Seat reservations and waiting lists on the cards for ICANN 74
As if health screenings and cumbersome legal waivers weren’t irritating enough, it seems now even in-person attendees at ICANN 74 won’t necessarily be able to attend the meetings they want to attend in-person due to mandatory social distancing.
The Org announced last night that Covid-19 restrictions mean there will be a limit on how many people are allowed to enter a room, and you’ll have to reserved your seat in advance as a result. Waiting lists could be used in cases where rooms are over-booked.
Fortunately, the venue is the World Forum in the Hague and its rooms seem to be pretty big.
ICANN also seems to have done a pretty good job at matching room size to likely demand, so it seems very possible no waiting lists will be required.
The major plenary sessions likely to attract the most attendees are in a room with a capacity of 469, which would have been more than enough seats for almost every session at 2019’s Annual General Meeting in Montreal, which of course had no physical distancing.
The GNSO has a room for 80 people, the GAC has 157, and the ccNSO 74. These limits may have been onerous pre-pandemic, but I feel will be plenty for the likely turnout in The Hague.
That being said, seats are being claimed already three weeks in advance via the online scheduling tool, so if there’s a session you simply must attend it makes sense to grab your spot sooner rather than later.
Actually Kevin – the first session has already sold out:
At-Large Policy Session 1: Evolving the DNS Abuse Conversation: An end user’s perspective – The Role of At- Large
Not a total surprise. It will be interesting to see how many sessions become oversubscribed .