How much it costs to attend U.N. "WSIS" Internet summit meetings

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I've taken the liberty of including a few paragraphs from Robert's blog 
below. Background on the WSIS process is here:
http://news.com.com/Should+the+United+Nations+run+the+Internet/2010-1028_3-5181327.html

-Declan

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: WSIS meetings - How much it is costing Civil Society
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:35:55 -0500
From: Robert Guerra <rguerra () lists privaterra org>
To: declan () well com

Declan:

I'd appreciate it if you could forward the following message to politech...


How expensive is it to participate @ WSIS you ask?

Well, I've just put together a few numbers and posted them to my WSIS
blog.  URL is

http://www.privaterra.org/activities/wsis/blog/wsis_meetings-cs_cost.html


I look forward to comments, specifically on what the exact gains
(economic and otherwise) one we expect .

regards

Robert
--
###
Robert Guerra <rguerra () privaterra org>
Privaterra - <http://www.privaterra.org>


---


Costs of attending WSIS meetings
Last updated: Jan 28, 2005

1. Cost per Person

Flight

         1. Since people come to attend the meetings from all over the 
world one can either break down the costs by region or use an best guess 
average value.
         2. To make things easy, let's assume an average flight 
cost/person of 1000 USD .

Accommodation

         1. There are many options.
         2. To make things easy, let's assume that the participant in 
question stays at a hotel in Geneva that has an NGO price. The Hotel Mon 
Repos is used by many, so let's use their UN rate of 150 CHF / night for 
our calculations.
         3. # days at event. the prepcom is 2 weeks, let's assume the 
person stays 15 days

thus the accommodation cost is 150 CHF x 15 = 2250 CHF
(Using the currency converter at www.xe.com that # in swiss francs comes 
to 1905 USD)

Per Diem

   1. These are costs related to expenses, incidentals and meals (see 
below for more details)
   2. Geneva is an expensive city.
   3. Where can we find an approx #, well several of the development 
agencies publish per diem rates. Let's use the ones published by the US 
State department as it's a source many people use and are familiar with.
   4. Let's assume one will be frugal and estimate 40% of the # quoted 
for geneva (169 USD) = 84 /day
   5. (and yes, normal meals can cost you 30-40 dollars!)

Thus, the per diem cost is 15 x (169/2) = 1267.5 USD

Adding the numbers

1000 (flight) + 1905 (accommodation) + 1267 (per diem) = 4172 USD per 
person for a 2 week stay

An important # is the average per day cost. let's divide 4172 (total 
cost) by 15 (# of days) . this works out to 278 $/day (we'll use this # 
later)

[...]
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