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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.
ICANN's next CEO job offer
Sunday, April 26. 2009
The IRT black box
Thursday, March 26. 2009
The noise that I'm hearing about the IRT – the Implementation Recommendation Team that the ICANN Board at its Mexico meeting requested be set up to give trademark holders sufficient protection as new gTLDs are introduced – has me slightly worried.
Despite some strong, and I think well-founded, recommendations to the contrary, it seems the IRT has decided to work behind closed doors. No publication of the meeting transcripts or recordings, no open mailing list so that anyone in the community can follow its discussions (like they can for, say, the GNSO Council, whose mailing list is public). This, I'm told, so that IRT members can have "open and frank" discussions.
I do understand the principle. On such sensitive topics, you can sometimes expect more productive results if you allow behind-closed-doors deliberations so that people don't feel like Big Brother is watching them every time they open their mouth. Yet I can't help but think that keeping the rest of us in the dark about what's going on in the IRT is a missed opportunity to show that real thought is going into debugging the potentially explosive IP issue.
Continue reading "The IRT black box"
Goodbye Paul Twomey
Monday, March 2. 2009
ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey at today's Mexico City meeting opening ceremony, announcing he will be stepping down at the end of his current term on June 30th. (photo SVG).
Paul Twomey will be stepping down at the end of 2009 after 6 years as ICANN's President and CEO. Twomey explained the reasons for his desire to leave ICANN during today's Mexico City meeting opening ceremony.
"I have been President since 2003," Twomey reminded a packed main meeting room at the Sheraton Centro Historico convention centre, where the 34th ICANN meeting is taking place this week. "In fact, today is my 60th month as President. My contract expires in June and I have told the Board that I would not be seeking its renewal for another 3-year term."
Twomey, who was Chairman of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) for 4 years before being named President, feels that staying on any longer would have been detrimental to the organisation he leads. "Another term would have meant 10 years of the same President," he said. "Also, on a more personal level, at 47 years of age I would like to hold other leadership positions in private enterprise."
Continue reading "Goodbye Paul Twomey"
Question ICANN's chairman on the web!
Thursday, February 12. 2009
Confirmed: new gTLD fees will be changed
Thursday, February 5. 2009
What goes on at a regional registrar meeting
Wednesday, February 4. 2009
ICANN meetings aren't all major-league gatherings of a thousand or more people. Some are more focused work meetings for a specific part of the ICANN community. Like the regional meetings that ICANN holds twice or three times a year (there's no set rhythm) for registries and registrars.
These are an invaluable opportunity for domain name professionals to meet and talk about the issues that affect them directly. Regional meetings are also a great way to explain to people who might not be familiar with the ICANN process how they can get involved.
For example, it was at the European registrar meeting in 2007 that, having listened to Registrar Constituency chair Jon Nevett give a presentation, I decided that INDOM should become an RC member. Since then, in a little over a year, I've gone from newbie to being involved in the RC Excom as Treasurer and now as the RC's European representative on the GNSO Council. So I'd say I'm living proof that outreach efforts at these regional meetings really do work ☺
ICANN obviously thinks so too as they have published the presentations made during the regional meeting we had at the end of January in Rome. This is a first and what looks like an excellent idea so that people who didn't attend may still get a grasp of what goes on during these regional meetings.
As an added personal bonus, one of the presentations being published was the one I gave to explain what being a GNSO Council rep involves and how the Council works ☺
ICANN releases stats on the DAG comment period
Sunday, January 11. 2009
ICANN ad for new TLDs
Friday, January 2. 2009
Reading through the current issue of The Economist magazine, my jaw dropped as I turned to page 155 and saw an advert for ICANN!Focussed on the new TLD program which, I quote, "could produce a new wave of innovation – innovation for business and billions of non-English speakers," this looks like a determined step by ICANN to stay ahead of the criticism that is being levelled at it for trying to usher in an ear of new TLDs on the Internet too quickly.
Recent Internet news stories have adamantly claimed that a US Department of Commerce letter posted to the ICANN new TLD comment board showed stern disapproval by the current administration for the new TLD program. I'm not sure I'd go along with that. After all, the program has been in preparation for the last couple of years and there's no way the US government has just found out about it. If it wanted to veto the program, it could have done so much more decisively a while ago.
The Economist ad may be a way for ICANN to make it clear to people that, yes, new TLDs are coming. "In the second half of 2009, ICANN is planning to open up a process that could create more names at the top level," reads the ad, in an obvious reminder that the timetable is set and that this is due to happen in a few months.
On a personal note, I'm glad and even a little proud to see domain names come out of their niche and be thrust into the mainstream in this way.
"Lucky ICANN" theme echoed by several people
Tuesday, December 16. 2008
I'm chuffed to see that my "is ICANN the luckiest organisation around?" post has been picked up by several people. When I wrote it, I didn't know if I was the only one to feel that ICANN's current reliance on the good will of a lot of volunteers might not be sustainable in the long run. It seems I wasn't the only one. As an example, check out Patrick Vande Walle's account of similar problems he has identified as an ALAC representative. There's another example of a comment here.
ICANN may review new TLD fees
Wednesday, December 10. 2008
New gTLDs being discussed during an open public session at the Cairo ICANN meeting, last November. Photo SVG.
Last Monday ICANN held a new gTLD Q&A session hosted by the GNSO Council. The subject of ICANN's proposed fee structure for initial evaluation and annual registry fees was once again at the centre of much of the discussions, during which it transpired that said fees may well be revised in the forthcoming second draft applicant guidebook (DAG), due out in February 2009.
A recording of the two hour telephone session is publicly available on the GNSO Council's calendar page (see "mp3" link for December 8 entry).
At one point during the session, I put a very direct question to Kurt Pritz, one of the people in charge of the new gTLD programme at ICANN. "Is there a good chance that the fee structure will change?" Kurt answered that yes, that was a possibility.
That doesn't mean that it's now written in stone that the proposed $185,000 evaluation fees or the $75,000/5% (whichever the greater) annual fees will change, but it does look more likely now.
It also shows that ICANN is doing exactly what it said it would do. It's taking a long hard look at all the comments being made on the first DAG, and there have been many on the question of fees, and it's acting upon them.
ICANN, the luckiest organisation around?
Saturday, December 6. 2008
ICANN at work. At a Registrar Constituency meeting (during the November Cairo meeting), Board members, Councillors and community representatives interact and contribute to ICANN's policy development. All are volunteers, putting substantial amounts of time and effort into the ICANN process. Photo SVG.
When I got to Cairo last month for the ICANN meeting, I had just been elected to the GNSO Council. Walking into the venue hotel, I bumped into one of my friends on the ICANN staff. I suppose I was expecting some kind of congratulations. I got a weary "you really are deranged!" instead.
It's a reaction that I didn't understand at the time. I looked at being on the Council as an exciting opportunity to be at the heart of the policy development process going on in my industry, and I still do. Policies like the new gTLD program stem from the GNSO and ICANN's other Supporting Organisations (SO). So Council members get to be involved in defining tomorrow's Internet. That's something that I found really thrilling.
But since taking my position on the Council after the close of the Cairo meeting, I've also discovered the other side of the coin. Council members must brave a constant deluge of papers, reports, ICANN updates and telephone meetings (3, sometimes 4 2-hour meetings a week). They must keep themselves up to speed with everything that's happening in the ICANN world, including of course topics that don't fall directly under the banner of their own Supporting Organisation. They must report to their individual constituencies, the Registrar Constituency in my case, to make sure the people they are elected to represent know exactly what's going on at SO level.
Continue reading "ICANN, the luckiest organisation around?"
