ICANN continued - the sequel

Wednesday was a day of cruising from one session to another. However there was another good session for Caribbean fellowship people to give input on the ICANN Strategic Plan. Later I attended to ISOC (Internet Society) meeting where many chapters reported in and topical issues discussed in the limited time available.
Finally, after looking in on some other sessions there was the meeting of 'fellow fellows' for some additional briefing - this took place each day though I failed to mention it.

Thursday. Whole day in a technical session for ccTLDs (I'll explain it this time - operators of top level country domains). Real interesting presentation by Bill Woodcock (CERT) on the Estonia incident. Other stuff on DNSSEC and Anycast.
By now the frenetic merry-go-round of meetings has slowed with busy people taking off for distant lands. Looks comparatively quiet...
Final fellowship session, the obligatory photo and the parting of friends...

Friday. A look in at the ICANN Board meeting. Not sure if I would feel comfortable consulting on a stage like that with a hundred people watching... off to check out the mall and the narrow streets and alleys of old San Juan. Trying not to think too much of the long flight up to Miami and right back down to Trinidad and on to Guyana. Thank God I am not going further.

ICANN continued

More on Monday - useful workshop on protecting registrants - mainly about ensuring registrars for gTLDs (.com etc) backup their data in such a way that it can be recovered by ICANN if the registrar folds.

Tuesday. Spent the morning listening to complex but interesting issues related to IDNs - domain names expressed in non-Latin scripts (characters). Fortunately not a major issues for us in English-speaking Guyana.
Good discussions about Caribbean issues. This included particular problems and needs of small ccTLDs, malware and security, user education and the benefits of having Caribbean stakeholders being able to meet together at occassions like this. I guess bringing us together makes a critical mass of actors allowing (good) things to happen which would not happen otherwise... ICANN has gone to great lengths to make this happen and must be commended for it.

More from ICANN San Juan

Sunday the LAC (Latin America and Caribbean) Regional At Large Organisation worked hard getting itself organised. This organisation is made up of representatives from various civil society and other organisations in the region and itself represents these groups of users to ICANN. This is a recent innovation by ICANN.
A session on Domain Tasting was thought-provoking. The activity seems to have little merit. Domain kiting even less. I won't attempt to explain these here (see Wikipedia) but I believe a measure used to evaluate such activities should be their usefulness to society. Work should be of service to others and contribute to the well-being of mankind. Like a tree man should produce fruits. Activities which only take, produce nothing and even have negative effects on others are anti-social. And that brings to mind day trading...
The day ended with a group of us in a small Italian restaurant - good food, good company.

Monday. The opening session. Boredom expected. Actually interesting, presentations short which helped. Including Bernadette Lewis from the Caribbean Telecommunications Union was very good so that the speakers were not all from the US. ICANN is still some-what US oriented...

ICANN San Juan meeting

Hi from San Juan, Puerto Rico!
I am here thanks to the generosity of ICANN's Fellowship program which aims to increase the participation of people from developing countries (like Guyana) in the ICANN consultation process.
The formal opening of this 29th International Public Meeting is on Monday but other regional activities have begun - Caribbean TLD registry operators and others met today. Excellent networking. Met people for the first time that I have exchanged email with for years... some new insights into ccTLD policy... firming up ideas for a new project.
See http://sanjuan2007.icann.org/ for more.
So far the Puerto Rico experience has been great from the little I have seen. Less green (here in the city), more blue sea, same weather as home in Guyana.