Kieren McCarthy
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| Country: | USA | ||||
| Email: | kieren [at] dot-nxt.com | ||||
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| Facebook: |  Kieren McCarthy
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| Twitter: |  @kierenmccarthy
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Kieren McCarthy is CEO of .Nxt, Inc., a company that supplies information and analysis on Internet policy and governance issues. He served as ICANN's General Manager for Public Participation from February 2007 to November 2009;[1] he continues to be known as a vocal critic of ICANN.
In October, 2011, it was announced that he was hired to handle .xxx outreach for the International Forum for Online Responsibility, the string's sponsoring organization, which is managed by ICM Registry. It was his role to put communication and consensus facilitating tools in place.[2] In January 2013, it was announced that IFFOR would now be providing Registration and Use Policy consultation to any New gTLD applicants, and that Kieren McCarthy was being promoted from his prior position to Executive Director.[3]
Work
Kieren is a journalist by profession, specializing in the Internet and domain names. He maintains a blog at KierenMcCarthy.com. He has worked as a freelance journalist since 2001; and previously, was a reporter and sub-editor for The Register, PC Week, PC Dealer, and others. He also provides occasional media training for a number of global IT companies.
Kieren was appointed ICANN's General Manager of Public Participation in January, 2007 and left in November, 2009. Kieren McCarthy credited his hire with ICANN to his role as an active critic. He notes that in 2006, when he was hired as General Manager of Public Participation, ICANN had a "bunker" feel to it, where the staff was overworked but often attacked for not doing more, had a notoriously bad website, and did not discuss its decisions of ask for feedback with enough transparency or reliability. He believes that he was a part of the change that took place between then and 2009. When he left ICANN, he left the organization an extensive list of recommendations and observations.[4]
In 2011, he established the .nxt Conference to create a more positive dialogue around the issue of new Internet extensions - new gTLDs. Shortly thereafter, he created the company .Nxt, Inc., which is dedicated to supporting the multi-stakeholder model by providing timely and helpful information on Internet policy and governance, covering organization such as ICANN, IGF, ITU, OECD and others.
A second .Nxt conference is set for 24-26 August 2011 in San Francisco.
Education
- M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering with Management and French, Nottingham University, 1997.[5]
Videos
Kieren was interviewed by Graham Chynoweth of Dyn Inc. at ICANN 44 in Prague: