Lacnic comments on

_{Montevideo, November 16, 2012}

ICANN Consolidated Meetings Strategy Proposal

LACNIC express its concern about the current Proposal.

First of all, it is important to remember about 2 questions from 2006 at the original "Meeting White Paper": "How can ICANN's meetings attract more constructive and effective engagement by members of the community?" and "How can they enhance the legitimacy of ICANN's actions". We believe that this 2 questions should still be guideing the current decisions regarding Cities and Countries Hosting ICANN Meetings.

The issues expressed at the "2012 Proposal" are understandable, and it is not possible to deny that there is a rationale behind the new strategic steps. We share the concept expressed by the 2008 "Reformed Discussion Paper", that the current system was developed 14 years ago and the meetings are now large and complex.

Despite what have been said, we want to emphasize on the importance that the current model of rotating meetings have had, and the positive impact in the different national, regional and subregional communities. Without the current system, the level of community engagement that ICANN had over the past years would not have been possible. Moreover, rotating from countries was also useful for ICANN to get closer with Governmental Officers and, as it was in the last 2 ICANN meetings held in our region, also Head of States.

ICANN is analyzing new ways of engaging the communities from different regions in ICANN
processes and activities. Changing the current policy for organizing meetings before developing those new mechanisms for increasing the engagement of the global community, would be a mistake.

LACNIC not only considers that keeping the rotation system would be positive for the community, but also for ICANN, and this has been the way that guided our own organization regarding Meetings Policy in the region. The success of the model also shows new challenges, regarding the constant increasing of size that our meetings experimented.

Instead of proceeding with the current 2012 proposal, jeopardizing the current engagement with the community, ICANN should probably reexamine the structure of the meetings, the number and variety of parallel meetings, the length of the meeting and the agendas, trying to make the meetings more attractive for a larger number of potential hosts and make the organization of these meetings more feasible and simple.

This strategic decision is part of another which is more important, where ICANN needs to
determine if their meetings should evolve more as a centre for harmonizing the work of the Internet Community, or as a business roadshow for the domain name industry at the developed countries.

Raúl Echeberría
CEO