Dubai: Organisers of Gitex Technology Week on Sunday announced that their Global Leaders Summit on October 9 will include speaker Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
Icann is the world body that governs billions of transactions done every day on the internet.
Organisers of Gitex said in a statement that Beckstrom's appearance will be part of a massing of top technological minds from around the globe at the summit in Dubai. The year "2011 has marked a new era of transformation leadership inspired by identifying new areas of thinking, investing in changes and listening to potential shifts," Gitex organisers said yesterday.
"Global Leaders Summit 2011 will bring together a high level gathering of thought leaders and senior business executives to uncover, discuss and witness innovative technologies and strategies from some of the most forward thinking and young minds globally."
Beckstrom's scheduled appearance at Dubai's largest technology expo falls roughly eight months before his expected departure at the end of his term. In mid-August, Icann announced that after helming the non-profit organisation since July 1, 2009, he will be stepping down next year.
"I am incredibly proud of Icann's achievements throughout my tenure," said Beckstrom at the time of the announcement. "In two short years we have advanced this organisation to a new level of professionalism and productivity, and turned it into a genuinely multinational organisation that will serve the world community long after my time here."
Milestones
The organisation said Beckstrom has overseen a number of milestones including the Affirmation of Commitments, a 2009 agreement in which "the US Government moved Icann's oversight from one government to the world."
Beckstrom also oversaw the introduction of non-Latin domain names in Arabic, Russian and Chinese to give non-English speaking persons access to the internet in their own language. A programme to launch new generic top-level domains such a .coke and .nike has been approved and will launch next year.
