It’s the end of year, and that means it’s time for Domain Name Wire’s annual Domain Dunce awards.

Let’s kick things off with a smelly situation.

By all accounts the Hotel des Almadies, which housed attendees of ICANN’s meeting at its recent meeting in Dakar, Senegal earlier this year, was far from luxury.

Attendees complained of rats, security concerns, air conditioning issues, and non-working showers.

That prompted Barbara Ann Clay, ICANN’s Vice President for Communications, to write a nastygram to Senegal’s Minister of Communication asking for compensation for guests. Attached to the letter was a 20 page report from ICANN’s at-large committee (ALAC).

But before the hotel or Minister of Communication could respond, ICANN retracted its complaint, writing that the letter was sent without appropriate buy-in from ICANN’s leadership.

Oops.

Below: a staircase at the Hotel des Almadies, which ALAC labeled “A dark, steep Staircase” and complained of a “tripping risk”.

Non-profit publishes profile of desired CEO.

Want to be the CEO of an organization launching a highly controversial expansion of the internet namespace and seeing its budget double or triple your first year on the job?

ICANN has a job for you.

Today ICANN announced it has selected search firm Odgers Berndtson of Brussels to help it find a new CEO to replace Rod Beckstrom. ICANN has used the same firm previously.

It also published a candidate profile (pdf). Among the attributes that will make you successful in this role is being able to work within the “internet governance ecosystem”. It’s a bit scarey to see mentions of the United Nations in this profile document. But the truth is ICANN’s CEO needs to be able to manage expectations of other governments that want to play a greater role in internet governance.

This will be interesting to watch.

ICANN releases audited financial statements for FY11.

Today ICANN posted its audited financial statements (pdf) for Financial Year 2011 (which ended in June). Here are some highlights:

Total assets grew to $100 million from $83 million the year prior. When accounting for liabilities ICANN has $80 million in “unrestricted net assets”.

ICANN has $29 million in cash.

It also had close to $52 million in investments (equities and fixed income) as of the end of June, but you can bet that’s taken a hit since then. It had a $6 million gain for the year.

Revenue increased from $66 million to $69 million.

Expenses nudged up about $1 million to $60 million. Personnel, travel and meetings were all up while expenses for professional services were down.

Conflict of interest, whether real or imagined, looks bad for ICANN as it faces fresh criticism over its new TLD plans.

ICANN has a problem.

As criticism mounts against its approval of the new top level domain name program, some groups are pointing fingers at an inherent conflict of interest.

The key example is former ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush.

One month after pushing through a vote on the new TLD program in his last meeting as Chairman he took a role with publicly-traded Top Level Domain Holdings, a company focused solely on profiting from new top level domain names.

There are no rules prohibiting this move, as Dengate Thrush pointed out when I interviewed him about the new role.

I can’t blame him for jumping at the opportunity. I also don’t think putting the program up for a vote in June had anything to do with profiting from it — I think it had to do with getting the program approved before his term as Chairman was over.

But it doesn’t matter. The problem is it just looks bad.

Recently Internet Advertising Bureau joined Association of National Advertisers in opposing the new top level domains program. Interestingly, I haven’t seen them point to this specific conflict. But other groups, including Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, have.

ICANN has received plenty of pushback on its new TLD plans both during the process of creating the applicant rules as well as after it was approved. Everyone has an opinion, and it would be wrong to point to Dengate Thrush’s move as proof that this is just a money grab.

But that won’t stop people from bringing attention to it, and that will bad for ICANN.

Registry for .asia domain names wants to release short names.

.Asia registry DotAsia Organisation Ltd is joining fellow top level domain name operators with plans to release one and two character domain names.

The registry has filed a Registry Services Evaluation Process request with ICANN explaining how it plans to allocate the domain names.

Like other registries, it plans a three-pronged release of domain names:

1. Request for Proposal – interested parties can submit a proposal about how they will use and promote a one or two character .asia domain name. Qualified applicants will be awarded the domains.

2. Sunrise – trademark holders of one and two character names can apply for domains. An auction will be held in the event of more than one qualified sunrise request for the same name.

3. Landrush and auction – any remaining unallocated domain names will be auctioned off or made available to the community.

You can view .asia’s request here.

According to HosterStats, there are just under 200,000 .asia domain names currently registered.