[council] FYI - background on communication equipment problems

[Denise Michel]

See note from Steve Conte, General Manager IS (below) regarding 
communication equipment problems.

Addendum from Steve:  I can't stress enough that this is NOT an issue 
with Morocco (the destination) or the local hosts here.  They have bent 
over backwards to not only adapt to my issues, but have gone above and 
beyond by calling and working with the Moroccan government and customs 
here to try to get my shipment in.  This is a great group.

Update:  27 June 2006 -- The equipment did not make it.  Steve is taking 
steps to ensure this does not happen again.

--------------------------------------
25 June 2006

Greetings,

I just wanted to give you a heads up on some logistical issues I'm 
having for this meeting.

The shipment of my video equipment was delayed in the US for four days 
and then returned to Marina del Rey the day after I left for Morocco. 
I've had a colleague cavalier this for me while I was in transit and he 
did a great job on getting the shipment back out.

As of last web tracking, the equipment is in Belgium, I'm presuming 
awaiting a plane to Rabat to be routed here.

I'm hopeful that my equipment will arrive on Monday, at which point I'll 
spend whatever time it takes to get this up and running.

In the meantime, since I was aware of the logistical issues prior to 
departing for Morocco, we've taken some steps to attempt to webcast 
and/or capture as much of the meeting as possible until my equipment 
gets here.

I've brought a spare camera with us in a suitcase and using our breakout 
laptop for ccNSO, we're able to provide a webcast stream for the main 
room events.  The webcast will be limited to a non-mobile (ie, no pan or 
zoom) shot of the stage including the podium.

I'll supplement this with a voice-only stream.

If my equipment isn't here for the ccNSO, I've brought a portable mp3 
recorder (my own personal one) to capture the audio of the ccNSO 
sessions and will post them as best I can during the meeting so as to 
minimize the time-delay of them.

I'll let Chris Disspain know of my logistical issues as well.

To top it all off, my laptop has a bad case of narcolepsy and has 
decided to go into sleep mode every few minutes, causing me to struggle 
for every single task I need to do online (my laptop has gone to sleep 
four times so far during this email alone, with an average of 5 minutes 
to get it going again.).

We're working on getting this problem resolved but being a weekend, it 
has also been a pretty significant challenge to face.

To be very clear, none of the above issues are the result of our local 
hosts.  They have been extremely accommodating to adapting to these 
challenges and all divisions of the hosts have done a fantastic job here.

I apologize for the impact this is potentially causing and I'm making 
every effort to minimize this impact, but as some of you have mentioned 
to me, it has already been noticed.

I take my role of supporting the board and these meetings extremely 
seriously and I'm making every effort to make this meeting as successful 
as possible from an operational/logistical perspective.

Sincerely,

Steve

-- 
Steve Conte
General Manager, Information Systems
ICANN