News and views on domain names, the Internet and life in general
From the category archives:
So I think there is a real chance that the Internet extension .xxx will appear on the Internet some time this year.
Of course, you really can never know since overseeing body ICANN is a complex beast, but following the first use of the organization’s Independent Review Process (IRP) and the resulting panel declaration [pdf], [...]
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I was at the United Nations in Geneva last week to watch what was happening to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as it prepares for its third outing, this December in Hyderabad, India.
Actually I was there for a different reason – an ICANN consultative meeting on the future of the organization the morning before the UN meeting – but it seemed daft to fly all that way and not check out the day of open discussions about the IGF. Plus I have a real soft spot for the IGF and the people that have worked extremely hard to make it a success.
I was a witness to the IGF’s creation, on paper, at the World Summit on the Information Society back in 2005, and then followed it all the way through various preparatory sessions as a reporter.
At the inaugural IGF in Athens, I was asked to be the conference’s “blogger-in-chief” – a position that, ironically enough, my current employer tried to veto. As a semi-official part of the IGF, I also got to see behind the scenes, and was impressed with the hard work, dedication and calm handling of what was an enormous and risky experiment. A lot of people at the time confessed to turning up just to see what would happen – spectators to what could have been the biggest diplomatic car crash for a decade. In the end, despite the odds, it shone through.
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If anyone ever wondered whether the Internet was vital, or if the new Internet Governance Forum suffered from a lack of interest, worry no more.
Next week, a series of events will be held in Geneva covering the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society and most importantly a preparatory meeting for the next [...]
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I have just announced the creation of the “dynamic coalition” for online collaboration in the IGF meeting in Geneva. Effectively this is a group of people who plan to test and run online tools to help governments, businesses, civil society, NGOs and so on, have discussions and arrive at solutions, conclusions, recommendations, whatever. It is [...]
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The Greek delegate has just spoken at the stocktaking meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva.
He gave some stats from the first Athens meeting in November 2006 that might be worth preserving:
1350 participants (including 152 media, and coming from 97 countries)
8 translation booths and 20 translators
50 buses
7 metal detectors
4 X-ray machines
By the way, there [...]
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I am in Geneva for a stock-take of the first Internet Governance Forum in Athens last November.
It should be an interesting meeting. The one thing that no one is any doubt about is that the IGF will be bigger and more important in 2007. Born out of international discussion (some might say argument) at the [...]
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Starting 5 February, I will be the “general manager, public participation” for ICANN – an organisation I have closely followed and frequently criticised almost since its inception in 1999. I’m excited about it, and the possibilities the position holds.
Here then is a blog post about why I took the job and what I hope to [...]
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I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently building and running online participation websites – or, in English, trying to get people on the Internet learning about and interacting with physical meetings.
Both have been for Internet organisations, which should theoretically make things easier. The first was the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens in early [...]
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[I just posted this on the ICANN Participation website - and realised maybe I should have only posted it here on my own blog. So here is some daft repetition.]
The Nominating Committee of ICANN decides who will take the most important posts in the organisation.
It is also the most secretive organisation I believe I have [...]
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So I was asked by ICANN’s “executive officer and vice president for corporate affairs” Paul Levins to do an online participation website for its meeting in São Paulo, starting officially on Monday.
Paul was at the IGF in Athens last month and saw the site that Jeremy and I had done for the IGF in order to try to get some online interaction both by people that couldn’t be there and by those that were there. In fact, in retrospect, the whole thing dovetailed with a conversation I had had with Paul when I visited ICANN in Los Angeles on a whim two months ago.
Despite alot of well-founded criticism of ICANN in the past (much of it from me) about the organisation being secretive, insular, opaque and whatever other term you wish to use, it struck me that ICANN had actually taken the criticism on board this time and was looking for ways to open up a bit.
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