Internet Society

SEEDIG marks its seventh anniversary with seven events to be held throughout 2021. The SEEDIG 7 Series will feature keynote speeches by prominent digital and technology experts, followed by interactive community discussions and networking sessions.

The first event of the SEEDIG 7 Series was held on 21 June 2021 under the overarching theme “Internet in your native language: Universal Acceptance”. The event was organised in partnership with the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation – RNIDS and with Tech partner - DiploFoundation.

The meeting featured:

- Fireside Chat with Danko Jevtović | ICANN Board of Directors

- Stakeholder Dialogue on UA engagement strategies with the participation of:

Kristina Hakobyan | Internet Society NGO (ISOC AM)

Maria Kolesnikova | UA Regional Coordination Group for CIS and Eastern Europe

Dijana Milutinović |RNIDS

- Open Mic

The event was moderated by Dušan Stojičević | Gransy

“Internet Society” NGO Board Members Anna Karakhanyan, Lianna Galstyan and Katarina Gevorgyan also participated at the SEEDIG 7 Series kick-off event. 

The recording of the event is available here.

On 27 May 2021, a webinar on Universal Acceptance was organized and Co-sponsored by APTLD and ICANN. It had a poetical name "The Knights of the Round Table of UA" and featured ccTLD managers to discuss what is required from them and their peers to promote UA.

“Internet Society” NGO Board Vice Chair Grigori Saghyan and Board Member Anna Karakhanyan attended the online meeting.

RIPE 82, the third virtual RIPE Meeting, took place on 17-21 May 2021. The program of the meeting was built around the topics of DNS, Anti-Abuse, RIPE NCC Services, IPv6, IoT, Routing, Database, etc. It also presented the updates from the working groups on the Address Policy, Connect, Cooperation and Open Source. Presentations used at RIPE 82 are available here.

RIPE 82 saw 1,172 people registered, 274 newcomers, and an average of 550 viewers per day. The top-five countries represented at this meeting were Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States and Italy.

On May 15-16, the forum "Armenia as a modern industrial-scientific-state" was held in Dilijan, organized by the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) and the RA Ministry of High-Tech Industry. “Internet Society” NGO Vice Chair Grigori Saghyan participated in the forum.

The aim of the forum was to outline ways to eliminate the consequences of the crisis in Armenia caused by the COVID-19 and war through the experience and potential of advanced technologies.

The two-day forum was attended by representatives of the leading technology sector, research institutions, universities, businesses, as well as government agencies.

At the opening ceremony, RA Acting Minister of HTI Hayk Chobanyan, RA Acting Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan, UATE Board Chair Alexander Yesayan and Executive Director Raffi Kasarjyan greeted the participants and expressed hope that such meetings would promote inter-sectoral cooperation.

The main topics of discussion were the possibilities of restoring the research potential in Armenia, the development of e-government systems and state security standards supporting the advancement of industry, the preparation of engineering education specialists for the modern industrial sphere, and the minimum number of staff needed for the research sphere.

“Internet Society” NGO Board member Anna Karakhanyan took part in CENTR’s 35th Virtual Marketing and Administrative Webinar.

At the meeting, representatives of European Registries, as well as Registries of .us and .jp ccTLD discussed the development of IDNs: the current situation, features of promotion and emerging difficulties. The other panelists were Patrick Miles (CENTR), Giovanni Seppia (.eu), Dana Ludwig (.lv), Jaromir Talir (.cz) and Sumika Uchikava (.jp).

On April 20 2021, ICANN70 Virtual Community Forum Readout was  held online, which was attended by the “Internet Society” NGO Board members. Participants discussed the most important events of the last meeting, news and plans of the ICANN community.

Mikhail Anisimov (ICANN) gave some details about the ICANN’s plans on the forthcoming second window of the New gTLD program, new projects and ICANN initiatives. Siranush Vardanyan (ICANN) gave an update and infographics of the Fellowship program and “Internet Society” NGO Board member Kristina Hakobyan gave an update of the GAC news.

On 13 April 2021 "Internet Society" NGO Board Member Grigori Saghyan joined an online seminar on Universal Acceptance in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region in the framework of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS Forum 2021). He talked about "Promoting Universal Acceptance as a prerequisite for progress of ensuring multilingualism and local content generation in Eurasia and Asia Pacific".

The Panel discussed the level of awareness of Universal Acceptance in their countries and the opportunities that the implementation of UA will provide for end users, and also suggested ways to involve business and government in its support and promotion.

The 11th Russian Internet Governance Forum (RIGF 2021) was held in Moscow on April 7-9, 2021. It was organized in a hybrid format, with speakers at the venue and participants being able to connect online.

During 3 days 3 awards ceremonies took place, as well as 8 sessions, in which 50 experts from different countries of the world spoke.

More than 1200 participants followed the forum both online and in-situ.

During the forum, issues related to information security, trust in the Internet, social network, data protection, use of artificial intelligence, development of the Internet were discussed along with many other important topics.

“Internet Society” NGO Board members joined the 11th Russian IGF online.

Presentations and photo-video reports are available on the official website.

The 7th Middle East DNS Forum, virtually hosted by CITC, took place on 5-7 April 2021. It kicked off with a keynote speech by David Conrad, ICANN's CTO on the current DNS landscape and ecosystem, emerging standards as well as emerging technologies and their effect on the DNS.

The MEDNS Forum brought together field experts and affected parties to discuss the latest developments in the global domain marketplace and ways to strengthen the DNS industry in the Middle East. It also tackled the challenges of Universal Acceptance and Solutions

“Internet Society” NGO Board members took part in the7th edition of the Middle East DNS Forum.