(Image credit: ICANN)
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) will be having its 65th public meeting from Monday 24 June 2019 to Thursday March 27 2019 in Marrakech, Morocco. However, you can listen in and participate remotely.
What is ICANN?
As the name implies, ICANN helps coordinate the assignment and management of Internet numbering resources (such as IP addresses) and domain names (forming a system called the Domain Name System or DNS). The DNS maps domain names to IP addresses.
ICANN also defines and implements policies for how the “Names and Numbers” of the Internet are assigned. ICANN coordinates policy development related to the DNS by bringing a variety of stakeholders (ranging from governments, technical, business, civil society) organised in various groups to develop and advise on such DNS policies. This volunteer-based group of diverse stakeholders is called the ICANN multi-stakeholder community.
The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) is an member of the ICANN At-Large Community since 2006, which represents the interests of Internet end users in ICANN policies and activities. Currently, as the TTCS’ At-Large representative (Dev Anand Teelucksingh), I have continued to be involved in various At-Large activities. I do want to encourage anyone with a interest and a desire to learn more about ICANN policy issues and how to get involved, email me at [email protected] and I’ll try my best to help.
Important links to learn and follow #ICANN65
Some important links to help you learn more and follow the #ICANN64 meeting :
- ICANN65 Full Meeting Schedule – this table (you will have to scroll down a lot) shows the various meetings happening in various rooms at the same time. All times listed are local to Marrakech, Morocco. The time in Marrakech, Morocco Kobe Japan is 5 hours ahead of that of Trinidad and Tobago. So when looking at the ICANN65 schedule, you’ll need to subtract 5 hours to get the time of the meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. This means that a meeting on Monday Morning at 10am for example will take place on early Monday morning at 5am in Trinidad and Tobago. If you visit the schedule on your iOS or Android device, you can install the ICANN Meeting App to follow the ICANN meeting schedule on your mobile / tablet device and to personalize the schedule of sessions you are interested in. Search for “ICANN Meeting” in your app stores.
- At-Large Meeting Agenda Workspace – lists the very busy schedule and detailed agendas of the meetings of the At-Large Community.
- Pre-ICANN65 Policy Report (PDF) – This report provides a high-level overview of the planned work and activities of the ICANN Multistakeholder Community (including At-Large) at ICANN65.
- Nissaba pre-meeting Report on ICANN65 – this report is aimed at persons who don’t have an in-depth knowledge of ICANN and to more experienced participants, who simply want a very quick overview of the main issues to be discussed, with pointers to which sessions are relevant for each issue.
How to listen and participate online in #ICANN65 meeting
When you select a meeting on the ICANN65 Full Meeting Schedule , you will see something like this :
You will see on the left under the short description are several grey buttons:
- Zoom – a web conferencing tool ICANN uses for its online conference calls and F2F public meetings. Zoom allows participants (either face to face or remotely) to instant message each other, review the meeting agenda and documents, follow presentations and raise their hands in order to make comments. This is replacing Adobe Connect which was used by ICANN in previous meetings.
- English Audio, French Audio, Spanish Audio – the audio of the meeting – the presence of muliple languages is done by interpreters in the room allowing different language participants to understand each other (and to be understood by other participants)
Note that not all meetings will have so many different language options, but all would have at least the English audio stream and the Zoom “room”
You can install Zoom on your computer or mobile device at https://zoom.us/download
