I was out and about in London yesterday. Late for a conference on Cybersecurity because of a huge car crash on the M40, then off to Westminster to meet this Parliamentary aide who has been asked to produce a four-page info booklet on Internet Governance for UK MPs and Peers (god help him).
And then off to Holborn for dinner with ITU head honcho Bob Shaw who is on a whirlwind world tour punting the ITU Telekom conference in December. So what? Well, why is it always when you are busy all day that everything goes wrong?
First, the Greek organisers of the IGF get back to me about my hotel in Athens. I was handed the most expensive option, at the fancy Astir Palace Hotel. At 150 euros a night, it is actually a bargain for what you get, but the fact is that during these conferences I only ever use a hotel room to change and sleep in. I spend 98 percent of the time in such a room unconscious, so it’s a complete waste of money. And for seven nights, that £700. No way.
Greek hospitality
So I emailed the organisers back and asked politely if they could see if they could fit me into one of the other cheaper hotels.
The response? “We would like to inform you that according to your latest request your hotelbooking registration to Astir Hotel Bungalows has been cancelled without being subject to any cancellation fees. Please be aware that we can no longer provide accomodation at conference rates. In order to book hotel rooms you are advised to contact directly the hotel of your preference.”
Great – so with four days to go, I am basically told to go fend for myself. But I should be grateful that they haven’t charged me for the pleasure of dumping me in it.
To add to the fun, a number of the hotels in the area don’t book online, and the ones that do are booked up (I can’t think why). Finally I’ve managed to get a hotel room in Vouliagmeni but at non-conference prices (basically, double). Cost: 730 euros. A saving of £210 on what I would have paid, but even so, where’s the famous Greek hospitality when you need it?
Website woes
If that wasn’t fun enough, while gallivanting about London, I was also being informed that the IGF site I’ve built for as much interaction as possible wasn’t, er, working. An error message covered the screen which pointed to the wiki element we have been trying to write into the site. Jeremy Malcolm working on the site from Australia had a look, couldn’t see anything wrong. Nor could I. And then we realise it’s because we’re on Firefox. Some changes this morning. It works… and then collapses again across all browsers and all OSes. So I’ve had to kill the wiki component until we have time to figure out what the hell happened and fix it. And what’s the betting that between now and Friday, there isn’t time?
Still, so far it is following the rules of all websites. You always have to give up on one element you really wanted. It’s the price of appeasement to the evil computer god.
Update: Ha! Jeremy found the code that was doing it and has pulled it out. The first big gremlin found and dealt with. Here’s hoping any others show up before the meeting starts on Monday.
Straw poll
Anyway, all that aside. I have shifted the poll I’ve been running on “What’s the most pressing Internet topic?” to the IGF2006.info site, complete with the 69 votes that have so far been registered on this site. And have put a new poll up in its place about ICANN’s decision to hire an independent third-party to review what domain names are.
Do please have a vote. And in the the meantime, I will get on with ticking off the remaining 3,675 jobs I have to do before getting on an early morning Friday flight to Athens.
