Reflecting on ICANN’s Conference in Cairo.
There is no doubt THE hot topic for ICANN’s conference in Cairo, held November 1 through 7, was with the proposed gTLD process. Prior to the conference ICANN produced a comprehensive draft document for the new gTLD program. It was nice to see the document had a great amount of detail where people could actually see, discuss and debate the emerging structure of the program. True, with a price tag of $185,000 per gTLD application (one gTLD string per application), along with additional fees detailed in the document, those who are working towards a community-based gTLD had the wind taken from their sails as the pricing was far more than expected. As heard many times from ICANN staff the document is only a draft and the final document may look completely different than the draft document. Either way, the time frame for accepting applications was mentioned to be around September of 2009. It is quite possible this time frame “may” drift as, during one meeting, it was mentioned that it is “possible” that another comment period may be added between the next document and the final document.
The other interesting part of the new gTLD process is the culmination of programs for IDNs and ccTLDs – all with goal of having things in place for when applications can be accepted for new gTLD strings. In other words, quite a bit of activity is going on at ICANN these days.
Another item I found interesting dealt with security. DNSSEC continues to move forward with further movement regarding acquiring information about the SSAC. However one of the more realistic aspects of security dealt with working with registries and registrars regarding disaster recovery and mitigation. This is a great way for such organizations to practice what they should do in case a disaster of sorts happens to their organization.
For more quick summaries regarding the conference, please read the Daily Conference Summaries, which may be found in the “Announcement” section of the wiki’s main page.
At the June conference in Paris I was enthused by the fact that you had three conferences occurring within two days of each other. You had the Egeni conference, a domainer conference and then ICANN’s conference. The reason for my enthusiasm was due to the fact that at one time you had the entire ICANN “community” under one roof. For those of you who understand this know that this is a rather huge statement. I am talking ICANN “academics”, those working with Internet governance, registrars, registries AND domainers. It was good to see EVERYONE talking. While in Paris I heard of people talking about increasing their involvement within the ICANN process so the “voice” in ICANN’s various committees are more representative of the whole community. So I headed off to Cairo with the anticipation of seeing more people from the various groups. I must say I was disappointed by not seeing what I had hoped. Could it have been due to the economy? Possibly Could it have been the location? Perhaps, but who hasn’t wanted to go to Cairo? Either way my hope continues. I hope to see a greater representation from ALL groups in Mexico City.
1 comment December 4th, 2008