Volunteering for the ICANN

If you’re looking to have a say in the future decisions the ICANN takes regarding the stewardship of the domain names you’ve grown to like so much, now’s you chance!

Under the theme “Make the Internet Your Business”, motivated individuals are invited to submit a Statement of Interest by April 15th, 2008, at 23:59 UTC.

You’ll probably be interested to know that the Nominating Committee is independent of the ICANN and it’s specifically tasked with searching the world for hopefully experienced individuals to fill the following key positions on ICANN’s Board as well as its Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees:

• 2 Board Directors
• 1 GNSO Council member
• 1 ccNSO Council member
• 2 ALAC members (who will represent Europe and North American regions)

Hagen Hultzsch, Chair of the Nominating Committee (NomCom), describes the challenge for the selected individuals as follows:

“Beyond its responsibilities for keeping the internet secure, stable and interoperable, ICANN’s mission is to grow and evolve its global multi-stakeholder decision-making process, so it is the individuals who make up the wider internet community who direct and decide the internet’s future.”

It seems some of the upcoming discussions might be about the multilingual issues in bringing the world’s languages to the domain names and also, the opportunity to offer consumers more “suffix” choices (beyond the common “.net”, “.org”, “.biz” and “.info” alternatives to “.com”).

So if you’re fluent in gTLDs, ccTLDs, DNS logic and related matters, this might be your time to “make the Internet your business” and join the influential team of ICANN leaders — good luck to all applicants.

Tags: icann, committees, organizations, gtld, cctld, dns, domains, domain names