I'm glad to see that the GAC have decided to open most of its meeting during ICANN. I made a call for them to do that in Vancouver in 2005, while I was observing GAC meetings for the Pacific Islands.

The rationale to open up GAC meetings is that it will allow more people to follow and report about GAC decisions and comments, and that towards countries which do not have the resources to fully participate into GAC and ICANN.

Usually, each GAC representative has a team of experts that follows the process and provide advice. In the Pacific Islands, to ensure issues are flagged you must rely on the public to alert the government, and while the public, participate little to ICANN, they get informed by the media. This is not perfect, but it is better than no participation at all.

For immediate Release:

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) leadership in consultation with the Internet Society (ISOC) has decided to switch off IPv4 on the 1st April 2008. IPv6 has been operational for many years in conjunction with IPv4, and the IETF, creators of the Internet, deems, it is time to move to a better Internet, and world peace.

The worldwide infrastructure is ready to support IPv6, equipment and the infrastructure have been IPv6 ready for many years. ICANN has even answered promptly to the challenge and will provide IPv6 compatible records in the root zone while they do not expect any challenge from ALAC. To prepare companies and users for the transition, the IETF will switch of IPv4 for 30mn during the IETF 71 meeting in Philadelphia in March 2008. Vendors, organisations and users, will be able to prepare themselves for the 1st of April deadline.

We expect the transition to happen as smoothly as the famous Y2k bug.

ARIN has predicted the unavailability of IPv4 addresses by 2010. This date seemed to far for all the world to benefit of the numerous advantages of IPv6 that every IETF engineer knows well. ISPs have been slow to adopt IPv6 only for cost reasons, denying the users intangible benefits.

We see the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss IPv4 related issues in workshops on the themes "Is ICANN the right entity to manage the 13 root servers?..". We see ITU to propose NGN as a better alternative, where users will buy monthly licenses to the NGN which will offer "Quality of Service". We expect Google to build in advertisement in each IPv4 packet as well as record every packets in their data centers. With IPv6, the only way to remember an IP address will be to use ICANN Domain System and IPv6 brings unprecedented quality and encryption capabilities to deliver and protect each packet.

These are the main reasons why IPv4 will be switched off on 1st April 2008.

May the force be with you.

On other news: I wish you a Happy New Year ;)

I have added an Internet for Luddites section on this site. I'm sharing here a couple of videos that explain in some funny ways what is the Internet.

I just did with the great help from Mue Bentley from the Forum Secretariat a short workshop for media professionals on what is the Internet and its issues.

I put a page on the PICISOC site to link to media documents that treat the best the various issues in a simple manner.

My presentation is here as a Flash file, however we mainly engaged in a discussion to treat what interests the most media professionals.

We had some good reviews: here and here

We should do another one...

Well, I made it to San Juan, Puerto Rico for the end of ICANN and just in time to attend the ISOC Chapters meeting.

The chapters meeting was interesting, there were present many Chapters. The president of ISOC Puerto Rico was chairing the meeting. Terri and Anne presented what is happening within ISOC for the Chapters. While the new membership system project is progressing, there is still a lot to achieve. Pity also that the marratech (teleconference) system could not be installed.

Chapters were representing quite a different range of culture and languages, some chapters translated for other chapters from Spanish to English and from French to English.

Chapters asked to share information in their own language and have access to information in their language.

The Chapters wiki was presented: http://wiki.chapters.isoc.org/

A couple of ISOC board members were present, and Daniel, ISOC BoT Chair was very attentive to chapters representatives. He asked jokingly how chapters would name ISOC HQ, World, Mothership,... ?

I think the Chapters meeting has grown up to something good inside ISOC, thanks to the help of ISOC staff to sustain it now from meeting to meetings.

There is a little representation from the Pacific Islands. Outside the usual suspects from NZ and AU, we have Lynnold Wini (SB), Simon Greaves (FJ), Tapugao Falefou (TV)

ICANN has started a fellowship program that Save advertised on this list, they now dedicate about USD100,000 for each ICANN meeting to bring representatives from developing countries:
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-26jun07.htm
See the video too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-avQSCl8eA

It would be nice if these 3 people could post some comments on this list to share with others who could not attend. PICISOC is about sharing experiences, you know...

I'm following also on the side the ALAC, it is fun to hear everywhere Tuvalu ccTLD being cited as an example but nobody from Tuvalu in the room to ensure correctness. I suspect Tapu cannot be everywhere...

During the plenary meeting an interesting issue is the request to open up TLD to geographical names. At least 3 cities are pushing for their own TLDs, .berlin, .paris, .nyc. An interesting comment from the board was that most applications to ICANN request an exception to create a TLD. Which is not exactly how ICANN sees it...

As you have seen, .fj has signed an agreement of mutual recognition with ICANN. This is a good thing to be able to start more formal relations and have easier communications between dot FJ and ICANN.

One RALO has been officially formed at this meeting, North America. Latin America and Caribean was officialy formed at the Sao Paolo meeting, with Africa and Europe at the last meeting in Lisbon. The Asia Pacific RALO while first to be formed has not yet been fuly officially recognised by ICANN, waiting for the right venue to do the official signing ceremony. And as the next venue will be Los Angeles because the meeting could not happen in Asia/Pacific, APRALO official status will have to wait.

On the rumor mill, because ICANN is governed by Californian Laws and courts and because the next meeting will be in Los Angeles, I hear that ICM (.xxx) may send the lawyers... I think it is a wild rumor, but could make things way more interesting.

ICANN meetings are becoming less and less controversial. It is more and more business as usual, as more people learn about the ICANN process. Less mis-conceptions, less scoops, more hard working people.

I wrote the following article "How To Use The Internet For Your Career" for the webiste http://whttp://www.diplomacymentoring.org/. You may find it useful to explain to decision makers and other ludites how they can use the Internet for their benefit.

I have also submintted it for the ISOC Members briefing series, but still waiting for an answer. It seems this serie has not had an article in years. Time to revive it.

After discussions with board members and ISOC members it seems that the best way forward is to let ISOC HQ to come back to the board with a membership policy document that the board will accept.
This process may take a longer time, but ISOC HQ has more resources to come back with a more holistic view based on a wide consultation.
It seems that ISOC has problems to grasp the concept of "membership based organisation". Nothing suggest that ISOC encourages more members to join ISOC. Members join ISOC for "altruistic purposes" but today, I think this is a very thin reason. Members need to see benefit, ISOC needs members to support its actions. At the moment ISOC HQ cannot rely accurately on its membership list. There are so many errors, like the list the chapters hold and what ISOC HQ think the chapters members are.
In other areas, ISOC HQ has been giving away its resources and money to non-members. While to become member is free and only requires you to fill up a form on the web (well you need a Doctorate to get it right), I think it is fair to ask people to become member to access ISOC resources.
There are many obstacles, due to the nature of ISOC which is here to conduct an all en-compassing awareness of Internet issues, to members and non-members. There is also the culture issued from the IETF and our special relation with IETF.
Well many things that need clarification and guidelines.
I therefore withdraw my previous resolutions to submit a new one, where ISOC HQ will come back rapidily (within 2 boards meeting) with a guideline document on membership policy.

I have submitted to the ISOC board the following resolutions. I think they will generate some discussions on some important points relating to ISOC. They may not make it to the next board meeting in this form, or could be withdrawn but because they are formulated as resolutions, the points will be considered (and that's my point). I'd like some feedback too.

RESOLUTION: ISOC as a membership organisation will direct its funding and resources towards supporting its members. Project funding, initiatives, fellowships and programs will indicate how they support ISOC membership.

RESOLUTION: Any individual activity supported by a Chapter or a Member Organisation of ISOC will receive priority consideration when competing for allocation of ISOC HQ resources.

RESOLUTION: Any ISOC HQ activity in an area where a Chapter or a Member Organisation operates will be announced to the relevant Chapter or Member Organisation prior to public announcement or commencement.

RESOLUTION: Any position in ISOC (ISOC board, PIR Board, or ISOC staff) must be filled by a person fluent in another language beside english.

The resolutions are broad enough to leave some flexibility, I also suppose they don't change much on how ISOC operates today but will greatly improve ISOC membership value by encouraging people to seek support from Chapters and Member Organisations. Furthermore our relation with Chapters and Member Organisations will improve by improving communication. The last resolution is to enhance the internationalisation of ISOC.

I have finished to transfer the videos of the key note speeches of PacINET 2006 on Google Video. You can view them below.
I used a firewire cable to the Mini-DV camera that was used. Kino captured the video in large avi format files (1GB each file for about 5mn). ffmpeg was used to convert each file into a more suitable size (2000kb/s for the video and 128kb/s for the audio), then the files were merged using avidemuxer and finally compressed using ffmpeg2theora. The final files were then uploaded to google video.

Day 3 of the conference was the keynote address by Hon. Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi, Prime Minister of Samoa and Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, Internet Pioneer and Founding President of ISOC, and Dr. Jimmie Rodgers, Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

I think 2007 is an important year for ISOC. ISOC budget is healthy. Staffing is nearly complete. The management of the dot org is renewed with ISOC. The IETF structural change is almost completed. Chapters are very active. The IGF is becoming mature. The Internet User has been named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Individual Membership is at an all time high. Organisational membership is solid. IPv6 is becoming the norm for a better user experience. From IP on Anything, via Anything on IP, to IP Anywhere, the Internet Society is looking at Strategic Initiatives for "Internet 2020".