Internet community had extra-ordinary 2009 – ISOC

President, Internet Society (ISOC) Lynn St. Amour has described the just ended 2009 as a year of extra-ordinary achievements for the group.

St. Amour in an epistle for the New Year to ISOC community made available to ITRealms Online, said Internet Society continued to prosper in 2009, with wide reaching effects.

“So, it is a pleasure to extend my sincere gratitude to all of you whose combined efforts, energy, and dedication have made this a great year,” the ISOC chief executive said.

He noted that often stakeholders use the term “Internet community” and, looking back at the achievements of 2009 by the ISOC family, it has become clear that these are truly the result of a strong, committed community pulling together around shared values and principles.

“It is impossible to list here all of the Internet Society’s achievements from such a busy and productive year, but I would like to single out a few highlights,” St. Amour said.

According to the ISOC boss, within the Enabling Access Initiative, the group worked closely with Chapters and other local and regional partners to significantly extend the technical and policy capacity building programmes, especially in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

“These efforts were aided through a revitalized INET programme with specialized content developed in partnership with local communities, and which reached out successfully to hundreds of participants in each location, St. Amour asserted.

Pointing out that this work also advanced the profile and strengthened of ISOC message in many high-level forums, such as the OECD, the World Bank, and the ITU, just as access has continued to be one of the major themes in many of the Chapter and other member projects supported by our grants programmes.

“In our InterNetWorks Initiative, a number of new efforts contributed to helping to advance the health of the Internet. ISOC continues to project a strong voice for IPv6 deployment, so it has been pleasing to see in 2009 that IPv6 is gathering momentum around the world, St. Amour said.

In an exciting new development in 2009, ISOC, she said, launched a series of topical, lively panel discussions during the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meetings.

“The first on IPv6 deployment attracted much international attention. Together with the subsequent panels on Domain Name System (DNS) security and bandwidth management issues, these events have set the scene for what will be an important ongoing activity, helping to advance the health of the Internet and promoting the role of the IETF.

The year 2009, she said, was one of ISOC’s most significant ever in terms of global engagement with highly visible roles in the European Union (EU), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and many other major policy and technical forums.

“It is clear that ISOC’s reputation as a trusted and authoritative voice on critical Internet issues continues to grow stronger. We again were honoured to coordinate the participation of other organizations, especially in the Internet Technical Advisory Committee to the OECD and the Internet Pavilion at the ITU’s Telecom World 2009,” she emphasized.

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