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ICANN chief cancels .nxt keynote

Kevin Murphy, February 8, 2011, 16:58:08 (UTC), Domain Registries

With the first-ever .nxt conference on new top-level domains just hours away from opening its doors, it looks like star speaker Rod Beckstrom has canceled his appearance.
ICANN’s president and CEO, who was featured prominently on the web site of the San Francisco conference as recently as Sunday, no longer appears on the agenda.
His keynote slot, scheduled for 10am local tomorrow, has been filled by Kurt Pritz, ICANN’s senior vice president of stakeholder relations and point man for the new TLD program.
While Pritz perhaps lacks the name recognition and stage presence of Beckstrom, it could be argued that his more granular insight into the program may actually make him a better-value speaker.
Juan Diego Calle, CEO of .CO Internet, is still scheduled for the second keynote, on Wednesday. Here’s hoping he can provide an update on .co’s post-Super Bowl performance.
UPDATE: Conference organizer Kieren McCarthy has confirmed that Beckstrom was unable to make it to San Francisco in time for the keynote, but said he may still attend later.

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Comments (7)

  1. JM says:

    Kurt is great. Agreed is best positioned to update on the program. Good news for Dot NXT!

  2. […] his keynote, which he gave following ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom’s unexpected eleventh-hour cancellation, Pritz said he wanted “to reset expectations and what I think our job is going […]

  3. […] standing in for ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, who inexplicably canceled at the last minute, Pritz’s speech was entertaining and contained just enough passion and information to provide […]

  4. We are the owners of the Registered Trademark DomainsNext.com Registration number 3906471. We just became aware of the .NXT Top level Domain Extension. We will be contacting our lawyer to stop this from happening.
    Mansour Elseify

  5. […] standing in for ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, who inexplicably canceled at the last minute, Pritz’s speech was entertaining and contained just enough passion and information to provide […]

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