I would like to take the issues raised by Milton one level further.

The core revolution of the internet has been to allow us to work more
easily and effectively across time and space. That includes
conducting meetings, holding discussions and building structures
(committees, transparent data repositories). The existence of the
Internet is the reason for ICANN and should be reason enough for
ICANN to be on the forefront of exploring and using this expanded
social process space.

Milton is asking “what is the value added?” and “at what individual
and collective cost?”. I may grumble about a 2am conference call, but
that is better than 4-5-6 days of travel and face-to-face time to
achieve little more than what a couple of middle-of-the-night
conference calls can achieve.

Also, there is a subtle division of access here. ICANN’s contract and
commercial stakeholders are able to, in most instances, to view the
intersessional as their ongoing “business as usual”, factored into
their time and budgets. For the other stakeholder groups (us in
particular) the carrot of selective free travel does not offset the
considerable costs in terms of time away from our individual 
“business as usual”, nor does it assure that we can attain sufficient
presence to not be swamped by the efforts of the contracted and
commercial parties.

I join Milton in thinking we need both a rethink and a reset here.

Sam Lanfranco, NCSG/NPOC/csih