting Dept. doesn’t like doing this.  What I will do instead is try to bug them into doing something else they don’t like to do, which is reallocate funds they’ve awarded us in principle.  Maybe we could meet informally outside the conference venue without the comms and other logistics in order to save on the thousands ICANN would spend on that.  Or maybe they could reallocate the monies promised for print materials that we haven’t used.  Or we can dip into NCUC’s bank account, although preferably not further than $5000….we’ll see what makes sense.  Worst comes to worst, we might have to have someone participating remotely—ICANN’s RM is generally very good, but this is of course not the preferred approach.  

But before I get into any of this with staff, I need to know who is able to come to Singapore.  There’s no point in haggling and harassing them to change budget allocations etc. if some folks are unable to attend anyway.  So I need to hear from all five of you:  If there is travel support, can you come to Singapore

a) For the retreat, which would mean the arriving the 19th 

b) For the policy conference, which if you’re not already there would mean arriving the 20th  

c) For the ICANN meeting itself, the normal travel support being Friday 21st check and Friday 28th check out.

Thanks,

Bill



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William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (w), wjdrake at gmail.com (h),
  www.williamdrake.org
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