Meeting in India set a record thanks to over 2,000 first-time attendees from Asia.
Last month’s ICANN meeting in Hyderabad, India, set an all-time record for attendance at an ICANN meeting. There were 3,182 people, breaking the previous record of 3,155 for ICANN50 in London.
That London meeting in Summer 2014 was big because new TLDs had just started coming out. Why the big crowd this time?
The location was the big draw, with 70% of attendees from Asia. Over 2,000 of the 2,306 people from Asia Pacific were first-time attendees, so this shows that holding the meetings in diverse locations expands involvement.
Only 12% of attendees were from North America.
Government and IGO-affiliated people were the top segment of visitors but still made up only 23%. Private sector/domain industry people accounted for 22%.
At least 74% of attendees were male. I wonder how this compares to previous meetings.
You can see more data, including internet usage during the conference, in this PDF.
Michele Neylon says
Attending a single ICANN meeting isn’t meaningful involvement.
I’d love to see people actually engaging with the ICANN stuff on an ongoing basis, even if it is just submitting comments on open comment periods.
However ICANN likes to make out that having big numbers of attendees is meaningful, when it really isn’t.