ICANN 01

Dates:	March 2-4, 1999
Location:	Singapore
Venue:	Singapore International Convention Centre Pan Pacific Hotel
Website:	ICANN1 site
Historical Significance
First ICANN conference Supporting Organizations established

ICANN 1 was held in Singapore, between March 2nd and 4th, 1999. It was the organizations debut public conference, and consequently involved laying the groundwork for its actual structure and functioning. The meetings were held at various venues, namely the Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre and the Pan Pacific Hotel. Currently, Singapore is one of only three cities that have hosted more than one ICANN conference; Los Angeles, California and Marina Del Rey, California , which is ICANN's headquarters, have both hosted two conferences. The second ICANN conference to be held in Singapore was ICANN 41, held between the 19th and 24th of June, 2011. During the opening ceremony of ICANN 41, Peter Dengate Thrush reminded the audience of how much the Internet community and ICANN has come since its humble beginnings as a largely American cultural phenomenon overseen by its government.

Meeting

ICANN held two days of public forums followed by a day of closed door work on the supporting organizations proposal. This immediate use of closed door meetings by the new organization grew extremely sharp criticism from some participants. Ellen Rony started a campaign to use gray ribbon images on websites opposed to ICANN's closed door tactics, and Network Solutions also issued a statement condemning the move.

Sessions included:

• GAC Organizational Meeting
• DNS Root Server System Advisory Committee Organizational Meeting
• Advisory Committee on Membership

The inaugural public session was held in conjunction with the APRICOT '99 plenary session.

Select topics discussed include:

• DNSO proposals
• Shared Registry System testbed and guidlines
• Discussion of ICANN policies and procedures
• Consider reports from Advisory Committees
• Finances, staffing, logistics

A fuller agenda can be seen here

Developments

• It had previously been decided that supporting organizations with expertise in domain names would be needed, and that ICANN should create its own group rather than rely on existing techincal and professional organizations to report to its board. Thus, at ICANN 1 in Singapore seven constituencies of Internet stakeholders were self-organized through the adoption of the Statement of Domain Name Supporting Organization Formation Concepts resolution. Later that year the DNSO would be officially recognized as the larger umbrella for all of these Supporting Organizations.

Other Notes

• At that time the GAC was chaired by future ICANN CEO, Paul Twomey.
• At the time of the first ICANN meeting the DNS had a completely different makeup:
  • There were 171 million total Internet users, compared to 2 billion in 2011.
  • 56% of those Internet users were from the United States or Canada. 15% from the Asia Pacific. Today, fewer than 14% of Internet users come from North America, 44% are from Asia.