ICANN 57 brings in thousands of noobs
ICANN 57 set new records in terms of attendance, with a large majority of participants total newbies who’d never been to an ICANN meeting before.
The meeting, held in Hyderabad, India last month, had 3,182 attendees, and first-timers outnumbered veterans over two-to-one.
The previous record was 3,115 total participants, set at ICANN 50 in London two years ago.
Over two thirds of participants — 2,180 people or 68% of the total — were noobs, according to ICANN statistics released last night (pdf).
That compares to 344 newcomers at the abbreviated June meeting in Helsinki.
The massive turnout in November appears to be due to huge local interest.
Over 72% of attendees — 2,306 people — were from the Asia-Pacific region. ICANN does not break down attendance by nationality, but I suspect the large majority will have been Indian.
Only 200 people from Asia-Pac showed up in Helsinki.
Of the Asia-Pacific participants in Hyderabad, 2,056 were first-time attendees.
For context, there were hundreds more first-time Asia-Pac participants in Hyderabad than there were total attendees at the Helsinki meeting, when 1,436 people showed up.
There were also slightly more Asia-Pac attendees at ICANN 57 than total attendees at ICANN 55 in Marrakech this March.
The significant local interest appears to have tilted the gender balance in favor of men, who represented 74% of the total. Women were 20%. The remainder did not disclose their sex.
That compares to 61% and 32% in Helsinki.
UPDATE: This story was updated with better gender mix data a few hours after publication.
I am looking forward to seeing all these new volunteers starting to participate in the PDP processes in the future…
I’m sure most of them have already signed up for WGs. 😀
Considering the number of languages in India, we also have plenty of room in LGR (Label Generation Rules) panels to define top-level and second-level IDN guidance…
(speaking in french) I am sure there will be live translators for all these languages at future ICANN meetings.