Here’s what really happened in Cancun.
It was a wet and wild Spring Break 2023 for ICANN in Cancun this month! OK, maybe not. On today’s show, Michele Neylon talks about what really happened at the ICANN meeting in Cancun. What was the general mood? What’s happening with new top level domains? Hear about that and more on today’s show.
Also: Squadhelp’s helpful haul, 420 and more
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According to the podcast, Dot com is the gold standard, essential to global internet usage and commerce. But there should be no restrictions over how much the dot com registry, which has a stranglehold on the contract, should be allowed to charge users for a dot com domain, just as long as the renewal price doesn’t rise too much from the registration cost?
Interesting observations about ICANN’s historical productivity.
An organization with three meetings a year and still notorious for progress at a snail’s pace. That is the nature of large organizations, to hold junkets at locations around the world where friends gather to talk and hit the town with just enough work done to say it was worth it and kick the can to the next meeting so everyone can see each other soon in another interesting global location. March, June, and October this year – Cancun, Washington and Hamburg. Nice for the global corporate jet set that go to these meetings, but it seems a bit excessive though. Two in person meetings and one virtual meeting would be lower cost and more inclusive, wouldn’t it?
Who bears that cost of putting on all those meetings? Does it come from domain registration fees – that $0.18 a domain registrants get charged? Is there any concern at ICANN for lowering fees by reining in the organization’s expenditures? Maybe that fee could be lowered to $0.10 per domain one day? Why is the $0.18 fee a given? Can’t ICANN get by on $0.10 a domain? It does have a pretty fat balance sheet. Reducing fees…You can just hear the laughter.
Great episode, thanks Andrew & Michele.
Agree with Michele’s sentiments re: ICANN76. It was strange to leave an ICANN meeting feeling optimistic. The winds have clearly shifted with a bias towards action, deliverables and published timelines.
Also: Spring Break jokes aside, it was tough to get any work (or sleep!) accomplished that week. I’ve never felt particularly old or unattractive until I went for a run on the beach.