ICANN held its 28th meeting in the Portugese capital of Lisbon between 26 and 30 March 2007, thanks to local hosts FCCN – Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional (National Foundation for Scientific Computing) who run the .pt top-level domain. This is a very brief photo rundown of events.
You can see the full set of photographs at icann.org/photos/meetings/lisbon/. Currently it is just a file structure, we are working on making it more user-friendly.
| Note: All photographs are copyright of ICANN and are watermarked. But we are assigning a non-commercial free use licence to them, which means that as long as you provide credit for the photograph and so long as the photo is not being used for commercial purposes, you are free to use them as you wish. If you click on any of the pictures below you will be linked through to a full-size professional photograph, which may well be too large for most people’s needs. All smaller (450-pixel-wide) photos have filenames with the suffix “-s”. |
The Lisbon meeting drew a large crowd of people (just over 800) from across the world to discuss the latest changes and evolution in the Internet’s infrastructure. The main technical topics of the meeting were IPv6 and DNSSEC, not to mention ongoing policy reviews for new gTLDs and the ever-present Whois debate, but much of conversation surrounding the controversial topic of the proposed .xxx domain and suggested changes to the registrar agreement after significant problems with a company called RegisterFly in the weeks leading up to the meeting.
Many of these topics were tackled on the first day in a press conference with ICANN chairman Vint Cerf, CEO and president Paul Twomey, local host Pedro Veiga and Portugese IT minister Prof. José Mariano Gago.
One of the most productive elements of the meeting was a series of agreements signed between ICANN and various ccTLDs and ALAC representatives. There was, first in terms of time, a memorandum of understanding drawn up with the operators of Libya’s .ly domain.
As well as the Ivory Coast (Cote’ d’Ivoire).
With the opportunity taken to get a group shot of the African contingent at the meeting.
And then also Russia’s .ru TLD agreement.
The Gala Dinner on the Tuesday night was held at the Convento do Beato, where attendees were treated to a meal…
And some singing from famous fado singer Camane.
The At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) chose a new chair, Jacqueline Morris, at the meeting, and she was able to announce the creation of a further two Regional At Large Organisations (RALOs) to give the average Net user more of a voice within ICANN’s processes.
The African RALO was signed by representatives from Morocco, Sudan, Mali, South Africa, Benin and Congo, among others.
And the European RALO by representatives from, among others, Bulgaria (pictured), Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Italy.
Who then all took the stage with a glass of champagne to celebrate their creation.
With one day left to go, however, CEO Paul Twomey switched back to water.
A meeting covering the Arabic Net perspective gave the opportunity for another group picture…
And that left the controversial decision over the proposed .xxx domain which was, in the end, rejected by the Board in an open meeting. And finally, the closing ceremony…
Where retiring GAC chair Sharil Tarmizi received a standing ovation…
And organiser Pedro Veiga was thanked for all the hard work he and his team had put in to make ICANN Lisboa 2007 a success.