On Wednesday night I saw that on twitter poeple were talking about the Toronto ICANN meeting and being in Toronto at that time and thought I'd catch up with old friends. I looked on the ICANN website and googled but there was no public notice of this meeting. There still isn't.

I called John Berryhill who knew from an email that morning that the meting was at the Sheraton center a few blocks from where I was. Since I'd arrived in Toronto (on a pleasure trip) I'd done little more than help people with their computers that weren't working right. Which I'd managed to fix every time

So I go to the venue and see Stacy and Craig of ICANN and asked when the meeting was and got a very cold reception and they asked me a terribly large number of questions but eventually told me the meeting was from 9 to 5 Thursday and Friday. My need to know was questioned and I began to feel like a criminal or a terrorist. They were messing with computers and when I had my answer I asked "so does it work?" and was told "it will by tomorrow". I left them staring in confusion at their screens and relished one of the few times I hadn't been ask to fix Microsoft Windows.

The next day, Thursday I show up at at random at about 2:40 or so and nobody was in the reception area. There were spare badges and lanyards there at the front of the desk in the open so I made myself a badge identifying myself and my affiliation. At behest of the hotel catering staff I obtained a cup of their tea. They were polite but near pushy so I put my leather briefcase down and helped myself to a tea. They also insisted I have a mango tart. Do I look to thin? Either way it *was* a very good mango tart.

A male ICANN staffer came out of the meeting - I didn't want to just barge in so I was waiting outside - and saw my badge and freaked and demanded I give it to him. I did, he recognizes me from yesterday and says I can't be in the meeting. Ok fine, but I thought I'd talk to poeple I know here when they come out. He didn't flat out say no but it was clear he didn't like the idea and suggested I leave. By this time poeple had began to filter out of the meetings and when it was clear to this guy that I knew a lot of the poeple and had for a while he literally quietly backed away. And called security, 2 or 3 more people with suits and walkie talkies who all stood at the bak staring at me.

(Edmon Chung, Rob Hall and Dave Maher) didn't understand why I wasn't in their meeting and pointed out it was their meeting, just run by ican and that it was free and suggested I just talk to Stacy. When they all went back inside I asked Stacy if she could register me or tell me why not by tomorrow morning. She said she'd talk to Tim and by tomorrow I'd either be registered or she'd have a reason why I wasn't. That seemed reasonable to me.

Rob Hall, who I still needed to chat with had gone to the washroom and I asked Stacy if she was back yet, she didn't know. Of the two doors to the meeting room, one was open. I asked Stacy if I could look inside, not go in the room for see if Rob was in there. She said no and closed the other door. I left, rather disgusted at the "open and transparent process"

The next day came back at about 2 o'clock and asked Stacy if she had registered me. She said no. I asked if she's talked to Tim or any or her superiors and she said she'd done noting and that I had to leave and if I didn't security would remove me. I walked away and got a cup of tea and sat *outside the building* in the very expansive rooftop garden and sat on one of the two benches there. (Shown at the bottom of this page http://rs79.vrx.net/works/photoblog/2009/Aug/20/ one wall and 60 feet away from the meeting reception area and the closed door to the meeting room. I didn't really want to attend the meeting - there are no surprises at ICANN meetings, they just read off pages of their website - I just wanted to chat with my friends about DNS issues.

I figured if I just sat in the garden my friends would see me and come out. But before the break security showed up and explained they'd been asked to secure me off hotel property. Now, this is a huge hotel with many restaurants and bars and the basement level is part of the giant underground mall and subway system that connects the lake shore all the way up to Bloor. What had I done to warrant being turfed off the premises? I wasn't doing anything that day I hadn't done the day before. I called john Berryhill and asked him if he could do anything. He called poeple and called me back about 5 times and explained that the ICANN staffers had accuse me of "inappropriate behavior" without saying what that actually was (a month later I still don't know). I had spent an hour with John on a very expensive cel phone and spent $40 on long distance fielding calls from Jon In Philadelphia (not to our European readers: cel phones in North America pay *incoming* long distance) trying to resolve this and at 4 pm, one hour later, after sitting in the hot sun outside was told by john the meeting was over.

What I didn't understand is how an American government contractor in California, tasked with supporting the DNS community to gauge its consensus, can prevent a Canadian from talking with other Canadians in this industry at their own meeting, on Canadian soil! While claiming to be "open and transparent".

Yes I should have registered. If I'd known the meeting was happening I would have. But it wasn't advertised, I found out about it from scuttlebutt on twitter.