21 November, 2010

Why ICANN Can't Communicate

A recent tweet from Antony Van Couvering regarding ICANN's latest announcement:   Nobody knows what "AGP Limits Consensus Policy" means.  How about "#ICANN Kills Domain Tasting For Good"?  Sheesh.

While just another sign that ICANN has lost touch with the community that it's supposed to be serving, we probably need to be asking ourselves "why is this happening?"  This certainly isn't the first time that ICANN has put out a misleading, confusing, or obfuscatory announcement -- we all recall seeing the "Morality and Public Order issue" described as "GNSO Rec 6".

In March 2008, the organization hired a new Policy Communications Director, yet a review of current Staff listings no longer shows that person on the payroll.  Then in June of 2009 we saw a new Director of Policy Communications come on board  (but for some unknown reason he is also described as "Director, Marketing and Outreach").  So if we were to hazard a guess, there probably is no one that is really in charge of basic communications policy at the moment -- another issue for the new COO to sort out.

It does leave us wondering... if ICANN can't manage simple communications, how will it fare with the new $2.7 million dollar gTLD Communications Plan?

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