Dr. Paul Twomey, the Australian who was ICANN's first Governmental Advisory Committee chair and later leveraged his governmental and private sector connections to become the Chief Executive Officer of ICANN, indicated that his term as CEO would not be renewed at the opening of the ICANN meeting in Mexico. Under Twomey's leadership ICANN weathered the World Summit on the Information Society and experienced a more than 10-fold increase in the size of its budget. He has been in that position so long that some view him as the personification of ICANN.   more »

UPDATE: ICANN is soliciting comments on the NCSG Charter Proposal. Comments are due by April 15, 2009 and can be submitted to: sg-petitions-charters@icann.org. Robin Gross, current Chair of the NCUC has issued a call for support with reasons for why the Charter Proposal should be approved.

Via IP Justice:

Participants from ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) filed a petition to form a new stake-holder group as ICANN’s structure transforms from a GNSO of 6 constituencies to 4 more broadly defined "stake-holder groups". More info on this here.

The NCSG petition was sent to ICANN along with an Executive Summary and a supporting graphic chart on 28 February 2009 in anticipation of ICANN’s 34th Public Meeting, which will be held from 1-6 March 2009 in Mexico City.

This petition is by no means a final proposal, so feedback is welcome on how to improve the structure and operations of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) to best serve the needs of non-commercial users of domain names.

The petition was submitted by NCUC’s Executive Committee and GNSO Councilors and other non-commercial participants. Non-commercial organizations and individuals are invited to join NCUC and participate in policy development at ICANN.   more »