Over 2,200 people have already registered for ICANN 50, which kicks off this coming weekend in London.

According to ICANN, that puts the upcoming meeting second only to last year's one in Beijing, which had 3,141 pre-registrations and 2,532 eventual attendees.

London's a pretty convenient "hub" city to fly to, but I suspect a lot of the interest might be related to the IANA transition process, which has put a new spotlight on ICANN in recent months.

ICANN has already laid on overflow viewing rooms for discussions related to the IANA topic.

The meeting officially starts with the welcome ceremony on Monday, but the work begins as usual on Saturday, when the various constituencies gather to decide what they want to moan about this time.

As usual, you don't have to actually be in London to "attend" the meeting there's a full schedule of remote participation opportunities if your diary, bandwidth and time zone permits.

It's a packed schedule as usual, and it could look overwhelming to a newbie.

A good trick is to simply follow the board of directors around on the Tuesday, when it invites each constituency into the room in turn for some passive-aggressive feedback sessions.

You'll get a relatively concise breakdown of the top three or four issues on the mind of ICANN participants in that way, but probably not a great deal of insight into the board's thought process.

The public forum on Thursday is also a highlight. Anyone can take to the mic to say or ask anything (relevant) they please. Comments and questions can also be submitted remotely.

For ICANN 50 the forum has actually been shortened to two hours to accommodate discussions of the IANA process, causing some in the community to question whether ICANN is trying to stifle the crazy.