Los Angeles

Leaving ICANN, off to greener pastures

by kierenmccarthy on October 15, 2009

I am leaving my job as general manager of public participation for ICANN on 25 November.

Yesterday, the COO sent round a note to staff; this morning I find myself elevated to the point of wanting to dance. Whenever I leave a job, I get the feeling of a weight being lifted off my shoulders and, shortly after, feel the excitement of future possibilities. This time, it is particularly strong.

I still have a busy meeting in Seoul in just over a week to deal with, and then more work for the Internet Governance Forum in Egypt two weeks after that. But from December I will be free to apply my energies wherever I wish and man does it feels good.

I’ve learnt a hell of a lot over the past two-and-a-half years but with the ending of a big agreement between the organization and the US government (and they said it couldn’t be done), with my boss heading back to Australia, and with a feeling that my ability to effect changes has passed its peak, it is definitely time to move on.

Update: I just found my original post on taking the job. Pleased to see I have managed to stay true to myself, although I may have to evaluate performance against my own goals in December.

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Popularity: 40% [?]

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That Eddie Izzard is an interesting bloke

by kierenmccarthy on October 14, 2009

I’ve always thought Eddie Izzard was supremely funny but I didn’t realise that he’d be a really nice bloke just to know and have a conversation with until today.

I embarked on some rather silly Twitter-following very early this morning (all sparked off by Stephen Fry tweeting about Trafigura) and ended up discovering that Eddie Izzard was in Los Angeles for a documentary about his life. I missed a Q&A he gave earlier this week at a screening (bloody shame) but he tweeted that he’d be on some chatshow I’ve never heard of – Kevin Pollak.

As it turns out this is a low-budget, Internet-only chatshow that makes me want to call a few mates, drive up to Hollywood and completely overhaul because there have been some interesting guests but the format is painful. Kevin, bless him, needs an audience to be funny (plus there is a reason canned laughter tracks exist) and he is a truly dreadful interviewer, but if you press play on the show (embedded above) and come back 17 minutes and 20 seconds later you’ll find Eddie Izzard giving a really interesting interview.

Far from going off on his surreal semi-structured humour bursts, Eddie Izzard was actually in a relaxed and chatty frame of mind. I’ve no doubt that having watched a documentary about his rise he had been pondering about his life and existence and clearly had some thoughts running through his head.

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Bird of Paradise shoot

September 20, 2009

Is this a flower reaching out of my Bird of Paradise – or just another leaf?
One of the things I love about Los Angeles (well, Southern California) is the abundance of the Bird of Paradise and its extraordinary bright orange (though sometimes black) unfurled mohican flower.
So when I moved to my new flat and had [...]

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Happy Birthday to me

August 12, 2009

Today’s my 34th birthday and I’m writing this post the evening before because I think I might give myself a break from all electronics for the day.
This time last year I took the day off and went surfing. I think I might do the same tomorrow. I have taken the day off work and [...]

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The reason American beer is so bad

May 5, 2009

So one of the many questions rolling around my head, particularly since living in the United States, has been: was is American beer so bad?

It really is bad. I know Brits get mocked for flat, warm beer (I love it – taste is terrific), but American beer – your Coors, Buds and Millers – really is absolutely dreadful. Tastes of nothing at all, doesn’t refresh or quench. Just about the only thing it does is get your drunk if you can stand to drink enough of it.

Well, I have found out the answer. There was a History Channel documentary on US brewing history at the weekend and it was easy to define from that this peculiarity that an entire nation loves drinking rat’s piss while everyone else in the world has spent centuries savouring their beer.

And this is the three-part answer:

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Keep in contact at kieren.tel

April 21, 2009

So after 18 months of retaining my UK phone while living in the US, I finally got tired of paying £30 a month for absolutely nothing and killed the contract. It ends next week

Why did I keep it for so long? Well, for one, I didn’t expect to stay in the States all that long. I figured ICANN would drive me nuts within a year and I’d move back to Blighty. Plus I didn’t want to rely on just a work phone for contact with friends and family. And lastly I didn’t want to lose my telephone number – 07932 783686 – which I have had for over a decade.

Well, I am still at ICANN and so still in the States and I didn’t use my UK phone because to use it over here was prohibitively expensive. I don’t rely on just my work phone for contact – I mostly use Skype to contact friends and family. It’s free and it comes with pictures. And as for losing the number… Well I am the proud owner of a .tel domain name.

In fact, due to my name being slightly unusual, I have kieren.tel.

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DOMAINfest auction a wash-out

January 30, 2009

We first learned that the domain name market was far from stable around eight years ago when the dotcom crash turned a booming market into dust in just a few months.

Over the years, that market has grown in strength: its stability saw people invest in advanced systems for buying and selling domains, and the never-ending demand for Internet sites, coupled with the fact the the number of top-level domains stayed the same and so the domain space became smaller, meant that prices increased steadily to the point where tens of thousands of domains became worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Well, the DOMAINfest domain auction has just demonstrated that the domain name space may be more stable but it ranks alongside art, rather than houses, when it comes to property.

In short, the auction was a bit of a wash-out, with none of the 200+ domains available exceeding expectations; most hitting the bottom-end of their estimated value; and a very large number meeting no bidders and being pulled off the floor.

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DOMAINfest pictures

January 29, 2009

I’ll be taking pictures at DOMAINfest today and sticking them on Flickr – and possibly here – with a CreativeCommons license (free non-commercial use; accreditation required). The stream is below:

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Sunset in Venice

January 17, 2009

One of the bizarre but wonderful things about living in Los Angeles is that when all your friends are freezing cold or trapped under the snow in January, you get to walk in the sun and witness the most extraordinary sunsets.

Last night I saw the makings of an extraordinary sunset and jumped on my bike to Venice to get some snaps. Here’s one and under that, a Flickr feed of the rest:

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Too much bloody work

January 29, 2008

It’s been six weeks since I last posted here. That can’t be good. And I have a ton of stuff to get out of my mind through my fingers. The one-day trivia brain of Los Angelenos; the US presidential election process; the insane bureaucracy and mind-control of this peculiar and remarkable country. Plus, lots of pics – some with world famous stars of the screen. And the tale of trying to get hold of my possessions after 16 weeks now.

Why is this material still in my brain and not on the page? Because of work. Too much work. Far too much work. This job is a constant invitation to burn-out. I think it is the three international meetings a year that is what really makes the workload impossible: there is never more than a week in which you can get on with all those things that need quiet periods to get done. I thank god that the cycle ride home (along the beach – it’s nice, even in crap weather) is 35 minutes. It’s the one conscious hour of the day I can’t be at my laptop. Although I did take two phonecalls on my way in this morning. How long before I’m balancing the Dell on my handlebars, trying to pick up WiFi signals from the beach houses?

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