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ICANN announced that its ICANN67 Public Meeting, which was to be held in the usual conference format in Cancun, Mexico, on March 7-12 2020, will now be held via remote participation-only.</p>
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“Each ICANN Public Meeting attracts thousands of attendees from more than 150 countries. With cases in at least 26 of those countries, there is the potential of bringing the virus to Cancun and into the ICANN meeting site. If this were to happen, there could be accidental exposure of the virus to attendees, staff, and others who come in contact with an infected individual,” the statement said.</p>
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The day before, ICANN staffers talked about the precautionary measures they planned to put in place in Cancun. However, late on Wednesday evening, February 19 (or in the early morning of February 20, Moscow time), the ICANN Board of Directors obviously considered these measures insufficient and made a final decision to hold the conference solely with remote participation. It should be understood that this decision marks the first such case in ICANN's history.</p>
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For many years, the corporation has offered online streaming of its events and remote participation in any ICANN Public Meeting. But holding such a large-scale event via remote participation-only is a completely different challenge. It seems that the participants will inevitably encounter difficulties and technical problems. On the other hand, if faced with a choice between an online broadcast failure and a threat to one’s own health, any person would probably choose the technical failure as the lesser evil.</p>
