The attendance of ICANN meetings continues to decline

Less than 2000 people attended the meeting in Abu Dhabi Statistics report on the 60th ICANN meeting that took place in Abu Dhabi in late October – early November has been published on ICANN’s official website. The document states that 1929 people participated in the event. This is the lowest indicator for an annual general meeting. Previously, the number of participants was never below 2000. For comparison, 3182 people attended the annual general meeting in 2016 in Hyderabad. It was previously suggested that the location of the meeting might affect its attendance. Observers believed that many representatives of Western countries (primarily women) would prefer not to visit a country with strict Muslim traditions. However, the statistics didn’t confirm this: 31% of attendees said they were female at the Abu Dhabi meeting, which is a usual percentage for an ICANN meeting. It seems we are talking about a general trend here. All three 2017 meetings had less participants than similar meetings a year before.