Nigel Roberts
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| Country: | Channel Islands | ||
| LinkedIn: |  Nigel Roberts
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| Twitter: |  @nigelrbrts
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Nigel Roberts is the Founder, Director, and CEO of the Island Networks group of companies,[1] which run the ccTLD registries of .gg (Guernsey) and .je (Jersey). He was one of the first elected members, representing the ccTLD Constituency, of ICANN's Domain Name Supporting Organisation, the forerunner of today's GNSO and ccNSO. Nigel Roberts has been involved with ICANN since its very beginnings, and took part in the US Government's International Forum on the White Paper in 1998.[2]
He was the first person to use the rights of Directive 2002/58 to obtain compensation in the English Courts from a sender of unsolicited commercial email.[3]
Work
After graduation from Essex University, he joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) which was, at the time, the second-largest computer company in the world. He subseqently worked on PDP-11 (RSX) and VAX/VMS computers on diverse projects, including work on the pioneeering ALL-IN-1 email and office automation package, and X.400 e-mail gateways.
Before founding CHANNELISLES.NET he worked for a number of companies and international organisations throughout Europe as an independent consultant/contractor, including spending a number of years working as as a consultant contractor with DEC as well as at BT, SWIFT, and the European Environment Agency in Denmark. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered IT Professional and one of the first UK engineers to be awarded the pan-European title of European Engineer (Eur.- Ing.).
Together with another ex-DEC employee, he founded Island Networks in 1996, setting up the Channel Islands Domain Name Registry for the .gg and .je TLDs. Island Networks is based on the small island of Alderney, in the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
He was an active member of ICANN's Delegation and Redelegation of Country-Code Top Level Domains Working Group, and is currently actively involved with its successor, the Framework of Interpretation WG.
Honours
In 2006 he was made a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society.
Education
Nigel received a BSc degree in Computing Science from Essex University. During his time there as an undergraduate he played a minor role as one of the group of students who created the world's first multi-user computer game.
In 2006, he obtained a Diploma in English Law from OU/College of Law and went on to be awarded a Qualifying Law Degree (LL.B) with First-Class honours in June, 2008.
Fun Facts
His hobbies include flying, radio presenting, and chastising spammers. Nigel remarks has been involved with the Internet for so long that his first email address (given as an 'ARPAnet tourist' at the MIT AI lab) predated the DNS and contained no dots. He ran in the 1997 general election for the UK House of Commons for the Ipswich Constituency [4] and serverd as a Member of the States (Channel Island legislature) in Alderney between 2002-3.