Apply for ICANN fellowship!

If you are interested in the Internet Governance issues (or even more generally in the politics of the Internet) and you live in a low income to upper-middle income economy, you should definitely apply for ICANN fellowship to attend one of their meetings.

I have recently discovered ICANN dashboard, which allows you a glimpse over their various statistics.  As you can see in the chart below, as long as you meet their qualifications, your chances of being accepted are rather high.  For example, in the last round of fellowships there were 33 qualified entries and all of them got funded.  Meeting the qualifications criteria is the greatest barrier to entry for this fellowship and it is not completely clear to me how so many unqualified people apply.  From reading the fellowship conditions, the two basic criteria are your citizenship and having at least some relevant experience.

Unfortunately, I don’t have more details about this opportunity other than what is available on their website.  Nevertheless, and regardless of what you may think about ICANN and its role in the regulation of Internet, it seems like an interesting chance to observe the process of Internet policy deliberation in real time.  The next ICANN meeting will take place in Seoul, Korea, 25-30 October 2009, however at this point you can only apply for the following meeting to be held in Nairobi, Kenya on 7-12 March 2010.  The fellowship applications window for that meeting is September 28 to November 6, 2009.  Good luck!

P.S. The underlying logic of limiting fellowship eligibility to people from developing countries is completely understandable, but it would be great if ICANN could at least link to other resources, which are open to people from the rest of the world.