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Just a Normal Week for an ICANN Ambassador

10 December 2013
By Nigel Hickson

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One is never bored at ICANN. Indeed the hectic pace hardly allows the mind to drift at all! I point to last week as an example.

It started on Monday in London at the Government and Students and Greenwich University where work on costs of a fragmented Internet is underway at ICANN’s behalf. Then, a brief spell in our Brussels office before flying off to Baku for Azerbaijan’s first National IGF. I spoke on Wednesday morning on ICANN’s globalization mission, the New gTLD Programme and the road ahead on Internet Governance. With the likes of Russia, Turkey and Moldova attending, this was an excellent forum for a regional debate in a multistakeholder setting; a point not lost on our friends from Russia in terms of their advocacy for a purely multilateral dialogue.

After enjoying the excellent hospitality of our Baku hosts, I was off early morning on Thursday to Kiev to take part in the third .UA Conference (UADOM). On Thursday afternoon I contributed to the debate on DNSSEC and IPv6, talked Ukrainian politics and enjoyed some fine local beer with the DNS Community. I presented ICANN’s contributions at the main Plenary on Friday. As in Baku I spoke about the changes within ICANN, the increased global engagement, the emergence of the Engagement Strategy for Europe (this evoked a great deal of interest – especially in the current climate) and the timeline for discussing and debating Internet Governance through 2014. In the early afternoon I was afforded an audience with the Chairman of the State Agency on Science, Innovation and Information to discuss the recently signed Document of Responsibilities about the .укр ccTLD (IDN for Ukraine). The meeting was televised.

Capping the long week was a healthy snowfall in in Kiev that disrupted my flight home and, alas, my planned sponsored run in London on Saturday. Still, however, a very productive week working through a typical ICANN agenda.

Authors

Nigel Hickson