Kieren McCarthy Leaving ICANN

15 Oct 2009

ICANN public participation GM announces his resignation.

Kieren McCarthy, who officially is ICANN’s general manager of public participation, announced today that he is leaving the organization at the end of November.

If you think it’s hard to connect with ICANN now, you should have experienced it before Kieren came on board. He has made it much easier to interact with ICANN and access information from the organization. It was no easy task to get public participation to where it is today. ICANN is one big bureaucracy, and working within such an organization is extremely challenging.

His job is what you’d call a “thankless job”. He even ventured onto domain blogs, where a number of people didn’t listen to his arguments and instead chastised him for joining ICANN.

In explaining his departure, Kieren wrote:

I’ve learnt a hell of a lot over the past two-and-a-half years but with the ending of a big agreement between the organization and the US government (and they said it couldn’t be done), with my boss heading back to Australia, and with a feeling that my ability to effect changes has passed its peak, it is definitely time to move on.

There’s a bright side to Kieren’s departure. He might finally have time to do more with his outstanding Sex.com book. It reads like a thriller and has a wider audience than the domain industry. But it has only been officially released in the UK. It would be great to see it published in the U.S. and even turned into a movie.

I wish Kieren the best of luck. Keep us posted on what you’re doing.