APTLD Amman Report 20/10/05

The APTLD meeting was held over two days on Sunday 2 and Monday 3 October. Charles Shaban and his company TAGO were exceptional hosts for this meeting, and went well above and beyond the call of duty to ensure participants enjoyment.

The opening session included an address Her Excellency Nadia Hilmi Al-Saeed, the Jordanian Government ICT Minister, and as a Jordanian at heart, I was pleased to hear that considerable progress is being made in the technology arena in Jordan. The Minister also returned to the meeting later, to observe the WSIS session, and was most interested in the APTLD process.

The APTLD site has a summary of the individual sessions, with links to presentations, at

www.aptld.org/newsite/meeting/2005/10_Amman/agenda.htm

Important aspects for .nz during the course of the meeting were mostly around the WSIS process as covered elsewhere, and the process for appointment of APTLD General Manager. There will be a fairly tight time frame of devising and placing advertising, interviews, recruitment, employment law consultation, and appointment, with the ambition that the appointee will be confirmed and in place before the next APTLD meeting (AGM) being held in conjunction with the ICANN Wellington meeting.

Also of interest is the ongoing development of the APTLD 2006 Business Plan, and most especially the incorporation of budget for the ccTLD Training School. Input from members on the Business Plan will be sought before the end of this year.

Naturally enough, there was a concentration in the programme on multilinguilisation, and a focus on Internationalised Domain Names, which seemed to be useful to the Arabic speaking attendees, and very useful updates received from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan attendees.

As always the meeting was smoothly run and participants in great spirits.

It was my pleasure to be able to attend, particularly as the meeting was held in the city I was born in, and in fact the venue was within a few kilometres of where we lived. Most bizarre was a visit to the Roman ruins in Jerash, where my family used to go for Sunday picnics, and to see a Scottish Arabic band playing in the amphitheatre – a sight I never thought possible, the combination of my heritage.

Recommendations

• That this report be received

Keith Davidson
20 October 2005