kierenmccarthy.co.uk

I am planning to take an open and consultative approach to my new job as general manager of public participation of ICANN, so I figured I might as well start now by asking people what they thought I should concentrate on first with a poll on this website.

Starting 5 February, I will be the “general manager, public participation” for ICANN – an organisation I have closely followed and frequently criticised almost since its inception in 1999. I’m excited about it, and the possibilities the position holds.
Here then is a blog post about why I took the job and what I hope to [...]

I wish I could say it was something to do with my very recent appointment as General Manager of Public Participation, but a few announcements yesterday have shown that ICANN is finally opening up a bit.
Perhaps most importantly, we have the first proper Board minutes from its 17 January meeting. That’s a two-day turnaround and [...]

The new head of the ITU, Malian citizen Hamadoun Toure, gave his first press conference on Friday to the press corps in Geneva and it would appear he used the opportunity to try to settle matters with ICANN.
The quote doing the rounds of the press reports is: “It is not my intention to take over [...]

Well, Stuart Lawley won’t take no for any answer and .xxx has popped up on the ICANN agenda again, this time with such extraordinary controls and safeguards that it makes you wonder whether the business case is still there.
Contrary to common belief, the .xxx domain was never ruled out. In fact, because it had been [...]

I took place in a discussion with various notables just before Xmas for an edition of the BBC’s Digital Planet radio programme and just remembered it has now come out and you can download and listen to it from its website (although I will also stick it below for ease).
The discussion was on two things: [...]

I have stuck up a new poll today, pondering what will be the biggest Internet issue of 2007, and archiving the previous poll about ICANN’s planned report into domain names.
I asked ICANN’s chairman and CEO about where this report was up to at the end of the Sao Paulo meeting last week. They are still [...]

On Friday, the ICANN Board approved some controversial renewal contracts for the .biz, .info and .org top-level Internet domains.
In a press conference a few hours later, chairman Vint Cerf urged the reporters to read the transcript of the discussion. That transcript isn’t up yet but I figured that Cerf was right about listening to [...]

I’m just watching the webcast of the ICANN open forum due to start in a second at Sao Paulo and the techies are playing Patti La Belle.
It’s no mistake, and Patti has a few things she wants to share with conference attendees from ICANN’s perspective. “Together we will live in paradise,” she explains, [...]

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently building and running online participation websites – or, in English, trying to get people on the Internet learning about and interacting with physical meetings.
Both have been for Internet organisations, which should theoretically make things easier. The first was the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens in early [...]