ICANN at work. At a Registrar Constituency meeting (during the November Cairo meeting), Board members, Councillors and community representatives interact and contribute to ICANN's policy development. All are volunteers, putting substantial amounts of time and effort into the ICANN process. Photo SVG.


When I got to Cairo last month for the ICANN meeting, I had just been elected to the GNSO Council. Walking into the venue hotel, I bumped into one of my friends on the ICANN staff. I suppose I was expecting some kind of congratulations. I got a weary "you really are deranged!" instead.

It's a reaction that I didn't understand at the time. I looked at being on the Council as an exciting opportunity to be at the heart of the policy development process going on in my industry, and I still do. Policies like the new gTLD program stem from the GNSO and ICANN's other Supporting Organisations (SO). So Council members get to be involved in defining tomorrow's Internet. That's something that I found really thrilling.

But since taking my position on the Council after the close of the Cairo meeting, I've also discovered the other side of the coin. Council members must brave a constant deluge of papers, reports, ICANN updates and telephone meetings (3, sometimes 4 2-hour meetings a week). They must keep themselves up to speed with everything that's happening in the ICANN world, including of course topics that don't fall directly under the banner of their own Supporting Organisation. They must report to their individual constituencies, the Registrar Constituency in my case, to make sure the people they are elected to represent know exactly what's going on at SO level.

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