Well, Monday was my first full day in LA, and a complete day inside the Hilton where the conference was held. Not necessarily attending meetings. This is my second ICANN meeting, the first was Wellington in 2006. One of the things that quickly comes apparent is that not everyone comes here to attend all of the meetings, or indeed for some people, any of them. There is networking and deals being done, new clients being made. So for some people, the meetings are a peripheral event.

But that said, there are some important discussions happening. First up on Monday was the opening ceremony where the special guest of honour was the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Commerce of the US government, John Kneuer. As with so many of the speakers this week that were to come, there was gratitude for the work done by Vint Cerf in his role as well as discussing Vint’s role as the father of the internet.

John Kneuer took the opportunity to announce ICANN would soon be opening a “Notice of Inquiry”, or a public review, of ICANN to which all those interested will be invited to participate and send their views. The inquiry will form part of the mid-term review of the ICANN Joint Project Agreement in March 2008. Comments will be due on February 15, 2008. See the NTIA news release for more information.

In a press conference following the opening ceremony, John Kneuer took the opportunity to discuss the mid-term review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN. John said ICANN is the best institution to serve the function it does, but some improvements can happen. He also said it was important to gather views on how the role ICANN plays is being executed against its ten management principles.

Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, welcomed the review saying ICANN wants to listen and it is important for ICANN to get the views of the internet community. Paul also said it was very important to have a global interoperable internet.

There were other issues addressed including two that Paul said were very important in their affect on the internet. These were internationalised domain names and the liberalisation of the process for applying for new gTLDs as well as paying tribute to the great efforts of Vint Cerf.

Vint Cerf, the outgoing chair commented that ICANN has shown great resilience and will continue to do so. There are major challenges ahead according to Vint including IPv6, plus the progress of the IDN test being “stunningly good”.

The ongoing increase of the number of people online was something Vint believes ICANN has a major role to play in. There is only 20 per cent of the world online now or 1.2 billion people, and Vint believes by 2015 there will be 6.5 billion people online.

On Tuesday afternoon there was a six hour workshop on new gTLDs. There was progress made here, although recommendations six and 20 were still in dispute with many people opposed. These were “Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order (recommendation 6) and “An application will be rejected if it is determined, based on public comments or otherwise, that there is substantial opposition to it from among significant established institutions of the economic sector, or cultural or language community, to which it is targeted or which it is intended to support.” (recommendation 20)

Dirk Krischenowski of dotBerlin and Thomas Lowenhaupt of dotNYC (New York City) both expressed confidence in most of the processes ICANN has implemented in a subsequent conversation with me, but they were concerned with the ongoing slippages in timelines for the introduction of new gTLDs. They did though express concern with the process ICANN will implement to receive and review applications, wondering if they were geared up for what could be a few to dozens or hundreds of applications when they are called for.

These new gTLDs, or cityTLDs in the case of dotBerlin and dotNYC, are much desired according to Dirk and Thomas. Thomas believes that large cities are losing their ability to communicate with their citizens, and the introduction of cityTLDs will be a great help in this.

There are also several interests in cityTLDs, with groups behind cityTLDs being implemented in Buenos Aires, Paris, Hamburg, Brussels, Den Haag (The Hague), Venice (could be region or city), Seoul and Chicago. There are other groups interested, although these have not been made public yet.

More information on ICANN’s Los Angeles meeting is available from the ICANN website at losangeles2007.icann.org/