hi all, i’m presuming most of you have seen the NTIA announcement by now. since i hang “MICE" on my nametag when i participate in ICANN meetings, i thought i’d push along some observations, and some links to detailed info that may not find its way into the press coverage. the announcement: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-... WASHINGTON – To support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet policymaking and governance, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) today announces its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community. As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). the FAQ on ICANN’s site; http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/functions-transfer-faqs-14mar1... want to know a LOT about these issues (like PhD level)? Here’s Samantha Dickinson’s summary of a boatload of submissions from all over the place that’s going into the upcoming Net Mundial meeting in Brazil. read all these (like i am right now) and you’ll know where the proposals lie. http://linguasynaptica.com/netmundial-submissions-on-iana/ my view is mostly “keep calm and peer on.” i’m hoping the transition could be the same level of non-event that taking down the NSF backbone network was. on the other hand, we don’t know how this is actually going to turn out until it’s done. the fearmongers in Washington aren’t being helpful. my view “from the bottom of the bottom-up process” is that i’ll be an interested observer and i’ll probably continue to put most of my energy into the day-to-day policy stuff. that’s the stuff that makes ICANN legitimate. i was on a conference call this morning where the CEO (Fadi Chehadi) and the Chair of the Board (Steve Crocker - author of RFC 0001) talked to community members about what’s going on. the points i raised were mostly about bandwidth (the community is already really overloaded) and process (a good project plan would be nice). happy to try to answer questions, although i’m still coming up to speed myself — this came as a surprise to almost everybody. i’m headed to the ICANN meeting in Singapore (leaving this Wednesday, back the following Friday). the outlines will be clearer after that. mikey PHONE: 651-647-6109, FAX: 866-280-2356, WEB: www.haven2.com, HANDLE: OConnorStP (ID for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the MICE-DISCUSS list, click the following link: http://lists.iphouse.net/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=MICE-DISCUSS&A=1