Thanks for an Extraordinary Year of Achievements from Lynn St.Amour,
President and CEO of ISOC
Dear Members, Friends, and Colleagues,
The end of 2009 is rapidly approaching – and what a year it has been.
The Internet Society continued to prosper in 2009, the results of our work
reaching wider and deeper than ever before. So it is a pleasure to extend my
sincere gratitude to all of you whose combined efforts, energy, and
dedication have made this such a great year.
We often use the term “Internet community” and, looking back at the
achievements of this year, it is 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.
Within the Enabling Access Initiative, we worked closely with Chapters and
other local and regional partners to significantly extend our 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. This work advanced our profile and strengthened our
message in many high-level forums, such as the OECD, the World Bank, and the
ITU. Access continues 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. In an exciting new
development this year, ISOC launched a series of topical, lively panel
discussions during IETF meetings. The first on IPv6 deployment attracted
much international attention. Together with the subsequent panels on 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.
ISOC’s Trust and Identity Initiative benefited from two important new staff
additions in 2009, increasing our involvement in many important new
initiatives and partnerships in both the Trust and Identity spaces. One of
the most significant is the Kantara Initiative (formerly the Liberty
Alliance), in which ISOC has developed a strong voice and leadership role.
Throughout all of our work in 2009, we strived to promote better
understanding of the nature and importance of the Internet Model of
development and the relationships of the many organizations and functions
making up the Internet Ecosystem. These efforts have clearly paid off and we
were very pleased to see many of our messages reflected in the words and
actions of many others in regional, national, and global discussions. In
2009, ISOC’s key messages were more frequently cited in media reports and
reflected in statements by policy makers around the world than ever before.
Additions to ISOC’s staff in 2009 helped us make big strides in producing
better publications and communications resources, delivering important
information and services in more languages, and providing much greater
support for events where Chapters, Individual and Organization Members, and
others come together in support of our common mission. The successful Sphere
project continues to be an excellent process for enabling the full potential
of the Chapter network. And we were very pleased to recently launch the
first phase of our new Association Management System as a much improved tool
for Chapter and member interaction.
This year was one of ISOC’s most significant ever in terms of global
engagement. With highly visible roles in the EU, ITU, OECD, 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. At
the latter event, ISOC announced the Next Generation Leaders programme, a
new activity starting in 2010 to build on our past successes such as the
Network Training Workshops (NTW’s), as well as our current work in
Fellowships to the IETF, and Ambassadorships to the IGF and other forums,
adding coursework and mentoring to help accelerate the careers of the young
practitioners who will lead the Internet into its next generation.
Finally, the Internet Society is finishing the year on a high note, having
just announced our support for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to help
it evolve as a more agile, inclusive, and flexible organization, as it
creates and promotes open standards.
There is so much more I could mention here – it really has been an
extraordinary year. As 2009 draws to a close, it is important to recognize
and thank all those who contributed to such a successful year. So, thank
you to all the Individual and Organization Members, the Chapters, and all
our other supporters and partners for their efforts and support as we worked
together in pursuit of our common goals. Thank you to our friends in the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board
(IAB) without whose
values and work, the Internet, as we know it, would not exist. And,
of course, thank you to the ISOC staff, the ISOC Board of Trustees, the
Organization Member Advisory Council and the Public Interest Registry (PIR),
for their efforts and support. To all of you, your support is vital to
helping the Internet improve the lives of people everywhere.
Finally, I’d like to extend my very best wishes to you and your families
during the holiday season, as we couldn’t do what we do without their
support. I look forward to working together with all of you for a
prosperous and successful 2010.
Warmest regards,
Lynn
Lynn St.Amour
President & CEO, Internet Society
