So what’s happened to the ICANN Board papers?

October 9, 2010

Nearly two months ago, I reviewed the ICANN Board and staff’s efforts at releasing the information that goes into the Board’s decision-making.
I was pretty scathing – and for good reason. It was a poorly managed, poorly handled, largely pointless exercise that saw huge chunks of information blacked-out for no discernible reason, and provided without notice, [...]

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ICANN review team: FAIL

October 8, 2010

I’ve sent the following note to ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) on its own mailing list that it pays no attention to.
I’m frustrated that they have become a part of the problem, rather than the solution. And in reviewing their draft recommendations, you can’t help but be struck by the vagueness, lack [...]

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Is ICANN’s independent review dead in the water?

September 29, 2010

I have avoided the meetings of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) into ICANN for a few months because it was so incredibly frustrating to listen to 60 minutes of people organising hotel rooms in different parts of the world while the ICANN Board and staff ran rings around them.
But the meeting popped [...]

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Finishing up the rules for new Internet extensions

September 24, 2010

Two very interesting things are happening today that may have an enormous impact on the Internet for many years to come.
First, the ICANN Board is meeting at a special two-day retreat in Trondheim, Norway, in an effort to finalise the rules for new Internet extensions. This process have been going on for more than five [...]

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IGF Day 4: The end is not nigh

September 18, 2010

Having spent the past three days grumbling and moaning about the Internet Governance Forum 2010, I pre-decided it was time to highlight the good stuff, the reason why people from 107 different countries bothered to attend.
If you asked pretty much anyone at the event if the numbers were up or down this year, everyone would [...]

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IGF Day 2 and 3: Silence the Lambs

September 16, 2010

If you were to list Internet conferences in terms of boredom, the IGF would come mid to top-table.
It doesn’t have the razzmatazz or micro-celebrities of Web2.0 conferences but then it also doesn’t suffer the long, drawn-out pondering of intergovernmental talk-fests.
That’s why it’s so important that the Critical Internet Resources main session at the IGF [...]

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IGF workshops: protecting the consumer and digital inclusion

September 15, 2010

I was the remote moderator for two workshops at the IGF today: Digital inclusion: reaching the most socially excluded people in society (workshop 114); and Protecting the Consumer in an on-line world (workshop 112).
I’m not going to give rundown here but I am going to stick videos of both below – highlighting the excellent live [...]

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IGF Day 1: The sound and the fury

September 14, 2010

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania. And Lithuania is north-east of Poland and underneath Finland.
In an exhibition center on the outskirts of Vilnius, over the Neris river from the big, beautiful Vingis park, are currently the 1,000 or so people in this world who spend their lives obsessing about Internet governance. I’m one of [...]

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New ICANN Board members: painful progress

September 13, 2010

Last week, the independent nominating committee of ICANN choose three new Board members: Bertrand de la Chapelle, Erika Mann and Cherine Chalaby. It was the European round of the organization’s top-body renewal.
Rather frustratingly, no details were given of the new members’ background or skills in the official announcement so it’s been a bit of guessing [...]

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ICANN Board briefing materials: more cover pages than information

August 17, 2010

At its recent meeting in Brussels, the ICANN Board resolved that it would publish the briefing materials that are supplied to it in order to make decisions.
This decision was widely seen by those familiar with ICANN as an effort by the Board to pre-empt what would be a recommendation from the independent review team [...]

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