ICANN Going To Beijing In April 2013 As Beckstrom Says Farewell
ICANN will hold its 46th meeting in the Chinese capital of Beijing from 7 to 12 April 2013, marking the first time it has held one of its three yearly public meetings in China since October 2002.
In his farewell news conference at the 44th ICANN meeting currently underway in Prague, ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom spoke enthusiastically of the announcement saying it the country now represented a quarter of the world’s internet population, that it deserved recognition and spoke glowingly of Beijing as “one of the most exciting cities in the world.”
Beckstrom said in an earlier welcoming ceremony he had focussed on China, visiting the country more often than any other country over the past three years and that holding the meeting there will help focus on ICANN’s growing involvement in China.
During his farewell speech, an upbeat Beckstrom spoke of his achievement and disappointments. One of his achievements was the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains. While the recent glitch in the TLD Application System remains a disappointment.
Another highlight was the internationalising of ICANN, noting in the news conference that this was done in part by hiring staff that can speak more than English. Three quarters of new employees under his tenure spoke a language other than English and this had made a cultural difference at the organisation.
“We made appreciable and concrete progress in internationalising ICANN,” said Beckstrom. “We made it a priority to hire staff with multi-linguistic skills. Seven members of the ICANN executive team now speak nine different languages.”
“Leaders from governments around the world no longer are simply talking to us at our meetings. They are talking with us about Internet policy,” said Beckstrom. “We now have 110 nations represented on our Governmental Advisory Committee.”
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