Subscribe
Score Card on the ICANN Board and how DotCom Savvy they are
May 21st, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
The ICANN Board controls the Internet. So you would think they were more DotCom savvy, but that is not the case. We looked at the Board Member’s names and found that most of the board didn’t even own their own name. There were a few exceptions but overall we gave the board a grade of “D” on being DotCom Savvy.
Joichi Ito (AKA “Joi Ito”) was the most dotcom savvy person on the board. He owns his last name dotcom and his firstname+lastname+dotcom, I think Joi picked up his name in a pool .com drop auction. I would safely say Ito understands domain names far better then most of his fellow board members.
As of this post, every last name of a board member is gone. However while researching for this story, I registered the last names of Wodelet, Getschko, and Rionge. I gave those board members failing marks because their last name was available and they had failed to register it. (As a side note, they are free to have their name from me, I just wanted to safegaurd it before posting).
I gave failing grades to Vint Cerf and Paul Twomey because a domainer, Paul Gordon, bought their names and pointed them to ICANN Watch. I have to say that is funny but also sad. Francisco da Silva also got a failing grade because his name is currently being Domain Tasted.
Susan Crawford, Steve Crocker, and Steve Goldstein had passing grades because they owned their firstname+lastname+dotcom.
As ICANN’s NomCom looks at new applicants for the Board, I think it would be important to get applicants that understand the significants of owning their own name. Matt Cutts is in charge of Search Engine Spam Control at Google, but until 2003 he didn’t even own a website. The reason he bought a domain name and started a website was to experience what other webmasters experienced. He has said many times since then it has made him a much better person at his job and can better appreciate what webmasters concerns are. I think it would be great if every ICANN board member owned domain names and understood the plight of domain owners.
Blue links mean the Board Member owns the Name, Red links mean owned by no one and orange means owned by someone else other then the board member.
I want to thank George Kirikos for the blog post idea.
« Newer Post Older Post »
Posted in ICANN |
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Someone wrote me by email and asked, “How do you get an A++”? Simple. A++ for owning your FirstName+LastName+dotcom and LastName+dotcom and Firstname+dotcom.
FirstName+dotcom is very hard to get, but it shows you are extremely savvy.