There were a couple of interesting points re ICANN meetings during the last Board meeting, held via teleconference on March 27th. ICANN's Executive Officer and Vice President Paul Levins presented a plan to reduce the number of meetings from the current 3 per year to 2.
It seems the financial burden of organizing the meetings is just getting too much for ICANN. Since the end of last year, the corporation has already had to step in rather significantly as local hosts have found themselves less and less able to face mounting costs on their own.
The reason for the cost increases? Simply put: the success of the ICANN meetings. More and more people have been attending, and the forthcoming June Paris meeting is set to be ICANN's biggest yet.
Paul Levins advised the Board that there would have to be a transitional period, starting from June 2009, should the decision be taken to move away from the current 3 meetings a year format. He did not make it clear if such a decision would have to be green-lit by the Board.
He also gave some interesting budget figures. The full budget for New Delhi was $1.7 million and the current budget for Paris is $1.54 million.