President Bill Clinton will guest star at ICANN's 40th international meeting, in San Francisco in March.

ICANN was started by the Clinton administration in 1998. With the California-based organisation returning home for its next meeting, Clinton's presence brings more prestige to what is already expected to be a heavily attended event.

Dubbed the "Silicon Valley" meeting, ICANN 40 is expected to break all attendance records as it draws local Internet professionals and companies on top of the fifteen hundred plus delegates that normally attend an ICANN meeting.

Clinton is expected to keynote at the opening ceremony. But getting the former US president isn't free. "We’ve seen some wildly inflated figures of what President Clinton would be paid to speak," says ICANN staffer Scott Pinzon on the organisation's blog. "His speaking fees are a matter of public record, and you can rest assured that the half-million and million-dollar figures some have reported are way out of line."

However much Clinton is being paid to show up, it won't come out of ICANN coffers. "The fees will be covered by a targeted sponsorship donated specifically for this purpose," adds Pinzon.

ICANN's sponsorship packs have been revamped for the San Francisco meeting, with new levels added such as the Diamond pack, priced at USD 500,000, or the Platinum Elite at USD 250,000! As Verisign is currently the only sponsor listed by ICANN, and the company is shown at Diamond level, it may be providing the "targeted sponsorship" that Pinzon alludes to.

In any case, the SF meetings looks like being a record-breaker for ICANN both in terms of attendance, and sponsorship revenue. Now if only the new gTLD program could be green-lit there, that would make it the perfect event for ICANN.

Akram Attalah is to become ICANN's new COO. He replaces Doug Brent and will start in his new position before the end of September. A quick Google search shows that Attalah was previously COO at CoreObjects after having held various positions at Conexant.

ICANN's Board met on August 5th and approved a number of resolutions, including one that must have been particularly pleasing for Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. Even before he became Chair, Dengate Thrush has always argued for some kind of compensation for that position.

Now approved, this will be paid on a pro-rata basis starting on August 6, 2010.

I think this is one of the sanest decisions the ICANN Board has taken in years. The amount of work asked of ICANN volunteers, specially the Board and its Chair, is enormous. Chairing the ICANN Board has become a full-time job and if the body in charge of coordinating the Internet's naming and numbering system wants to keep drawing quality people to its top volunteer positions, it must be ready to compensate them.

At all levels, there's a terrific amount of volunteer goodwill within ICANN. Taking one group I am currently involved in as an example, the Vertical Integration Working Group, I am stunned by the dedication of its members. With 2 teleconference meetings a week (each lasting from 1.5 to 2 hours) and numerous position papers and other reports drafted, the sixty plus members of the group have spared no effort in their quest to find a solution that will then benefit the whole community as part of the new gTLD program.

Being on the Board is even more demanding. And it requires complete impartiality. I know of several people who have both the expertise and the will to serve as Board members but to do so, would be required to give up their day jobs. The question then becomes: how can ICANN expect them to give up their salary and maybe even a long-term career just for the "honour" of serving a 3-year term on the Board?

Compensating the Board Chair is clearly a sensible decision and a step in the right direction, but it does generate its own sets of problems. Why only the Chair? In fact, why stop at Board members?

These are questions that ICANN will also have to look at in the near future. 

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom during the Brussels meeting opening ceremony. (INDOM Photo).

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom's speech at the Brussels meeting opening ceremony has elicited a strong reaction from the team tasked with reviewing ICANN's accountability and transparency.

And in what is a clear display of transparency, that reaction has been posted on the ICANN website.

We recently heard from Doug Brent, ICANN's COO, that he will be leaving after 4 years with the body responsible for coordinating Internet domain names. Having worked with Doug in the course of my duties as a member of ICANN's GNSO Council and more recently as Vice Chair of that Council, I can say that he will be missed. Doug was as helpful as he was professional, and always managed to make you feel like no problem was insurmountable. Quite a feat in the ICANN environment.

I hear that other members of staff may be leaving soon. Some, it appears, have already left.  VP, Global and Strategic Partnerships Theresa Swinehart for example, who was an ICANN veteran having joined the organisation way back in 2001. I also worked with Theresa, when she was on then-VP Paul Levins' team. I have not seen an official announcement from ICANN on Theresa's departure, which seems odd, but she is no longer shown on the staff list.

Another major staff member about to leave, so I am told, is IANA boss David Conrad. Although I do not know David personally, I have heard several people credit him for a marked improvement in the way IANA has performed over the last few years. IANA is a key element of ICANN's job as steward of the Internet's naming system as it allows new domains to be added to the Internet root. For instance, in order for several new non-Latin script Internet domains to become active recently, they had to be "delegated" by IANA.

So all this leaves me with one question. What's going on at ICANN at the moment for some many key staff members to be leaving? I've also heard a rumour that Nick Ashton-Hart, Senior Director Participation and Engagement, may soon be on his way…

Following the confirmation of Cartagena, Colombia for the December 2010 ICANN meeting, the ICANN Board has set aside a budget of US$2.126 million for that meeting, the last of the three ICANN traditionally holds each year in different regions of the world.

The amount, a maximum not to be exceeded, is inline with recent ICANN meeting costs.

Cartagena is scheduled to last for a week, from December 5 to 10, 2010.

ICANN practices regional rotation for the 3 international meetings it holds each calendar year, with the last one of 2010 planned for South America. Several venues were looked at but it now appears that the Colombian city of Cartagena has been selected.

Cartagena promises to be a landmark meeting for ICANN as the final version of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook is scheduled to be released there. If that happens, then the first round of applications should start in Q1 2011, paving the way for an initial wave of new gTLDs to hit the Net in late 2011/early 2012.

ICANN's 37th international meeting doesn't officially get underway until Monday, but for many attendees work has started already. I got to the meeting venue in Nairobi this morning and I'm happy to report that apart from some truly horrendous traffic, the Kenyan capital looks like being a very pleasant place to be in.

But I won't have much time for sightseeing over the next few days. This meeting promises to be challenging. Not just for me, although it will be that as well. The GNSO Council Chair Chuck Gomes is not making the trip over to Nairobi, so his chairing duties should have been split evenly between me and fellow GNSO Vice Chair Olga Cavalli. However I learned this morning that Olga is also unable to make the trip for personal reasons. I will therefore be chairing all the GNSO meetings, including the open Council meeting on Wednesday and the Council wrap-up on Thursday. Talk about being unexpectedly thrown in at the deep end…

But this meeting will also present several challenges for ICANN itself. First and foremost, will the organisation be able to keep this meeting relevant even though many of the usual suspects have chosen to stay away? The Board has some key topics on its agenda, not least a possible reconsideration of the .XXX application and the need to decide whether to okay the proposed Expressions of Interest for new gTLDs. It is imperative that this work not be slowed or delayed because there are less people physically present than usual. Otherwise the whole rationale for having this meeting could be questioned.

One way to ensure this will be to guarantee a high quality of remote participation for those not physically in Nairobi but who still wish to take part. Remote participation hasn't been a strong point at past ICANN meetings. Most of the time, remote participants have been relegated to the role of silent observers due to the inherent difficulties in making themselves heard in a room full of people onsite. For this meeting, the remote participants will definitely want to speak and be active. A lot of them are regular ICANN attendees and they have no qualms at all about speaking publicly. If their voices can be heard, Nairobi will be a more productive meeting.

Following a ruling in its favour by ICANN's Independent Review Panel (IRP), would-be .XXX operator ICM Registry is pushing ICANN to honour the 2007 contract which should have allowed it to run .XXX for the last 3 years.

ICM Chairman Stuart Lawley has written to ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush. "I sincerely hope you share (…) the view expressed by so many (…) that the completion of the first ever Independent Review Process following the issuance of the Panel’s recent ruling is a defining moment for ICANN," writes Lawley.

Lawley told me recently that he expects his legal fees alone to exceed USD 6 million. But ICM is not asking ICANN reimburse these or even make reparations for the loss of revenue ICM has undoubtedly suffered from not being able to launch .XXX in 2007. What ICM is asking for, however, is that it be considered a part of the 2004 application round and not be amalgamated into the new gTLD program. "Nothing in the declaration would justify a decision to reconsider the ICM application in connection with the upcoming new gTLD round," Lawley argues. "Nor is there any principled reason to apply new rules or requirements to a proposal that was already determined to comply with the rules and procedures governing the 2004 sTLD round."

Lawley will be making the trip to Nairobi next week for ICANN's 37th international meeting, where he is hoping to meet with Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom and to see the ICANN Board revisit the .XXX issue.

The ICANN Board met yesterday and reconfirmed its commitment to the 37th international ICANN meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi from March 7 to 12.

Security concerns expressed by some participants in recent weeks combined with a recent terrorist alert on the convention center where the meeting is to be held have contributed to many of the usual attendees deciding not to come.

That includes whole groups, such as the GNSO's intellectual property constituency (IPC) or the gTLD registries. The IPC and the registries are even planning alternative meetings in "safer" locations such as New York during the Nairobi meeting week. Sensibly, the Board has said that no funding would be available from ICANN for such meetings.

ICANN staff and the Board have been working in recent weeks to gauge the true extent of any security threat and ensure that if the meeting did go ahead, it would do so in relative safety. Various reports, both from governments, people onsite and recent visitors to Nairobi, show that the terrorist threat is actually not very credible and that the level of security on the street is no worse than at many other major cities. Touch wood… I hope no-one finds out otherwise in a couple of weeks!

After much worrying, talking, arguing and hesitating, ICANN has gone and done the right thing. Despite certain security concerns from participants from countries like the United States or the UK, the Nairobi meeting is on.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom confirmed Nairobi after Friday's special meeting of the ICANN Board, convened specifically to discuss the situation.

"We recognize that many developing country cities have higher ambient levels of street crime and much of the world (the U.S. and Europe included) faces international terrorist threats and attacks," Beckstrom explained after the meeting. "Both are simply facts of life."

It's good to see some measure of common sense returning to this Nairobi debate. Yes there are risks, risks are everywhere. But ICANN is a global organisation and as a member of that organisation, I would rather not see it slap Kenya or any other country in the face by snubbing it (this would have been the second time for Kenya, a fact which would have understandably irked the Kenyans).

"Given that ICANN is committed to "One world. One Internet. Everyone connected." we have engaged and will continue to engage with the whole world," concludes Rod Beckstrom.

I couldn't agree more.

Although unconfirmed at this stage, the ICANN grapevine has been buzzing the last few days with the news that ICANN's Vice President for policy development Denise Michel was about to be replaced.

Former Manager of public participation Kieren McCarthy has just confirmed the news on his personal blog with a scathing piece. "Of the hundreds of people I have worked with, some of them very difficult, I have only truly disliked two," writes Kieren, before going on to explain that Denise was one of them and that she "infected the whole work environment with destructive and negative behaviour."

Since becoming a GNSO Councillor, the GNSO being responsible for setting policy for the generic namespace, I have obviously worked with Denise on several occasions, but never closely enough to know whether Kieren's words are an exaggeration or not. 

But I did work closely with Kieren on several projects within ICANN. I know him to be an extremely fair and honest person that will always tell it like it really is. So if he thinks that "when, in six months’ time, everyone is much happier about the process used to decide vital policies for the global Internet, you will be able to track it back to this day," adding "the Internet has become a better place today" I tend to trust his judgment.

Kieren names David Olive as Denise Michel's replacement and the new person in charge of what is one of ICANN's key departments.