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Jean-Jacques Subrenat

Jean-Jacques Subrenat is involved in voluntary and educational activities. Writes and debates on global issues, current affairs, international relations, governance. Has an interest in research. Is self-educated about the Internet. Currently involved in the EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) network and projects, and at CCRN (Centre culturel et de rencontre Neumunster) Luxembourg, as the senior adviser to its Board.

He was a volunteer in the French Navy (1960-63), a scholarship student (1964-68), a researcher at the CNRS in Paris (Centre national de la recherche scientifique 1967-71), a diplomat (1972-2005).

In the French diplomatic service, he worked at the Policy Planning Staff (1976-78); on secondment to the Ministry of industry to help set up the Solar Energy Authority, where he headed the international affairs department (1978-80); Diplomatic Adviser to the Minister for Europe (1980-81); Deputy director for Asia and the Pacific (1984-86); Alternate director for development aid (1986-88); Alternate director for the Americas (1992-95).

He was posted in Singapore (Embassy Secretary 1973-76), in Japan (Counsellor 1981-84, Minister Counsellor & Deputy Head of mission 1988-92). He was Ambassador, Permanent Representative to the Western European Union (WEU in Brussels 1995-98), Ambassador to Estonia (1998-2002), Ambassador to Finland (2002-05), acting Governor for France at the ASEF Board of Governors (2005).

Recent responsibilities: Chairman of the Advisory Board of Institut Pierre Werner in Luxembourg (2007~2009), and tutor at ENA (Ecole nationale d'administration in Strasbroug, 2007~2008).

Ambassador Subrenat has a doctor's degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris, and diplomas from Bordeaux, Paris, Osaka. Edited a book on Estonia, published a book on music in Finland. Guest of the International Visitor Program (USA, 1986); honorary distinctions from Estonia, Finland, France, Japan, Thailand.

Jean-Jacques Subrenat was selected for the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee. His current term, which started after the 2007 annual meeting, will end after the conclusion of ICANN's annual meeting in 2010.

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."