All,

I humbly accept the nomination for Chair of the UASG.  My thanks to Edmon Chung for putting my name forward as a candidate for Chair for the upcoming term, and also for the endorsements from group contributors on the discuss@ list.  I am honored to receive this level of support for my candidacy by people whom I respect and have had the privilege to collaborate with over the past four years as Vice-Chair of the UASG.

With the solid leadership and guidance from UASG Chair Ram Mohan the UASG is at a transition point.  The preceding years have seen the UA effort evolve from an aspirational goal to a focused effort that has created a solid foundation on which to build due to the hard work of the Secretary General, the electorate, and the many, many volunteer contributors and vendors.

I am enthusiastic about working with the UASG community to promote the development and adoption of recommended practices and deployable assets that will enable the currently disenfranchised to get online and experience the wealth of opportunity that a natively accessible internet can provide.

I’d like to take a brief moment to share with you my perspective on the accomplishments of the UASG and where the focus should be in the coming term.

The mission for the UASG has always been to support the concept that all domain names should be treated equally and has evolved to include email addresses (including Email Address Internationalization).  Through the extensive support of ICANN, the UASG have engaged with qualified experts, commercial organizations, and groups such as ICANN, IETF and ISOC and the resulting efforts are embodied primarily in the document repository on https://uasg.tech.  These foundational documents do not address all open questions and the effort thus far does not reflect a “mission accomplished.”  Rather, the efforts and deliverables to date simply provide a solid footing and core set of tools to continue to develop and which can be applied to expand our reach and effect an increasing impact within the internet ecosystem.

As with other initiatives designed to improve the experience and reach of the internet ecosystem (e.g., DNSSEC, Internationalized Domain Names, Email Address Internationalization, etc.), creating technically sound solutions and making those solutions available to the world isn’t enough.  Despite strong efforts and various approaches, the UASG has yet to effectively impart the value and potential benefits of adopting UA outside of a small set of engaged providers.  We had hoped that by explaining issues surrounding UA, measuring the potential impact of these issues and by providing recommended practices to address them, we would see material adoption.  Experience has shown that this is not the case. 

Briefly stated, over the next two years, the UASG should:

1. Continue to focus on a global solution that encourages interoperability across cultures and regions rather than primarily focusing on specific regional solutions.  Failing to maintain the global view may result in increased usability within targeted regions but risks the creation of a fragmented internet where communication and usage across regions is problematic;
2. Make concerted efforts to judiciously and efficiently apply resources to drive changes to widely used source code repositories so that we effect improvements not by encouraging work, but instead help to solve the problem for the general population without requiring a nuanced understanding of the topic;
3. Continue to evolve our Ambassador program to engage with peripheral organizations to evangelize the concepts of UA and encourage the adoption of recommended practices and to identify opportunities where the UA can apply its resources to make material improvements;
4. Continue to support IDN and EAI. These are very important efforts within the UA agenda and should continue to get substantial resources to further expansion of supporting technologies.  There are specific challenges around both of these topics and continuing to engage with industry experts to develop materials to provide quality guidance for implementers and solution providers should continue;
5. Continue to include and enhance in our outreach and communications and awareness component. By awareness, I mean increased awareness that IDNs, EAI, and non-traditional TLDs exist and must be accepted.  We have touched on awareness over the past four years but are seeing that a lack of awareness has led to a lack of concern on the part of many, many solutions providers.  By including awareness in our strategy, we should be able to expand our reach;
6. Continue to work with ICANN staff and our UASG constituents, evolving our mission and efforts to be inclusive of the community’s ideas and needs.

My experience and background at ICANN, in the domain industry, with IDNs and at GoDaddy qualifies me well, I believe, to provide leadership and guidance to the UASG. I have run global multi-stakeholder efforts before, I understand how to engage with global communities, and most of all, I remain humble in approach but relentless in execution. These are essential traits, I believe, for continued success of the UASG and its mission.

I hope you will consider supporting my nomination to help me serve you and the internet community on bringing the mission of Universal Acceptance to a strong and successful outcome.

Sincerely,

Richard Merdinger