ICANN's Rod Beckstrom, left, met with President of Bulgaria Georgi Parvanov and First Lady Zorka Parvanova. Photo courtesy of the President of Bulgaria's office, used under a Creative Commons license.
7 November 2011, Sofia – Bulgaria held its first event dedicated to the ICANN New gTLD Program today. ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom spoke to open the ceremonies for DomainForum, which also featured noted ICANN community members such as GNSO Chair Stephane Van Gelder, Michele Neylon of the Registrars Stakeholder Group, and Dragomir Slavov of Register.BG. Attendees also heard from an impressive list of technical operators, intellectual property lawyers, and government officials.
Beckstrom made the most of 24 hours in Bulgaria to educate about new gTLDs. In addition to speaking at DomainForum, he also delivered a keynote lecture on Internet governance and leadership at the University of National and World Economy.
He also met with Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov and Deputy-Minister of Transport, IT and Communications Valeri Borissov. The Bulgarian dignitaries discussed new gTLD policies, the internationalized domain name (IDN) process, and government participation in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Mr. Borissov confirmed the Bulgarian government's support for the ICANN multi-stakeholder model.
Beckstrom also engaged in direct talks with the local Internet community, including staff members who help operate the local country code top-level domain, .BG; and gave interviews for key Bulgarian media.
These activities represented the latest in ICANN's ongoing campaign of events to educate the world about the risks and opportunities tied to upcoming new gTLDs. To read accounts from past events or see a schedule of coming events, visit our New gTLDs micro-site.