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Breakfast with Rod Beckstrom
Monday, June 22. 2009
Was invited to breakfast this morning with the man who may very well become the next ICANN CEO at the conclusion of the 35th ICANN meeting currently going on in Sydney.
Rod Beckstrom at the Sydney ICANN meeting. Photo SVG.
Let me stress that when I write "may very well" become the next CEO, I'm not being funny. As the man himself said this morning: "if I'm lucky enough to be offered this position, and if I'm crazy enough to accept…" In other words, although discussions are in their final stages, until the ICANN Board takes a definitive vote during their meeting on Friday, Paul Twomey's successor has yet to be chosen.
There's also the question of will Beckstrom himself want the job? You'd be forgiven for thinking that if he's come this far, his mind is already made up. But this morning, I got the feeling that this may not necessarily be so and that he was taking a very close, long and hard look at the way the ICANN community works through the prism of this Sydney meeting. And let's be frank, the "ICANN circus" as I've heard some people call it would be enough to put anybody off
Anyway, if Rod Beckstrom does get the Board's vote and if he does decide to say yes, he will officially start his new job next Wednesday, July 1st, at noon California time.
So who will we be getting? An American with considerable private sector entrepreneurship experience, whom most recently worked inside the US government, has lived in four different countries, knows Europe very well, was an exchange student in Germany and went to University in Switzerland.
All good prerequisites for dealing with the complexities of the ICANN ecosystem. So the ICANN Board may have a good candidate on their hands. But whether Rod Beckstrom's tenure is a success or not will depend a lot on what the Board asks of him and how he can address two very difficult issues: new gTLDs and the JPA.
Probable new ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom is in Sydney
Sunday, June 21. 2009
Former Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center Rod Beckstrom is in Sydney attending ICANN's 35th international meeting.
Although Beckstrom hasn't yet been confirmed as ICANN's new CEO, contract negotiations between him and his future employer are known to be in the final stages. Barring any last-minute disaster, Beckstrom should be confirmed as new CEO, possibly as early as the ICANN Board meeting scheduled for this coming Friday (June 26th).
Beckstrom has so far kept his presence in Sydney very low-key. He will spend the week getting to know members of the ICANN staff and community in private meetings and won't appear in any public capacity before being officially named as CEO.
Beckstrom is an avid user of the latest Internet technologies. He runs a blog and a Twitter page.
ICANN's new CEO expected to attend Sydney meeting
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
ICANN's replacement for current CEO Paul Twomey (pictured) should be in attendance at the Sydney meeting, at the end of June. Photo SVG.
Well, you'll probably now read it in lots of other places, but you read it here first folks! Paul Twomey's replacement should be in attendance at the next ICANN meeting, happening in Sydney (Australia) from June 21 to June 26.
Twomey's current contract ends on June 30th and it had been expected that ICANN's new CEO would be "phased in" after Sydney, starting in July with some "meet and greet" sessions with the ICANN staff.
Well it now seems that timetable has been shortened and that the new CEO should not only be named during the Sydney meeting, but actually there.
And that then begs the obvious question: who is he? Sorry, not even my promises of a lifelong supply of French baguettes to my sources had them willing to let me in on that well guarded secret. So all I can tell you is that the lucky finalist apparently hails from the American business community, and is an ICANN outsider.
I guess we'll know more in a couple of weeks.
P.S.: This just in: the IGP blog has former Director of US Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center Rob Beckstrom as Twomey's replacement, with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner a finalist as well...
A deluge of ICANN documents and reports
Monday, June 1. 2009
To ensure participants are able to engage in even more effective discussions, ICANN is making sure major documents are published well in advance of its meetings.
Several major documents have been published by ICANN in the last few days.
There's an analysis of the second Draft Applicant Guidebook comment period and corresponding changes made by ICANN staff to the DAG v2.
There's the final IRT report which is bound to be a major topic of discussion in Sydney.
There's also the third revision to the ccTLD IDN fast-track process (of special interest to me, as I'm on the GNSO's gTLD IDN fast track working group).
Why the deluge you may ask. Check out the minutes of the ICANN board's May 21 meeting, section 8.a, for your answer.
After Mexico, there were complaints from the community that too many documents were published in an haphazard way just before, or during, ICANN meetings, and that it was therefore impossible to take them all in and discuss them properly during those meetings.
So the board asked its Public Participation Committee to look at this issue. The result: a board resolution asking that all documents that need to be considered by the GAC should be published 15 working days before June 21 (the official start of the Sydney meeting, although my colleagues and I on the GNSO Council start our work a day earlier with a full schedule of meetings). Other documents should be available 10 working days before.
This is a good resolution which should help us all by not forcing us to wade through pages and pages of important documents at the last minute when we go to ICANN meetings.
