ICANN has called for applications for upcoming meetings to be held in
North America, Asia Pacific and Africa in 2011.
The proposed meetings are:
- the 40th meeting to be held 13-18 March 2011 in North America
- the 41st meeting to be held 19-24 June 2011 in Asia Pacific
- the 42nd meeting to be held 23-28 October 2011 in Africa.
For the North American meeting, Kevin Murphy, writing on his Domain
Incite, says ICANN should consider Las Vegas.
“ICANN is now almost 12 years old, it’s held almost 40 public meetings
in diverse cities all over the planet, and it’s never been to Vegas. Not
once.
“That’s got to change.”
Murphy reasons that ICANN “has got to be the only industry organization
in the world to never convene there” and that “Vegas is the conference
center of North America, if not the world.”
With rooms subsidised by hotels eager to get punters into the casinos,
he reasons it should be cheaper than other options. Looking for a host,
Murphy says “a domain name company with deep pockets, something to sell,
and no particular queasiness about sponsoring a Sin City event” would
be ideal. ICM Registry springs to Murphy’s mind given that it “will very
likely be in the pre-launch stages of the .xxx TLD.”
But I am not sure that having “strippers at the Gala Event” would be a
big seller given the political issues around an ICANN meeting. Would
governments around the world be happy sending their staff to a function
with strippers? It might not look good back home.
ICANN advises interested parties to review the Meeting Selection
Criteria, which will be used to guide the evaluation of both
community-recommended and ICANN-identified meeting locations. Elements
such as cost of the meeting for ICANN and the community, convenience to
international airports, availability of sufficient hotel guest rooms in
or near the venue, meeting facilities, network infrastructure, personal
safety of meeting participants, and total level of financial support
will be considered by ICANN in making its final selection of a meeting
site.
More information is available from:
icann.org/en/announcements/
And the Domain Incite report is available from:
domainincite.com/isnt-it-about-time-for-icann-las-vegas/