Vittorio Bertola
Candidate in ICANNATLARGE.COM Interim Panel Election April 2002

This is a brief presentation of myself and my statements as a candidate.

I am an Engineer, 27, and live in Turin, Italy. My present and past activities include being open source software writer, author of technical books and articles, Usenet moderator, founder of some small non profit organizations, students' representative in my University's Board of Directors, ISP manager, and finally, as current daytime job, CTO for a pan-European dot com company named Vitaminic (running sites such as www.vitaminic.it, .de, .fr, .co.uk etc., plus www.iuma.com in the US, www.peoplesound.com in the UK and www.francemp3.com in France) which I contributed to start in 1999, and which is currently the leading Internet music distributor in Europe.

My experience with ICANN dates back to 2000, when I started Italy's only At Large site, and was among the top ten voted candidates in the European At Large election. I then continued to participate, physically attending a couple of ICANN meetings, being a member of the ICC (Interim Coordinating Committee), submitting proposals and comments, and actively posting on various At Large mailing lists. In the last months I have been one of the most active members of icannatlarge.com, posting proposals to the web forums, drafting the charter of these elections, and actually pushing for them to happen as soon as possible. I am also the coordinator of the ICANN working group for the Italian chapter of the Internet Society, and former member of the Executive Committee of the policy board for the .it domain.

My vision of the At Large is that it should not be a heavy, bureaucratic and centralised structure imposed from the top, but should instead be like an "open container" of individuals, organizations and bottom-up groups that may aggregate and self-organize themselves in different ways, according to their country, language, job, age, culture or whatever else. This is the only way through which you can fulfill an ultimate purpose of representing all active Internet users of the world, without exceptions or further requirements, who want to have a voice in ICANN and in other Internet administration bodies; we have to support the creation of forums and groups of small and manageable size, in local languages, and at the same time build a mechanism for all these groups to discuss and share opinions at a worldwide level.

Individuals are under-represented in the management of the Internet; diversity is low, and most people come from big US or multinational companies that make business on the net. We need to increase diversity, bring people from all continents and cultures to the table, and head the Internet towards being an instrument of freedom, knowledge, and cultural and economical growth for all parts of the world.

However, at this stage it is important to be practical. I think that I would be a good panel member because I have already proven to be able to contribute a lot of time, passion, ideas and practical work, including actually running sites, to the cause of the At Large. I think that, after two years spent in talks, now it is important to actually produce some results: starting up formally an At Large organization, increasing its membership and getting some recognition inside and outside ICANN. We should not start talking now of globalization, online democracy, digital divide, and so on, but proceed one step at a time.

In my opinion, voters should consider candidates not by their country or their job title, but by their ability to produce good proposals, their enthusiasm, and their proven skills. I think I have all of these, as you might verify by yourself simply by reading my posts in the forums on icannatlarge.com. This is why I ask you to include me among the people you will vote for - as I have no lobbies or national groups behind me and I can only count on individual support. Thanks!

For further reference about my ideas and attitudes you might visit:

The election charter which I authored (English, from icannatlarge.com forums)
My bylaws proposals for icannatlarge.com (English, from icannatlarge.com forums)
All my posts in icannatlarge.com forums (English)
My proposal for At Large organization at Nov 2000 ICANN meeting (English)
My candidation statement for year 2000 elections (English)
The At Large site I created for year 2000 elections (Italian)
My personal site (Italian)

Comments, criticism, or expressions of support are welcome. Please post hereafter or contact me by E-mail at v.bertola (at) bertola.eu.org.
--vb. [Vittorio Bertola]