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Marby finds his pandemic pessimism

Kevin Murphy, October 4, 2021, 13:00:11 (UTC), Domain Policy

CEO Göran Marby has spelled out his goals for ICANN’s current fiscal year, and they include a scaled-back ambition when it comes to face-to-face public meetings in the face of an ongoing pandemic.

His first enumerated goal for the year ending June 30, 2022 is:

Develop, with the community and with support from the Board, the ability to conduct hybrid meetings that are inclusive and enhance the opportunity for community interaction and decision-making.

Compare this with his equivalent goal from July 2020:

Work with Supporting Organization and Advisory Committee leaders, community members, and the Board to define and implement a phased plan to return to face-to-face meetings.

The goal of creating a “face-to-face” meetings plan has been replace with a “hybrid” meeting plan, where some section of the community can only participate online, depending on travel restrictions.

A lot has happened in the last 15 months when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic.

In June 2020, there was still some optimism in the ICANN board that the October meeting that year would go ahead in Hamburg as normal. That didn’t happen, and the face-to-face components of the three subsequent meetings have also been cancelled.

At that time, the world still hadn’t experienced the reality of Covid-19 variants, and the possibility of multiple lockdown scenarios was still largely theoretical.

So it’s probably no surprise that Marby has been forced to rein in his hopes for bumping elbows with the global community any time soon.

ICANN 72 later this month, originally planned for Seattle, will be the sixth consecutive online-only public meeting, but Marby has been tasked by the board with making the Puerto Rico meeting next March a “hybrid” affair.

Given his goals run to mid-2022, it seems possible ICANN 74, slated for The Hague next June, is also being considered most likely a hybrid meeting.

Marby has nine goals for the year in total. Seven he wrote himself, two were set by the board. Last year, he had 10 in total of which four were set by the board.

Other areas of interest coming from his own pen include greater focus on legislation around the world, emerging technologies such as blockchain naming, outreach in the developing world, DNS security and stability and prioritizing ICANN’s increasingly overwhelming workload.

Not all of them are stated as goals, at least in Marby’s blog post, and not all appear to have measurable outcomes.

The board has told him to “stimulate Universal Acceptance” and “work with Internet governance stakeholders”. Again, it’s all pretty amorphous stuff.

One 2021 goal that does not make an appearance this year is “Develop a plan for the potential economist function”, or hiring an “astrologer in chief” as I phrased it last year.

Reasonable people could disagree with whether this one was fulfilled — the economist job has been advertised on the ICANN web site all year, but does not yet appear to have been filled.

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