[EURO-Discuss] R: Trip to Caucasus - conclusions and recommendations

[Veni Markovski]

Roberto, Manuel -
The issues with the IDN are well documented at public meetings, dating 
as back as ICANN San Francisco <http://svsf40.icann.org/node/22471> 
(there's audio there, too), and even before that - anyone can go, and 
research them. We have had dozens of meetings and discussions, round 
tables, open and close consultations. Anyone could have been part of 
this, and anyone can be part of it. I don't remember anyone being 
rejected from participation in the Fast Track.

The success story of the Fast Track is the Russian IDN .rf (.??), and 
those of you in Durban, can talk to Andrei Kolesnikov about it. There 
are others, who are also successful in Eastern Europe, but the Russian 
one made it very successful (100,000 domain names registered in the 
first 3 hours after the start, and 802,346 currently).
Both the Bulgarian and the Ukrainian IDN have issues, but different 
ones. Again - details are available online.

My point of clarification was only because Oksana wrote, and I quote:
"the lack of trust into ICANN in our community, of miscommunication,
untransperancy and unaccountability from both sides (ICANN and
Ukrainian applicant for .ykp)"

Since I have not been informed on such items in the process (by the way 
- for the record, the regional VPs are not part of the IDN Fast Track, 
we don't participate in the technical evaluation, etc.), neither by the 
applicant, nor by the Fast Track team, I clearly stated:

"I have seen different people unhappy about different aspects of what 
they think ICANN should be doing, and I have seen people unhappy with 
the IDN fast track (shall I mention .bg IDN?). But that's different from 
the words, used by Oksana. If there has been miscommunication, please, 
let the regional VPs know about it. Likewise, if you believe ICANN has 
done or hasn't done something, esp. if required by our policies, let us 
(me and Nigel) know."

There is a lot of resources here: 
https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/fast-track, including two annual 
reviews: https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/fast-track/reviews (you 
may notice that the Bulgarian community was pretty active in 2011, and 
not so in 2012).

If people are interested in the particular case, I'd suggest that a 
small ad-hoc group of interested people is created, and comes with a 
report in a timely manner, so that the rest of the folks on this list 
may understand what happened.

I would agree with Manuel and Roberto, if the goal here is to show how 
the At-Large organizations from Europe can help ICANN perform better. 
However, I would not agree that there is "lack of trust into ICANN in 
the Ukrainian community", or that there have been "miscommunication, 
untransperancy and unaccountability from ICANN' in the process for the 
Ukrainian IDN ccTLD. Such statements can only be interpreted as if ICANN 
is not following its own policies - in this case the IDN Fast Track. 
Since this is not the case, I just wanted to make this clear.

Hope this is helpful.

Best,
Veni
VP, GSE, ICANN.org


On 07/15/2013 07:34, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
> I think I agree with Manuel.
> I don't know the details, so if we have the discussion going I need to
> understand what you are talking about.
> I believe that the IDNs are an essential part of the ICANN strategy, and we
> need to make it a success story.
> How about to start a new conversation, with an appropriate subject line?
> Thanks,
> Roberto