The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) just conluded its 30th International Public Meeting in Los Angeles.
“ICANN meetings are the ICANN model in action — bottom-up, consensus-driven discussions that help ensure the domain name system is co-ordinated rather than controlled,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “This 30th meeting was one of the best — we laid out our progress on internationalized domain names and new generic top-level domains, and we charted a course forward on complex and difficult issues.”
Some of the resolutions adopted at the meeting are the formation of an IDN working group to explore what the process could be for developing a fast-track policy/process for introducing IDNs and having staff continue working on implementation analysis for new gTLDs and to come back to the Board and community as soon as feasible with a report on implementation issues no later than the ICANN Board meeting in January 2008. An overview of the adopted resolutions can be found at http://www.icann.org/minutes/.
ICANN also elected a new Chairman of the Board, as Vint Cerf steps down as ICANN’s chairman now. The new chairman elected is Peter Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer who specializes in intellectual property and Internet law. Thrush was the legal advisor to InternetNZ in 1996-1999 and he has been involved in ICANN since its inception. On his views of ICANN’s future, Thrush said:
“I think our biggest challenges are about serving the global audience. At a technical level there is the challenge of introducing international scripts at the top level for both gTLDS and ccTLDs, as well as new processes for introducing what may be a large number of generic top level domains. At the organizational level we need to expand our global activity and constantly increase international involvement, as well work on the completion of the Joint Project Agreement with the United States Government.”
Now that Vint Cerf leaves ICANN, the organization has recorded some video tributes to Cerf, including this tribute from Dr. Charles Elachi and Google’s Eric Schmidt:
Yesterday, Vint Cerf released a letter to the ICANN community, titled “Looking Towards the Future“, in which he points out some of the challenges ICANN will be facing in the future.
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