DotGreen at ICANN 44 in Prague

By Tim Switzer, COO and CFO

It was another exciting week for DotGreen Community Inc. at the recent ICANN Prague meeting. Coming off other recent global meetings in New York-USA, Spain, France, Chicago-USA, and Brazil, the DotGreen Team arrived in Prague-Czech Republic ready for positive and inclusive activity around the growing and expanding areas of both Green and the Internet!

Prague is a remarkably beautiful city due to its people, culture, climate, architecture. (DotGreen photo)

The week started off with the second “People and Planet” event co-sponsored by DotGreen and Neustar. It was an awesome day experiencing the “green-ness” of Prague via the open-air market Náplavka, picnic in Petrin Garden, and both a walking and biking tour of the beautiful city of Prague. There were over 60 international friends and supporters of DotGreen and Neustar in attendance and a good time was had by all! Prague is a very environmentally-friendly city and everyone walked away from the day with “green” ideas to take home with them and share with their family, friends, and communities upon their return.

As always, the main topic of the week was New gTLDs. There were many “string contention” meetings and discussions occurring on a constant basis as both single-string applicants and large portfolio string entities were in attendance. There was a lot of dialogue during the week about batching and digital archery. At the beginning of the week, Digital Archery was suspended and by the end of the week, the ICANN Board had officially canceled it. The Board outlined a plan that would lead to more detail on timeline and batching process in three weeks from June 28th – the community looks forward to this! Also, during the week, a lot of thoughtful input and guidance was provided to ICANN about the efficiencies that could be realized by the ICANN New gTLD Evaluation Team given the detailed knowledge of the 1,930 applications and the repetitive nature of much of the information due to limited number of providers and therefor technical solutions. We hope the “one batch” model for the initial evaluation process can be completed in a very timely manner. DotGreen has confidence that ICANN can deliver!

Jennifer Knoll, DotGreen Director, Tim Switzer, DotGreen COO, Alex Berry, Neustar SVP Enterprise Services, and Annalisa Roger, DotGreen CEO, at a local press conference. (DotGreen photo)

Throughout the week, the DotGreen Community received valuable feedback and support from many sources including multiple regions around the world – support for what we’re doing to promote the green movement, support for our international reach and activities and support for our specific plans and unique business model for the .green top-level domain. Once again, this ICANN week re-enforced that all the DotGreen Team is doing to bring together the global and growing GREEN movement with the global and growing Internet, Mobile and Social Media world via the .green TLD will lead to a triple bottom line public benefit and a growing green economy and positive future that is so necessary for all people and our planet!

The very convenient public transportation system, a part of DotGreen’s People & Planet adventure in Prague, Czech Republic. (DotGreen photo)

ICANN announced a new CEO, Fadi Chehade, to take over starting October 1st. Akram Atallah, ICANN’s COO, will step in as CEO between July 1st and October 1st. The ICANN Community also took the opportunity to say “THANKS” and show its appreciation during the week to Rod Beckstrom for his leadership over the past three years. Fadi was very active and present during the week and took the opportunity to listen, learn and meet the ICANN community as he prepares for the challenges ahead.

A couple of key items discussed during the week in multiple forums at ICANN were the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) and the renewal of the VeriSign .com contract. While significant forward movement has been made on the RAA (10 of 12 Law Enforcement recommendations were agreed to), there still remains work to be done – kudos to the working group that has spent a lot of time working through these issues, their diligence and leadership have been key to the progress made so far. The ICANN Board approved the renewal of the VeriSign .com contract during a Board meeting that was held at the beginning of the week.. Finally, a couple days after the meeting concluded, it was announced that ICANN had been awarded the contract to continue to perform the IANA authority functions via a new contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA).

ICANN 45 will be held in Toronto. See you there!