We call it football

Last night, we had the now semi-regular football tournament. Like many things at ICANN meetings, some themes emerge; and a little repetition. (Whois, anyone?) Huge thanks to Erick Iriarte for putting it all together.

As is traditional, the ICANN staff and Board team lost all our matches. We actually do this on purpose, to show humility and openness. It's a ritual humiliation we're happy to go through. And anyway, we had the best t-shirts.

But we weren't completely creamed. We'd lost our professional-level goalie, Olof, because his wife threatened divorce if he came home injured again. But we had Denise harrying the opposing strikers, and tackling dirty the way only girls can in a mixed game.

Some themes emerged;

Caribbean People, Caribbean Priorities

Which room?: Comandatuba 2+3
transcript


What it is: A moderated panel session to provide the Internet community with a cultural and technical overview of the Caribbean.

A transcript for this meeting can be reviewed here.

Domain Name Workshop

This chatroom is for discussion of domain name tasting and the domain name marketplace workshop.

Caribbean Forum 1330 Thursday

Everyone,

Hope to see you at this meeting! A great opportunity for exchange and dialogue with different cultures.

Caribbean People, Caribbean Priorities - A presentation and discussion session (1330-1530) (Comandatuba 2+3)

What it is:
This moderated panel session will provide the Internet community with a cultural and technical overview of the Caribbean.

Why it's important:
Participants and presenters will also hold a dialogue on Caribbean priorities vis-

GNSO

A chatroom for GNSO meetings

Let's tackle some sticky ccTLD issues

I'm pleased that today we were able to launch a couple of discussion papers that I have been keen to start a public dialogue on to help improve management of the DNS root zone.

We've been working hard to improve the responsiveness and efficiency of IANA for some time now. In assessing how IANA does its job, it became clear some of the delays that affect us are because we have inherited some policies that aren't the most efficient to implement.

Number one on the list of things that would improve average processing time for the DNS root zone is to alter our "glue" policy. I have presented at the last few ccNSO meetings, as well as meetings of APTLD and CENTR, on this particular topic. Some name servers are shared between many different TLD operators, and simple administrative changes to these can require two confirmations from every single affected TLD operator. In practice this has made some fairly simple changes take over a year, because one or two of them would not respond to our requests.

Finding Unity in Diversity

By Rebecca Wanjiku
African participants at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) meeting in Sao Paulo have formed a unified body that with articulate issues from participants drawn from various sectors.

Africa Regional At Large Organisation (AFRALO) will unite users wishing to articulate their issues to ICANN. AFRALO is expected to link Africa to the global At Large Organisation within ICANN.

Alice Munyua, a member of ICANN

We Need gTLD Competition

(I tried to make some points on the introduction of new gTLDs at yesterday's GNSO public forum, but with time pressure at the mic, the points I were trying to make were necessarily somewhat brief and probably also somewhat confusing. I'll break up my thoughts into general categories and spread them over a few blog posts.)

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One of ICANN

Playing the catch-up game- African style

PLAYING THE CATCH UP GAME- AFRICAN STYLE
By Rebecca Wanjiku
Paul Odhiambo is an ICT officer at the Ministry of Education in Kenya. He is used to the technical jargon and all issues relating to the information society.

But attending the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting is not that easy for Odhiambo. In some of the sessions, he finds himself in unfarmiliar territory. Why ? afterall he is a techie !

Because at the meetings, participants discuss about ICT laws and how they can be made responsive to people

Tanzania enjoys fruits of co-operation

By Rebecca Wanjiku,

When Peter Ulanga was invited to visit Brazil, last year, he knew that something was going to change in the management of dot Tz country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

Ulanga, and a colleague, Peter Shilla, benefited from training offered by the Brazilian government on management of domain name registries using open source software.

Within two years of the training, Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority is ready to launch the dot Tz ccTLD registry. The domain has been administered by the University of Dar es Salaam and individuals.

`The training worked well, we have bought necessary equipment and we are ready to launch Tanzania Network Information Centre, TzNIC,` said Ulanga.