An Open Letter to Rod Beckstrom
Monday, June 29th, 2009
An open letter to the new CEO of ICANN.
Congratulations, Rod. You’ll be the new CEO of ICANN.
You have your work cut out for you. Rightly or wrongly, ICANN is a punching bag for many grievances. As Michael Palage pointed out at the last ICANN meeting, ICANN will likely be subject to many lawsuits over the next couple years. Here are a few suggestions as you prepare to take over the reins.
1. Remember that domain owners ultimately fund your organization. Registries and registrars merely funnel domain owners’ money to ICANN.
2. Transparency requires understanding. Merely publishing information does not create transparency. Ironically, publishing too much disparate information can have a negative effect. People need to understand how ICANN works and how decisions are made. It’s ICANN’s job to educate people and operate in a simple manner.
3. Be visible with your ultimate constituents — domain owners. ICANN typically sends one representative to domain industry conferences. It’s great having him there, but I’d like to see more participation in the future.
4. Don’t be afraid to stop projects that don’t make sense. Prior investments are sunk costs. If it doesn’t make sense to proceed with an initiative, then cut it.
5. Registry competition means putting registry contracts out to open bidding.
6. Remember your core mission. Mission creep could spell ICANN’s doom.
7. Please respond to legitimate criticism, and not on the defensive. People want to know their voice is being heard.
Related posts:
- ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom Talks about Domainers
- An Open Letter to Google
- ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom Responds to Congress
Tags: rod beckstrom
An Open Letter to Rod Beckstrom – http://tinyurl.com/m5lm88
Thank you for your thoughtful, well intentioned comments.
Warmly,
Rod Beckstrom
@dnnews I just responded briefly to your Open Letter, which I appreciate your sharing http://bit.ly/8lE0N
Nicely put Andrew. And thank you for expressing what so many think and feel.
Hello Rod,
It feels so nice to see you participating on domain blogs.
It shows us that you are a wise humble man who cares and is aspiring to fulfill his duties well.
Thank you and good luck in your new mission.
Regards,
RKB
PS: As always, Great journalism Andrew.
Great idea to write this open letter Andrew! And it’s very nice to see Rod here as well
Good luck Rod with your new position. Hope to see ICANN moving in the right direction in the future.
Congratulations, Rod, on your appointment. I, too, am quite impressed that you are engaging in domainer blogs such as Domain Name Wire. It is a welcome change from those who have previously held your position and gives many of us in this industry confidence that ICANN is evolving.
Thank you Daniel, RKB and David for the congrats. I’m going to need and will appreciate all of the help and support I can get!!!
Warmly,
Rod
Good luck in your new office Rod. Agree with the others…great to see you stopping in here.
Congratulations Rod, and thank you for commenting.
Also, thanks for writing this Andrew.
Is there a type of starfish that ignores/cuts off one of it’s arms in order to make it’s other arms grow bigger?
@ Adam …..speaking on behalf of all asexual organisms I want to see that we find that statement offensive.
Come on, we all know he was Googling himself and clicked on the news link.
Good luck, Rod.
@ Stuart, to be fair, Rod found this through Twitter. He’s definitely a “connected” guy. I have a feeling that he will be much more open than the outgoing CEO.
[...] my open letter to new ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, I made made a key point with regards to domain [...]