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ICANN Marrakech is over, save the Board meeting. And this fact was – as it always is – sufficient reason for everyone to head to the bar and mull things over while consuming (un)healthy quantities of booze.
What was the upshot of this week-long meeting in Morocco? Well, the general bottom-up consensus was that not much [...]

Brazil and football. If my calculations are correct, England will win its World Cup game against Portugal on Saturday and then lose on the Wednesday to Brazil. In many ways this would be better than beating Brazil and losing to either Germany or Argentina in the final. That would be too unbearable. And losing to [...]

There was almost no-one at the Board public forum this afternoon. And it was business as usual. There was some discussion why there was no one there – which appeared to conclude that we needed to have a discussion about it, but the answer is: it was business as usual.
Why would you attend the open [...]

It’s difficult to know if there is anything more frustrating that being unable to get on the Internet at an ICANN meeting, but then I’m certain that the greengrocers of Georgia or undertakers of Uxbridge have an anecdote or two to put that in shadow.

While it’s nice having a much bigger conference venue than usual [...]

I have done a story for The Register on what the GAC is due to announce in its communique to the ICANN Board later this week.
It forms part of the “enhanced co-operation” process underway and effectively it says that communication across ICANN needs to improve and that means making information available faster and earlier and [...]

It’s like WSIS redux. The issue of US government oversight of the Net has popped up yet again, this time in the form of the NTIA asking for comments on ICANN in general in time for the renewal of the MoU contract in September.
And following a long series of requests all making the same point [...]

“Cause baby, I feel wonderful tonight…” The man singing this is lying. He doesn’t feel wonderful at all. He feels like a musician who has been reduced to playing old-favourites to a small bunch of indifferent tourists, sat tapping away behind two sythesisers, only one of which he ever plays, but both of which are [...]

If you’re going to put up a load of Internet wonks in your Congressional Palace, you might as well get something out of it.
An interesting letter [pdf] has appeared from the Moroccan minister for economic and general affairs addressed to ICANN head Paul Twomey asking ICANN to hurry along the redelegation of its .ma top-level [...]

Two surprises in one: first Vint Cerf has announced that Paul Twomey has signed a three-year continuation contract of his CEO role. First of all, no one appears to know the contract was up, and secondly – three years?!
Everyone had assumed that Twomey would leave in around a year’s time. He had been GAC chair, [...]

I’m at the opening ceremony of ICANN’s Marrakech meeting and it’s due to kick off in eight minutes and apparently the Moroccan prime minister Driss Jetou is coming.

I have to say, this is the best conference centre I’ve been to for a quite a while – it’s the Palais de Congres and, rather helpfully, only [...]