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With Sympathies: Marilyn Cade

Marilyn Cade

On behalf of ICANN, it is with great sadness that I offer condolences on the passing of Marilyn Cade.

Marilyn was a long-time member of the ICANN community and a strong and constant advocate for our work. Through more than 20 years of involvement in ICANN, she was active in several working groups within the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), including serving in the Business Constituency and on the Commercial Stakeholder Group Executive Committee.

"Marilyn Cade helped build ICANN to where it is today," said Maarten Botterman, ICANN Board Chair. "She cared about ICANN, and she cared about people. She earned our deepest respect and gratitude for her tireless contributions."

Many will remember her tenacity and passion. "Marilyn had strong views and opinions on many matters but always supported the multistakeholder model," said Göran Marby, ICANN President and CEO. "She wanted people to be involved in ICANN and to maximize the potential of the Internet."

I know many will miss seeing her in her trademark red jacket and hearing her say "My name is Marilyn Cade," at nearly every ICANN Public Forum. She was an ardent supporter of mentoring and leadership development, and participated in the ICANN Fellowship Program and in ICANN Academy courses.

On a personal level, I worked with Marilyn in Washington, D.C., promoting the Information Technology industry and an open and global Internet. I will miss her boundless energy and passion. She was supportive of ICANN from the very beginning. She reflected on the early days of ICANN in an interview here.

May she rest in peace, knowing that ICANN is stronger and growing because of her commitment.

Yet her impact went beyond ICANN. Marilyn contributed to the emergence of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a global platform. As the virtual IGF begins this year, the IGF Secretariat has published a remembrance webpage. There will also be a session in her memory at 21:00 UTC on Friday, 6 November. This is a testament to her spirit.

The Internet community will remember Marilyn, and we offer our deepest condolences to her family and friends.

Comments

    nitin walia  20:55 UTC on 05 November 2020

    That is a very sad news. Words can’t describe how sorry I am at this loss.What a beautiful life she lived. She was always there for the ICANN community members with a warm smile and a helping hand. She will be surely missed. May her soul rest in peace.

    Cheryl Langdon-Orr  21:15 UTC on 06 November 2020

    Thanks for these words David it is very hard to do justice to the *force of spirit and intent that was the indomitable Ms M*... We know she will be sorely missed by many in our community and that yet (as she would insist is can) our community will go on just fine, but I believe it will go on benefiting from her tireless efforts.

    Manal Ismail  23:54 UTC on 09 November 2020

    Very sad news .. She will be surely missed .. It's hard to imagine an ICANN meeting without her being around and first at the public forum mic .. She was always active, cheerful, greeting everyone and introducing community members to each other, giving me the feeling that she was home at ICANN .. Sincere condolences to all her family and world-wide friends .. May her soul rest in peace ..

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."