As some of you will have already noticed, remote participation details  are in the process of being posted on the ICANN Nairobi site. Work on the remote participation for Nairobi began for me on the first day of December when I took up the post of Senior Director for Participation and Engagement, as the Board’s [...]

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ICANN’s internal team – including staff from the US (California, Texas, New Jersey), France and Niger – continued to meet daily over the weekend to discuss and share information regarding the ICANN Nairobi meeting. Today and last night, we had direct contact with the local Kenyan members of the security planning committee, and there has [...]

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We have listened to the community. Many are looking forward to Nairobi, some expressed concerns, particularly in light of the events in downtown Nairobi on January 15. Accordingly, ICANN staff and board have reexamined the security situation During our re-examination we first explored moving the event out of the downtown Nairobi area to a suburb, [...]

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It is my pleasure to pass along the following message from ICANN’s President and CEO, Rod Beckstrom: Dear Community: As you know, I believe that ICANN’s CEO should be accessible to the community, but also to those who may not regularly participate in ICANN’s processes who are interested in the important work we do. As [...]

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I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Nick Ashton-Hart Senior Director, Participation and Engagement. This position incorporates the duties of General Manager for Public Participation previously performed by Kieren McCarthy, with some fine-tuning of focus and effort. ICANN views increasing participation across all stakeholder communities as a strategic priority. This means recruiting new participants in [...]

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Kieren McCarthy’s last day at ICANN staff is today, and he wanted to share some of his perceptions and comments about his tenure and further areas for improvement. You can find his comments at: Kieren’s Comments Next week, I’ll be announcing who from ICANN staff will be taking on these responsibilities going forward.

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ICANN ran an open forum at the IGF in Sharm El Sheikh yesterday. You can view a video of the event below. ICANN and the Internet Ecosystem Presentation [PDF, 1,440K]

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Just after the Seoul meeting ended, we set up an online survey asking attendees what they thought about various aspects of it. Of 1,120 total attendees (excluding staff and Board), we emailed 540 of them using the information they had provided on registration and received 110 responses – a healthy response rate of 20.4 percent. [...]

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Earlier today, Chuck Gomes was selected by the new GNSO Council as its chair. The voting procedure needed 60 percent of both of the new houses – contracted and non-contracted – to vote in favour. A first round vote with Chuck Gomes and Olga Cavalli saw Chuck Gomes win 100 percent of the contracted house [...]

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