ICANN

This afternoon, ICANN sent out an email news alert to inform recipients about a scam that the organization recently learned about. Apparently, there are entities trying to sell fraudulent certificates with the ICANN logo on them that supposedly “are required to protect generic top-level domain names.” I am unsure about who the target audience for the scam is, but I want you to be aware of this.

I also recommend signing up for the ICANN newsletters, which will keep you in the loop about ICANN activities, meetings, and updates.

Here’s the full news alert that was sent to ICANN newsletter subscribers warning of this unauthorized activity:

The ICANN 50 meeting is being held in London this week. Although I chose not to attend, there are many people who are attending the meetings. As you might expect, some of the most interesting discussion doesn’t take place during the organized sessions, and similarly, some of the most candid discussion takes place via Twitter.

I am not inclined to listen to the ICANN meeting audio stream, but I am sort of following along via Twitter. If you search (or click on) the #ICANN50 hashtag, you can follow along with the meeting. Some participants have been sharing their candid thoughts about the discussions and others have been offering commentary based on the proceedings.

If you didn’t make the ICANN meeting but you are interested in

I want to share three domain industry infographics that were published by ICANN that I thought were interesting. If you are unsure of the role ICANN plays in the oversight, allocation, distribution, and management of domain names, these infographics can give you a bit more perspective. According to the blog post accompanying the release of the infographics, “ICANN has published infographics to illustrate various aspects of the system that plays such a crucial role in the global Internet.”

I am not involved with ICANN governance, and I don’t cover it all that much about ICANN on my blog as a result (perhaps to a fault). For those of us who don’t follow ICANN all that much, these infographics are helpful tools to learn more about what ICANN does as well as the roles of other types of companies involved in the business side of domain names.

There are three infographics that were published, and you can read them more clearly by clicking on the button on the bottom right to enlarge them to the size of the screen. You can also click on the links below each infographic to be taken to the page where more information about each is provided.

I am not going to the ICANN meeting in Singapore in a couple of weeks, but there is going to be a strong domain investment business presence there. Many domain registrars, service providers, gTLD registry operators, and others involved in the domain space will be at the meeting.

I’ve been wanting to attend an ICANN meeting for a while, and Singapore is on my list of destinations I haven’t visited but would like to visit. It’s tough traveling across the world for a business event, especially with a two year old, so I am not making the trip this time.

In the last week or two, I’ve received

This evening, ICANN released the names of the 42 people who were selected for the ICANN Fellowship program, which I previously wrote about. The 42 fellows are from 31 different countries, and they will attend the ICANN meeting in  Singapore in March of 2014. There were 121 applications submitted for this program.

As part of the program, the fellows will have their travel and other expenses paid for by ICANN:  “The fellowship covers the cost of  economy class airfare and hotel, as well as providing a stipend after successful completion of the program, in order to assist in covering some basic expenses incurred by the fellow.”

Listed below are the 42 individuals who were selected to participate in the program. If you qualify, this seems like it would be