Travel Support ICANN Meeting Sydney, Australia Monday, 22 June 2009 >> Well, thank you all for coming. There's free drinks at 7:00, and we'll see you then. >>KEVIN WILSON: Hello, everyone. My name is Kevin Wilson. I'm the chief financial officer. And the subject of this workshop is travel support guidelines. And while I'm going on to the Web site on the schedule to find the presentation, which is at the bottom of the -- that schedule item, let me introduce Steve Antonoff, who's our director of human resources. And also responsible for much of ICANN's administration, including the travel administration. The goal of the travel support guidelines and this workshop in particular is to clarify why we -- why ICANN supports travel, for whom, which travelers we support, and for each particular group of the ICANN community, and to clarify how the community feedback into that process is balanced and weighed and synthesized in order to come up with the travel support guidelines. We also have a strong goal based on community feedback to administer the travel and make sure that it's administered effectively so that community members can focus on the policy-making efforts of ICANN. So the actual goal, in my words, is to become a boring subject so that the -- those who are supported come to the meetings and have an easy and transparent time and that the travel support guidelines are fairly seamless and address the particular issues that need to be addressed. So the first question is, why do we provide support. There's three basic principles. First is to facilitate policy development. Sometimes when I come up with a travel support question, my CFO DNA kicks in, and I wanted to say, no, that we shouldn't be spending money on travel, that's an unnecessary cost. But in reality -- and the community feedback has been very clear as I've learned more and more about the ICANN organization -- much of the work is done face to face. We continue to provide efforts and work remotely, intersessionally, et cetera. But there's so much work done at the ICANN meetings and that it's important to facilitate that by providing travel support. There's also a desire to increase participation for those who possibly couldn't afford to come otherwise. And the third one is to provide outreach, to reach out to members possibly outside of ICANN or those who are entering into the ICANN tent, and therefore it allows them to provide outreach. Hi, Janice. So the -- striking the right balance from a financial aspect as well as getting the ICANN work done is the art of the travel support guidelines. This slide is a brief rundown of the development of the travel support. And like many guidelines and policies at ICANN, it's very much community-based. And so this just highlights the community involvement aspect of it. So the fiscal year '09, the current year's travel guidelines, were kicked off with a workshop that was held in the Delhi meeting in February of 2008. There was a draft support procedure posted in May. After community input, particularly at the Paris meeting, in addition to conference calls and an online forum, the final travel support procedures were circulated with the board and then posted on the Web site. And those were used for the basis for all the travel support that occurred this year in the fiscal year 2009 year for the Cairo meeting, the Mexico City meeting, and this meeting, the Sydney meeting. For the fiscal year '10 travel support guidelines, which were, essentially, kicked off by the prior year by the fiscal year '09 guidelines, which indicated that the whole travel support guidelines would be reviewed again, so, to develop the current -- the current fiscal year '10 travel support guidelines, we initiated that with the intensive effort with the Mexico City workshop and then opened up an online comment forum. And then there was also conference calls with various constituency groups, community groups, to provide feedback into what worked, what didn't work, and what they would like -- what the community members wanted to change. And from that, staff synthesized the results of all that feedback and posted a draft travel support guidelines on the 3rd of June. And that actually is still open for comment. Last I checked, there was just a few comments left. So -- a few comments that had been posted. And I think that that is closing the 6th of July I believe it is. And so the plan is, after that's closed, then we'll post the final travel support guidelines. The assumptions, the travel support guidelines, the draft ones that are on the Web site now that some of you have seen, those numbers and financial impacts of that travel support guideline is incorporated into the draft fiscal year '10 operating plan and budget, which is expected to be considered and voted on and approved by the board this Friday at the board meeting. This is a chart which shows the travel support that was provided for the community in fiscal year '09. And I wish I could show that a little bit bigger. Let me see if I can make it grow. Can you read that now more easily? Good. Okay. So the columns to the right show what was in the travel procedure which was posted last August. And it shows the 13 GNSO members, the 12 ccNSO members, eight ASO, ALAC at I think it was 23, and then fellows at approximately 25, NomCom at -- this shows three per meeting there, and then the At-Large Summit down here. So these columns over to the right are the assumptions that went into the development of the fiscal year '09 budget for that process. We can explain those a bit. And these are -- Anyway, so those -- that's how the budget was developed. The columns in the left show the travel support that was actually provided for the community members. And we can see that, so that it breaks down. In general, there was less travel -- overall, there was less travel support provided than was shown in the budget, and for a variety of reasons that we can talk about. And then, obviously, tried to do my best to pull out the summit in those calculations as well. Let me see if I can do the next one. The -- as part of the community feedback, we received quite a bit of comments. I think there was something like 20 pages of comments alone on travel support guidelines. And here's just a quick recap on some of the comments that were made. Some suggested that ALAC reduce to the supporting organizations level. Others requested that ALAC not reduce its level of support. In addition, there was requests for more face-to-face general assemblies or regional meetings with the RALOs. The GNSO constituencies requested more support, and up to the all- councillor level, there was one comment made that they would either have either all support or no support rather than half support just because of the time spent in trying to allocate that. The GNSO Council members also -- there was some indication of request for -- at the board level, meaning flying at business class. The other comment was made about the GNSO restructuring would necessitate more support as well. And then this year, actually, I think at the Paris meeting, there was actually a formal request for GAC support which was formalized to this process. The -- let me put this a little bit smaller. Hopefully, you can read that still. The -- there was also some community members that expressed objection to the -- to travel funding at all or some who felt that the travel funding was too much as a part of the ICANN budget. So what we heard in a bit more detail from the community, in addition just to who was supported, there were some comments about the per diem being okay, some -- there were several comments about the per diem rates set for some cities weren't enough. There was some concern about the way the per diems were calculated in terms of were the travel days calculated or not. Some requested extra support for when they had extra costs such as visa or they wanted to have -- another one was a request for higher economy-class ticket on an airfare so that they could upgrade more easily. And number of people suggested that business class was important. Other ones are relatively small but important, that there be free Internet access or Internet access be reimbursed on the hotel, in the hotel rooms. And as far as administration of travel, Steve is here to help support that. I'd like to take a second to explain the role that Steve and I play. Our offices are next to each other, many of you know. And so we -- Steve is responsible for administration. I'm responsible for the -- for the policy or the guidelines development. And we work very, very closely on balancing that. And so Steve and his team have done an excellent job, I believe, from the feedback we have received thus far, in answering some of these questions. But some of the questions included, I would say not some -- many, many questions concerning visas and the timing of visas and just general clarity on how visas would be handled. There was a request to book individual members' own travel, comments made such as, "We could save money if we could book our own travel." There was just basic administration issues on being not responsive to e- mails or confusing e-mail addresses, that sort of thing. And then there has been some comments and concern about inconsistency across groups that the various community groups weren't treated fairly or weren't treated evenly across the board. And then there was a general comment about timeliness, that it was very important to book travel early to get the good rates, book travel early to take care of some of the visa challenges. So what else we heard. We heard that travel support is an effective tool to help advance the work of ICANN stakeholders. So I got to take off my CFO hat and cost-cutting mode and say, okay, it's important to get the work done. Some would like to have other venues selected. So there was quite a few comments on, "Let's be really cognizant of the way we book our meetings and how many meetings we have and the structure and how much remote participation tools we use." So a lot of those comments were passed over to the public participation group to make sure that those were processed. And specifically the comment was made that it's not just ICANN's costs. It's the costs of the community members or the companies or the organizations that support the community members, so to factor those into the venue selection and other aspects of travel. I think I covered all the ones there. In fiscal year '10, that brings the question of what's the draft travel guidelines that are now posted and that are factored into the fiscal year '10 budget. So the guidelines that we have support the amount of travel that are supported for each group for the fiscal year. And so that's the travel support guidelines. The travel support summaries describe how travel support is provided for each meeting. So the -- and the first summary was for the Sydney meeting. And then the travel support reports describe who received the support. And that's also posted on the Web site. So those three words we've -- I think we've come up with our dictionary now that we have agreement, so the word "travel policy" or "procedures" is an acronym -- the words with travel support guidelines which identify how much support, the summaries, which give the travelers individual instructions on how to handle and follow the guidelines and how to handle the booking of travel for an individual meeting. And then reports are the actual individual reports. So the -- See if I can make this a little bigger. So the support -- the travel support guidelines as drafted now include the following. So over on the left, you can see the various community groups. And then on the -- the other column describes the support. So the GNSO has increased -- suggested that the support be increased so that all the council members plus the two liaisons would be supported, which is more than what was in FY '09. So FY '10 shows that at essentially 23 supported travelers for each meeting. And I want to say this. For each of these groups, the intention is to have a travel supported -- the number of travelers supported. I might slip and you might think it means council members, but it's not intended to. It's up to the individual community group to decide how they allocate the travel, whether it's for the -- for the council members or for others that are working on working groups or however they decide that they feel is most fair and most effective in getting the work of ICANN done. The ccNSO is remaining at half the travel support. And that's essentially the chair, the NomCom appointees, and half the remaining councillors, rounded up. And the ASO also remains at half support equivalent, which translates to eight members, which has traditionally been declined by the -- those members. The board, all 21 board members and liaisons traveling at business class are in the travel support guidelines. At-large, the assumption is that it's ten council members, plus an allowance for ten RALO members at the ICANN meetings, or general assemblies. And as Cheryl and others have made clear, we -- the intention is to make that flexible so that the -- we're expecting -- >> You said ten. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: You did. My hand was heading across this way. >>KEVIN WILSON: That's what that was. Thank you very much for correcting me. 15 council members plus for the ten RALOs. That's my DNA. My CFO DNA. I'm already trying to cut costs. Apologize for that. But the point being that the other areas I'm sensitive to as I was heading into that is there's a flexibility built into this so that we're not forcing the RALOs to come to every meeting and we're not forcing the general assemblies. We're acknowledging that there might be some creative ways to stay within budget, be fiscally responsible and get the work done in the most effective way. The fellowships are at roughly about 25 as well for the fiscal year '10, which is essentially the same level of support in FY '09. The NomComs are supported for the NomCom meetings. SSAC, no support other than the -- obviously, the liaison to the board. And RSSAC the same. And then GAC, this is new support for fiscal year '10, which allows six members per meeting to be -- to provide support for the six members, with a focus on the least-developed and lesser-developed countries. Okay? So what are the accomplishments thus far? We believe we listened to and synthesized the feedback from the community as one of the active readers of all those comments, I can certainly say I read every word and did my best -- we did our best to synthesize the feedback. But we'd like to get feedback on how we did the feedback. We posted the draft travel support guidelines at the beginning of June, as we mentioned. After that feedback. We issued a travel summary for Sydney. And that was an important document. And I think the sense I have received thus far is the administration of travel as led by Steve and his team are -- that travel summary was a key document to allow us to do that. We've also posted the travel reports for the Cairo meeting and the Mexico City meeting and sort of a draft of the Sydney meeting, meaning that the names were there. We'll obviously not know the amounts until after the Sydney meeting. But you'll be able to see those travel reports. There's also been travel administration improvements, including setting up a one-stop serves all e-mail account that will not be all caps and won't be anonymous in the future, but we did set that up. We established an exceptions process. And as CFO, I'm the owner of the final authority, but I just wanted to communicate in the spirit of consensus, bottom-up stakeholder approach, Steve and I and his team and others are -- including the policy group, are actively involved in addressing exceptions. We don't want to telegraph and memorialize what the process is for exceptions. Want to keep it a little bit of a mystery. And the reason why is, if a rule gets out, then we notice that people tend to kind of game the situation on that. So we tend to watch that. We did notice this time, though, that the number of exceptions that were positive was about equal with the number of exceptions that were negative. So for all those people that needed to stay an extra day or wanted to stay an extra day and asked to do that to save a little bit of money, there were other people that, for various reasons, visa, transit, et cetera, were charged more. So from a budget impact, I think that's working pretty well. And as we notice patterns in our exceptions decision-making, we'll certainly add those to the FAQ, and then eventually get them into the travel support guidelines so that it won't be a mystery. That's our intention. We also clarified all the roles and responsibilities, probably the most important thing is the policy support group. NICK, Glen for GNSO. Gabi for the ccNSO, and, obviously, others, are not in the travel support business. So we're happy to say that Steve's team and I have taken on that role so they can focus on what they need to do. They're still involved behind the scenes. But want to keep on encouraging the community to work with us first, and then we'll work with the policy people to make sure that we're not making poor decisions that are -- you know, if someone critical needs to be at a meeting, we don't want to be having the CFO making a decision on a dollar amount and balance that. We also engaged with active stakeholders. There's a number of community members that are very active and have lots of expertise in travel, some that even own travel agencies and probably should own travel agencies. And so we've actively engaged them -- or both. We've developed a template capturing all Sydney travel information. And this is a minor detail that probably no one reading this would think is helpful, but it's extremely helpful, because now we have a master sheet. It's not a silo organization. Any staff member that's been involved in the travel and eventually on the Web site will have full access. And it ties into our accountability and transparency, which is just wonderful for those of us who have to administer it. And then we've also prepared the template for the Sydney travel support, I think I mentioned before. We've also completed a guideline for cash payment at the ICANN meetings. Some of you noticed challenges for that at the Mexico City meeting. And we've addressed that straight on. Obviously, the At- Large Summit complicated -- compounded the problems with the amount of people and the amount of new people. But we've also -- we have standard procedures and segregation of duties and accountability. And so I'm much happier about the -- about security, et cetera, et cetera. So we've got a process. And like anything, it's just -- no magic, just, you know, making sure the trains are running on time. And then we also -- Steve took the initiative with his team to develop a lesson learned document, which we actually already have an early draft of. So we're -- I would put that as in our hope to -- the way we stated it is, our intention was to have Sydney be silver medal and make a lot of improvements. And the sense I got from many of you is that we've made some great strides. Our goal is to have a gold medal by Seoul. And that postmortem feedback document that we've already received internally from our own staff is really helpful. But we're also -- appreciate getting comments on how to make it more efficient and effective. Anyway, so that's that. I mentioned the open comment period is closing on July 6th, and shortly thereafter, we'd like to post the final travel support guidelines for the fiscal year. And then Steve and his team would deliver the travel summary for Seoul. And I have a strong feeling his intention is to post that much earlier in the process so that we can -- those who can book travel and -- can do that as soon as possible. So the bottom line goal, just to be really clear, is to make this a very boring subject and hopefully, you know, gently leave the radar of those who are involved in the policy-making process of ICANN so that you can focus on what's really important and not have the discussions going on about travel in the meetings. Okay? Thank you very much. Any -- open up for questions or comments. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: David. >> Yes. I am Chung Laung David Liu from ISOC Taiwan. We strongly encourage ICANN not to reduce the level of support for ALAC, and, indeed, consider the possibility of increasing the level of support. At large, by definition, that we are all grass root netizens. We come here to interact with our at-large colleagues. We listen to the presentation of the supporting organizations, and we bring back what they have told us to our grass roots netizens. Sitting with me are two colleagues of mine from Taiwan ISOC. We receive no support from any source. We are in and out government agency. We are not business units. It happens that all three of us are with universities and we manage to request support, special support, for us to come here, because we think this is very important for the grass roots units to interact with other grass root units and to interact with other ICANN organizations. I would like to point out in particular, please consider support for units from the so-called non-English speaking geographic places, because, indeed, I think this kind of interaction is extremely important. Not as to the health of us, but also to the health of ICANN. Thank you. >>KEVIN WILSON: Thank you very much. Darlene. >>DARLENE THOMPSON: It's interesting that just before the last meeting that I was in in this room, I was in the AC/SO meeting, and one of the comments there was talking about how there's so many silos. Well, they didn't use the word silos, but there are silos in ICANN. Are you NCUC? Are you ALAC? What are you? And I have found these face-to-face meetings, personally, are the only way to break down those silos and start talking to people from other constituencies, and then we can maybe start working together so we're not duplicating efforts. So in that way, it's actually -- it is cost effective in that way. >>KEVIN WILSON: Thank you. Go ahead. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Turn your light on and he can see the light. We can have up to three. >>KEVIN WILSON: Vanda, go ahead. >>VANDA SCARTEZINI: Just talk a little bit about the fellowship. And just because the fellowship group is, by definition, a group that we choose as the -- in the list of developed countries and to give them an opportunity, at least one short opportunity to come here. And so we are seeing now that probably we need to think a little bit more about the amount of per diem they receive. Because -- The amount of per diem they receive, because they receive a fixed amount of money. And in a place like that, for instance, everything needs to be supported and it is expensive. So probably we need to make another account to make the amount, the total amount, a little more higher to cover many costs they mostly cannot afford. It's something that we should -- I don't know, Steve can probably can make a better accountability with the number that will be better. But I believe it's -- $300 for the whole week is too cheap, and there is no way to survive -- >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Yeah. >>VANDA SCARTEZINI: -- and pay the things. And most of them, there is really no condition to pay nothing from their pocket. So that's one thing that I believe it is necessary to take a deeper look on that. Thank you. >>KEVIN WILSON: Thank you, Vanda. Alan. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I have a few, but I'll give you the easy ones first. Can I assume, based on the experience of the last few meetings, that we have won the battle that Internet connectivity in the room is required and either should be provided or covered in the per diem? Or is that not a given? [ Laughter ] >>KEVIN WILSON: I'll speak as an individual, but I really do believe that it needs to be a consensus answer so I'll come back to you with a more formal answer. But as an individual, it seems that if -- that given the nature of our work, it's really important that people stay connected, and it seems like it's a relatively small expense and that it should be supported. But there might be other factors. For example, I know that I don't connect to the Internet in my room. I go down to the staff room do all my Internet connection. So there might be some budget aspect, and I want to check with the meetings team or, Steve, I don't know if you have more detailed information. But I don't know if they have changed the policy. I know the last two meetings they have made the decision to do that but I didn't know if it was a standard process or it's just the hotels that they have negotiated this with. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I'll point out that for many of us, we have a real life that keeps on -- that goes on despite ICANN, and when I have a day like today from 7:00 a.m. to probably 10:00 p.m., that I'm pretty well covered. The next few hours I am going to be working anyway, and to be quite candid, I prefer do it in a way that I can't do in a public room. [ Laughter ] >>KEVIN WILSON: That might be 511, which means too much information. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I said it as discreetly as possible. Let me try one more that I hope will be easy. What's your target for getting -- for when you get out the per diem? How many days, weeks, prior to the meeting? I know this meeting was not the way you planned, but what -- roughly, what is the target? >>KEVIN WILSON: Someone said fortnight. I thought that was a good one. The key for us is to get the per diem -- you are talking about the wires out before the meeting. To get the wires out and the feedback in enough time, most wires are completed within five days. I know there's exceptions to that, but if you complete it within five days, double that. You should -- By the time Steve or I show up at the meeting, we'll know how many people we'll have to pay in cash. So I think that's helpful to know that. That would be the intention. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Let me ask one more out of curiosity and then I will let other people have a go. You have said several times that the exceptions ended up being budget neutral. There are as many as you save money on that cost money. I am just curious what are the ones you save money on? Other than occasionally I know of a better way to get airfare. I am just curious what are the other ones that end up saving you? >>KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, quite often people request, for example, to stay an extra day because of, for personal reasons, they want -- or for whatever reason. And we haven't extended the per diem amounts. We have said, yes, you can book the travel so you can leave at a later time. And it just so happens that the airlines have -- it's a carryover, for whatever reason, the magic of airline pricing. That's probably the -- Steve, can you think of other examples of that? I think that was the big one. >>STEVE ANTONOFF: Most of the things were airfare driven, because typically for the exceptions of the folks who said I want to take some personal holiday and stay a few extra days in Sydney, we took a look at what the airfare was. And in some instances, the airfare actually was a little higher. And based on some discussions that Kevin and I had, we had our own internal rule, which we are not ready to disclose yet, as Kevin has already alluded to. We would actually say yes, even if the airfare was higher in many circumstances. So there were times when it was higher, times when it was lower and it turned out, much to our utter amazement, that it turned out to be cost neutral. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I guess since ICANN does not typically include a Saturday stay, a couple of days on one end or the other lowers fares. >>KEVIN WILSON: One thing, and I want to send this message out, we didn't want people to come in and say, "I have a way to save $200. Can you pay for a $150 hotel room?" We didn't want to get into that gaming. So if someone said, "I have a way to save $200," we say, "Great, that really is great for the ICANN community, that's wonderful. Now you have to pay for your hotel as well." Because it offsets the other ones where it's the opposite direction. Adam. >>ADAM PEAKE: About the Internet access, I actually work fully clothed in my room, so there's nothing quite as frightening as the previous speaker. >>KEVIN WILSON: We are getting ready for the drinks for Paul. >>STEVE ANTONOFF: I have seen wardrobe budget as a new -- in the travel support program. >>ADAM PEAKE: Having real life is actually sitting in your room doing Skype, going back to the office and doing e-mail and doing actual work when the meetings aren't going on, and that's why it is useful because you don't want to be sitting down here with papers writing reports and doing actual work while it's going on. And the Internet is how we communicate, and so that continues during this week. There was a thought I had. There were things -- the per diem is, I think, generally quite generous, and that's kind of you. Where it does get a little bit tight is if you have a 7:00 a.m. meeting which means that you have to have breakfast in the hotel, it starts -- suddenly, $90 a day which is generous, that's $35 gone. And if you have to work over lunch, that's actually $90 gone, basically, if you have paid for it out of a room service bill, which we have done a few times. So allowing catered breakfast when it's a 7:00 a.m. meeting or some form of, you know, sustenance is a good idea. So that would be a thought. I have never been quite clear if the per diem -- how we do internal travel, you know, from my home to the airport in Tokyo, whether that comes out of the per diem or not. For me, it's not too much money, but I know some people, it actually costs them $150, a one-way trip to get from their home to the airport. So that's actually two per diems to get to an airport, not even there and back. So I guess that might be one for your flexibility rule. But perhaps just paying from home to airport travel might be something you pick up. You might want to consider that as a possible inclusion in the budget for everybody. >>KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, I think those are all points we should take up at the next draft of the travel guidelines. I know we internally debate whether there should be actual reimbursements, as, say, the NomCom does, or whether there should be per diems, which I know ALAC was kind of the leader. I think my understanding is ALAC, in the ICANN environment, was sort of the leader of the per diem charge. So we debate that internally, and we would like to get more feedback on that. >>ADAM PEAKE: For me, it would be only that travel from the home to airport kind of travel, is the one that stands out for me. Everything else personally is fine with per diem. I have two sort of questions. One is a request really. I always need a letter of invitation to these meetings that I then pass on to my boss, and that means, "Dear Adam, as an ALAC member, we want you here." I wonder if that's something you could send out as a default. I know you have to do visa letters which are specific questions, and that is individual specific. But whether it would be just easy enough to send out as a default to all the volunteers, you know who we are, what we do, but a "Dear Adam" letter, "You are here because we want you to come to the ICANN meeting," and it may just be a useful thing to do. And it's quite nice to be invited as a volunteer. And they are electronic so they are probably not that difficult to produce. >>KEVIN WILSON: I could probably approve the cost. We'll find out if there's a process issue. >>ADAM PEAKE: You can probably reuse them as well. You just change the meeting number and location. And then there is -- >>KEVIN WILSON: But seriously, is that a -- you don't receive that now? >>ADAM PEAKE: Not automatically. I have to request it. >>KEVIN WILSON: I am just learning. Okay. >>ADAM PEAKE: And I actually do need that; otherwise, I can't come. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: And it's also early enough. >>ADAM PEAKE: And early so my boss actually thinks that I -- yeah. >>STEVE ANTONOFF: So I think the concept of creating an automatic -- a process that generates automatic letters is actually a very good suggestion. The challenges are getting the list of who is to be supported early enough, is part of the challenge. And to ensure that that list doesn't change, which for some groups, the list is a moving target. >>ADAM PEAKE: I can see -- but you have got 15 ALAC members. They are all going to come. Well, they all can be invited and they can all say, "Sorry, I can't come." >>STEVE ANTONOFF: Exactly, but we support more groups than just the at-large. But conceptually I understand what you are saying, and I think now that we are developing a more formalized travel support team who is really focused around helping, those are the kinds of suggestions I think are very valuable because we probably could build a process to actually accommodate that. >>ADAM PEAKE: The only other thing I wanted to mention was, the fellowship program, of course, is primarily, if I understand it, aimed at government and with a ccNSO or ccTLD manager bent. Not entirely, because I know there's academia and civil society and business in there, but I think there's -- So the GAC is already getting a bit more than six, in a way. And that might be worth showing or emphasizing in some way, I would have thought. Isn't it 17 or 18 for this meeting or something? >>KEVIN WILSON: You are saying the GAC, because they come in through another travel support system? >>ADAM PEAKE: Essentially. I don't know if they are actually GAC members that are coming but they are representatives of governments who are coming as fellows. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. >>ADAM PEAKE: So it's not as if the GAC is only limited to six. There is something that is governmental in that sense. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. >>ADAM PEAKE: I don't know whether it's worth reflecting but the community might want to see that. >>KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, I think that -- Preparing the travel reports was a very challenging exercise for that -- you just tapped into that reason, and it kind of ties into Darlene's comments about the silos. But I think that's a good point. My understanding is when the GAC requested travel support at the Paris meeting, the response was let's work through the fellows program. -- let's work through the fellows program. So I think that's the intention. This year, the FY '10 year, the intention is to make it more explicit so we can report on it and be very clear, very open and transparent, on where the travel support is going. >>ADAM PEAKE: Are we insured? Travel insurance and so on or health insurance? I had not really thought of that. I don't know why I just thought of that. I'm not feeling unwell. >>KEVIN WILSON: Is there travel insurance? Is that your question? Yes. >>ADAM PEAKE: Good. Can we break a leg in luxury? >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: No. Dev and then -- >>DEV ANAND TEELUCKSINGH: Dev Anand Teelucksingh from Trinidad Tobago and from LACRALO. And just to follow-up something with Adam regarding the letter of invitation, it's also important for getting a visa, because to get the Australian visa, I had to have that letter of invitation. So the delay in getting that, delay in getting the visa, so -- getting it all up in front I think is all a very good idea. >>KEVIN WILSON: I want to emphasize that we do have this one-stop shop e-mail account that Steve and his team have set up. So while these are good ideas on how to set up a process, I don't want to have a commitment -- a service commitment to that. However, as individuals, you should know that if you need something to help your travel, then you just send that, and our commitment is we'll respond to it however we need to. Setting up an overall system like Steve mentioned can be very complicated, and it might not be worth the benefit -- the cost might not be worth the benefit to set that up for all people with the fluctuations of the types -- of the names and the countries, et cetera. But that being said, we continue to look for ways to streamline the process, definitely. Yes, Darlene. >>DARLENE THOMPSON: At least I don't do all of my questions at once, like Adam. I intersperse them. Anyway, just a comment on the reimbursement system, because there's been occasionally, like on my way back home where I have to overnight, and then, whoopsie, ICANN forgot to pay for it. But that's okay, I put it on my own Visa and then go through the reimbursement system. And this last time, from Mexico when I had to do that, I just got my reimbursement about a week before I got my reimbursement for this trip. It's very slow coming back. So you are paying interest on your Visa for ICANN, something that ICANN should have paid for already. >>KEVIN WILSON: "You" meaning you; right? Not me. You are paying for it. >>DARLENE THOMPSON: Yeah. So the reimbursements, if you are agreeing to reimburse something that you have already, ahead of time, agreed to -- "you," ICANN, of course -- agreed to reimburse, they need to come back a whole lot faster. >>KEVIN WILSON: And I would put that in the category of keeping us from the gold. That's why we hopefully got the silver for this meeting, but there is process. I would consider that an exceptions process. If you're eligible for per diem, the plan is that should cover for you. But like you said, if there is an exception, there is a glitch to it, then we would process that accordingly. And our process is getting -- is evolving to the point where we will be more responsive. >>STEVE ANTONOFF: If I could just comment on that as well. One of the challenges we have as an organization -- I will just give you a sense of it. Most of you can go to our staff page and realize that the entire ICANN staff, the entire ICANN staff, is not much larger than the at-large. So in terms of transactional processing, we did not build our finance team, for example, for the volume of transactional processing to process literally hundreds of expense reports flowing in very quickly after an ICANN meeting. Part of the theory behind the per diem was to, A, smooth out getting the money to the participants as well as to manage the transactional process. Having said that, there are clearly folks for whom the per diem prewire transfer method doesn't work. So what Kevin and I have continued to discuss is, how do we build a better system. And I think what you'll discover is, as we go from meeting to meeting to meeting, we'll get more adept at dealing with problems like you've just described. In my head already, I'm thinking, what would I do today, if you're on your way home, Darlene, from this meeting and you're supposed to have a layover somewhere with a hotel prepaid and you arrive and the hotel isn't available, have we given you instruction as to what to do next so you don't have to take your own credit card out and pay for it, and I bet we haven't. But by Seoul, we'll have a method in place, because we'll know who all of those travelers are that will have layovers either inbound or outbound to the meeting with special instruction that says, if you get to the hotel and it's not what it's supposed to be, here's what you do next, so that you don't have to take your credit card out to fix the problem. Because we actually can overcome those hurdles. We just have to think through what that process really looks like so we can fix it. >>DARLENE THOMPSON: That's awesome. Thank you. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: But that's hugely important, so it's really good to hear that, because certainly, and not to an ICANN meeting, but traveling for ICANN to another meeting, I had exactly the same circumstance, with a, no, no, no, ICANN hasn't paid for this, of course not. It's 3:00 in the morning, you're in the middle of some God forsaken hole, and you do what you can do. So it's important that equipment or just a hot number to call, I mean somewhere, someone will be awake and just broker that. Now, in that circumstance, it turned out that ICANN had paid, so they got double dipped. And we sorted that out. But just having a number, really useful. >>KEVIN WILSON: Great. Thank you. Alan, I'm sorry, I've been skipping you. >>ALAN GREENBERG: It's all right. You're nice to me some of the time. Just on that last one, I'll point out that in some areas, if you're delayed because of weather, the airlines don't cover hotels. So there's going to be unexpected ones also that were not covered but suddenly the expenses will be there. I'm going to go on to the hard one now. You said that we will have flexibility in how we use the, quote, RALO travel, which is ten people per meeting, 30 per year total. And for that, we're grateful. However, we consider it quite important that the majority of those people be it seven or eight, whatever it is at any given meeting, actually do show up at the ICANN meetings and participate. There, the two -- the one or two RALO leaders are linked to the ALSs and to the people in the regions. And we find it exceedingly important that they show up. So now we're back to the question of if we're using up most of those slots for the RALO leadership, what do we do for regional meetings and things like that? And I think we still have the problem of, we need to get together some people periodically within their region to look at each other and see each other and talk to each other. If we're smart, we will piggyback it on other meetings, other regional meetings, where half the people are already going to be there. And there are meetings like that where people tend to come. So the number of people we need to bring is not large. The distances are not necessarily large, depending on the region, of course. And I think, ultimately, we do need some level of funding to cover bringing ALS people to various meetings in various places just to maintain the continuity. And if we go back to fiscal year '08, it was there. Fiscal year '09, that money was diverted into the summit. And we would really like to see it come back again. >>KEVIN WILSON: Okay. I -- yeah, I think the issue on the history, why don't we spend a little more time on that, and I'm happy to spend more time on that. But from my position right now, assuming the budget is approved and adopted, that we with -- if there's request for additional funds, we need to find out where it's going to come from. It's going to come from some other place for the ICANN budget. So factor in -- or if it's significant, then we would need to go back to the board with -- and community with a -- you know, a proposal. Okay? >>ALAN GREENBERG: I guess my point -- and I've said it privately -- is the at-large structure that we've come up with that ICANN invented is an expensive one. If we want it to be effective, we have to provide some level of face-to-face contact for these people who are dispersed all over the place. I'm certainly not one of the people who say it's the best possible structure. And if and when we come around to revise it, maybe we'll come up with something that's cheaper. Right now, we're stuck with it, and we need to make it work. >>KEVIN WILSON: Yeah. Thank you for that, Alan. Thomas, did you have something? >>THOMAS NARTEN: I just wanted to ask a general question. I'm kind of curious. Is this actually the right venue to raise that question? I mean, is this about travel policy more generally or is this about allocating funds for specific amounts of travel for constituencies and all? I don't know what the answer is. I'm kind of curious, because it seems to me that this is not necessarily the best place to have that discussion. But -- >>KEVIN WILSON: Yeah. My understanding -- I should have probably made this clearer up-front. My understanding is this is an explanation of the draft travel guidelines that's also factored into the budget of what it is right now. And then this is the last -- you know, the last, whatever, 12 days or eight days until July 6th that we're receiving comments on that. And that would be factored into the normal ICANN process of feedback into a -- in this case, a guideline. So -- >>THOMAS NARTEN: So this really is kind of the right place to make the budget request, at least initially. And then it goes to the budget indirectly after the fact? >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. The only reason I'm hesitating is, I think you said, at least initially, which is what I'm applauding. So if -- I don't -- I'm not treating this as a formal request to add more money for these funds. I think -- I think the point is that right now, the draft guidelines are what they are. If the community believes that should be changed in some way, then I was just kind of articulating the way I think it would play out. >>ALAN GREENBERG: We're -- I think we're rather pragmatic. If because of miscommunication at so many different levels we have missed the deadline for fiscal year '10, we may handle some of it out of -- with exceptional circumstances. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. >>ALAN GREENBERG: And maybe this is just advanced notice that when we start talking about fiscal year '11, we try to get it right the first time. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. And then the only other point that I wanted to make, it's an academic exercise between you and me, which I know we will do it on the delta between FY '08, FY '09, complicated with the At- Large Summit. But it's not a -- it's not -- the guidelines isn't, well, we're going to keep the travel support the same as it was in FY '08. The guidelines are as we articulated who is supported. Okay that makes sense? But I am interested in the analysis, just because that's -- I want to be intimately familiar with my financials. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: If I could just pick up on that point. And I was glad -- I was very interested, because I was also picking up on what you were saying, Thomas. It seems to me -- and I know we've had these conversation when you've met specifically with the ALAC and at- large, that depending on the outcomes of the at-large review, there are different types of strategic planning, forward planning, accountability and responsibilities which may come back to ALAC. And by definition, then, the RALOs. And we're looking at the potential for not annual events even necessarily, but some strat planning over a three and a five-year plan with regional input. And there is a predictability and some tradeoffs that the end user, the ALSs and the regions can make, saying, well, we need these 35 people to get here, and to do that we're going to have 18 months' notice, and this is what we'll hopefully not have to give up too much of. So we're at a point where the changes that you're talking about now are also fitting in with potential new ways of doing things and should all make our jobs easier. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. And I guess I would summarize it this way. My job is -- and Steve's and staff's job, is to spend the money as efficiently as possible and to make sure we administer the travel support in the most effective way that gets you here or gets the travelers who are supported here at the ICANN meetings and doing the good work that you all do and that they all do. So that's number one. Anything that's an impact on the budget, I see our job as to analyze that and vet that through the board finance committee, for example, on budget impacts to do that. Anything -- I think this is leveraging off of what Thomas was saying. Anything that affects the, you know, response to the at-large review or response to any review or response to any other activity is more of a policy and a -- it's not a financial decision, although there's a financial impact that needs to be attached to those decisions, is -- for the community and, you know, depending on the type of decision, it would be a board -- board resolution. Is that clear? Hopefully, that's fairly clear. >>ALAN GREENBERG: That's clear. The -- I guess my follow-on is, those are good thoughts, but we actually have to implement them afterwards. I look at the GNSO reorganization, where there were words in the various Board Governance Committee's reports saying, if we want new participants, we are going to have to have, effectively, ICANN-funded outreach and ICANN-funded administrative support for these organizations, but we haven't seen the budget items for those or the staff allocated for those. And we were still expected to produce the results. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. >>ALAN GREENBERG: So we need to actually follow through and do it, not only say we're going to do it. >>KEVIN WILSON: Right. Right. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Well, good. Let me just call it to a close, then. And I wanted to personally thank all of you who have been involved in the travel support administration and the extensive feedback that we've received at every step along the way from last year at New Delhi on. And, hopefully, we'll, like I -- Steve and I say to each other every day pretty much, we're shooting for gold for Seoul. So thank you very much. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you. [ Applause ] >>ALAN GREENBERG: As one of the more vocal people, I would like to say it's been a delight working with you and seeing the benefits and the changes and having the really good interaction. So thank you. >>KEVIN WILSON: Thanks, Alan. Thank you.