Blog

The rainy and charming city of Seattle hosted the ICANN82 Community Forum, which took place from March 10 to 14. However, it was preceded by several important meetings of specific working groups within the ICANN community over the previous three days.

This meeting was attended by 1,369 people in person in Seattle, including 155 first-time participants, while 548 people joined online. In total, participants represented 129 countries and territories, with North America being the most represented region (53.1%), in contrast to Latin America and the Caribbean (6.1%).

Throughout the week, and across 175 public sessions, several key topics were discussed, with special emphasis on:

ICANN82 was the first open meeting for the entire community under the leadership of the new President and CEO, Kurt Erik Lindqvist. Kurtis, as he is known within the community, highlighted some key points during the opening ceremony, which we bring here: the role of various important women in building this organization as we know it today, the importance of defending the multi-stakeholder model, with its "bottom-up" approach to Internet governance, which is at the core of ICANN’s creation and operation and, in his words, has proven to be a success. He also recalled the tenth anniversary of "Universal Acceptance", which ensures that all domain names and email addresses are treated equally and can be used by all applications, devices, and systems with Internet access, regardless of the alphabet used. Additionally, he reaffirmed his commitment to contributing to a safer, more stable, and globally connected Internet.

The words of ICANN’s President and CEO may have offered some comfort to a community that was visibly concerned about recent positions taken (also) regarding Internet governance by the country that hosted ICANN82, particularly in the speech at the United Nations meeting titled the 58th Plenary Session of the General Assembly, in which "(...) the United States rejects and denounces Agenda 2030 and the SDGs.”

During the ICANN82 Community Forum, several sessions addressed highly relevant issues regarding sustainability, digital inclusion, gender diversity, and cooperation as a means to achieve the best results and essential tools for the development of a more inclusive Internet. The .PT had the opportunity to actively participate in some of these discussions, notably in the "ccTLD News Session” of the ccNSO, where LusNIC—the association of Portuguese-language registries—was presented as an example of close collaboration between registries united by a common asset, the "Portuguese language.” Additionally, .PT played a role in presenting the EU DNSWOMEN project, led by the president of .PT, which aims to inspire and support women in this industry, and in the "Joint Meeting: GAC and ccNSO," where we shared with representatives of various governments the multi-stakeholder governance model of .PT and presented ourselves as a technically autonomous registry.

And of course, if I may allow myself a moment of "bragging” ICANN82 ended in the best possible way: with the announcement that Lisbon has been selected to host ICANN88 at the Lisbon Congress Center from March 13 to 18, 2027, with .PT as the host. Twenty years after hosting ICANN28, Portugal has once again been chosen to welcome this community and serve as a stage for important discussions about the global domain name ecosystem. Welcome, ICANN88!