Report of Participation at the at-Large summit and the ICANN meeting at Mexico

ICANN’s 34th international public meeting is the first of three held annually to conduct policy development and outreach. 1219 people attended from over 100 different countries. The participants engaged in a wide range of discussions about the Internet’s domain name system and related issues.

The at-Large summit was held for two days preceeding the ICANN meeting with participation from 90 at-Large structures. At Large structures the world over represent the Internet USER and USER COMMUNITIES. ISOC India Chennai applied to become an at-Large structure six months ago and was announced as certified during the ICANN meeting at Cairo in December.

At about the same time I was named the IDN liaison for the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) to succeed Hong Xue from China who has done commendable work as IDN liaison in her committed purusit of the IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) cause. I took part at the ALAC meetings, the At Large Asia Pacific Regional meeting, participated in a working group to discuss the Future of ICANN, attended the ISOC
International Meeting and attended several sesions in the ICANN meeting including the ICANN Board Meeting on March 6. ( ICANN Board meetings are open as an exemplary model of open, participative and accountable organizational governance)

At Large Structures are to play an important role in ICANN governance. ICANN handles the task of critical Internet Resouces - the IP address space through IANA, and the Domain Names. At Large Structures participate in the ICANN process and play a very serious and significant role.

At this ICANN meeting, the role of at-Large structures was redifined and took a concrete shape. At Chennai it is time for us to pay attention to the task of shaping a part of our ISOC Chapter as an at- Large structure. For a start, those intested in ICANN and at-Large are invited to take an active part in the Chapter's at-Large related activities.

We can form an at-Large working group within to generate inputs to the at-Large process. In the initial phase the at-Large structure can remain as part of the Chapter's management, though we may debate among ourselves about the possibility of shaping the at-Large structure as a distinct body with its own local governing structure, to effectively engage in the outreach and local activiites related to at-Large with the full support of the ISOC Chapter. Your views on this are invited.

The at-Large summit and the ICANN meeting during Feb 27 - March 6 was almost of non-stop activity occupying the participants for about 16 hours a day. ( It is an eternal compalint in light-vein in all ICANN meetings that the participants travelling half way across the globe get to see only the airport, hotel room and the conference halls, and never the places of interest in the city of the meeting. I was lucky to step out on to the street twice to walk three blocks, once to a Mexican resaurant for an ISOC Dinner and then again with friends to a restaurant called the House of Tiles )

Further information about the meeting, including presentations and
transcripts, is available at http://mex.icann.org.

The presentations by varous panelists at the at-Large summit and the ICANN meeting are online at page http://mex.icann.org/mex/presentations

The transcirpt of the sessions and Q&A are at page http://mex.icann.org/mex/transcripts.

I did raise a few points which are on record somewhere.