I'll be facilitating a workshop in Sao Paulo about meetings structure and related topics.  I've written a paper that will be posted shortly in preparation for the workshop, and I'll post it here as well.

It's time to step back and evaluate ICANN meetings.  Different groups have very different reasons for attending, and we'd like to make sure that expectations for these meetings are addressed.  As a start, we'll be asking people to let us know why they go to ICANN meetings.  We have about 800 people showing up now, routinely, to week-long meetings whose essential structure hasn't changed in more than six years.  We could probably be doing a much better job at matching the meetings to the goals (many) of the people who attend.

So - think about it.  ICANN’s approach to meetings should be determined by core organizational goals and principles. How can ICANN’s meetings attract more constructive and effective engagement by members of the community? How can they be conducted more efficiently, at lower cost in time and money? How can they enhance the legitimacy of ICANN’s actions? Facilitating remote participation (and online work) is a top priority, but we have many other things to work on as well.  We'll talk about all of this in Sao Paulo.