Lacnic 10 Years: A Decade of the Internet, Now Looking towards the Future

23/11/2012

During five days, top Information Technology players and experts met in Montevideo to celebrate the first decade of the Regional Internet Registry. Keynote presentations, panels, debates, meetings and an emotional awards ceremony were all part of the Lacnic 18/Lacnog 2012 activities.

Intense, emotional and very fruitful. These words describe the five days of the LACNIC meeting held in Montevideo to discuss the main challenges facing the Latin American and Caribbean Internet community and celebrate the first ten years of the Regional Internet Registry (RIR). The event included the Lacnic 18 meeting and the annual Latin American and Caribbean Network Operators Forum meeting, LACNOG 2012.

Almost 600 registered attendees from 32 different countries were present at the keynote presentations, panels, debates and workshops that were part of the meeting’s activities. The list of speakers included prominent Internet personalities and pioneers such as, among others, Steve Crocker, Chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society, and Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC).

A Catalyst for Growth. In his keynote address, Lacnic’s Executive Director gave a brief overview of the organization’s ten-year history and noted that in the early days the region’s Internet pioneers envisioned that “creating an organization to manage IP addresses in Latin America and the Caribbean would also serve as a catalyst for Internet growth in the region.”

He stressed that “from Lacnic’s very genetic constitution, a vision of development and growth by and for the region had already been outlined.”

Echeberría noted that all this time the Internet has changed the way society interacts, the way we do business, our teaching methods, and added that in the near future it will have a huge impact on government systems.

“Technology has introduced a new dimension to human relations, a new way of understanding communication. We live in an interconnected world where the pursuit of happiness can be related to what is happening on the other side of the globe, where technological tools allow us to express ourselves and lean on others in new and meaningful ways,” added Lacnic’s CEO.

Sharing Experiences. The spirit of the meeting was reflected in each exchange among the numerous participants. One of the keynote panels addressed the issue of Internet Governance, focusing on the topics that will be discussed in December at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT).

At a technical level, the main topic of discussion had to do with the adoption of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6, which will exponentially increase the number of IP addresses available to users and eliminate the current problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. In turn, technicians participating in the Lacnog meeting discussed the unification of fixed and mobile networks and analyzed Internet infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The LACNIC 10 Years meeting also served to honor ten individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade by presenting them with the 2012 Outstanding Achievement Award (see press release).

Women also played a major role in the meeting. On Wednesday, all female participants came together with the aim of sharing their experiences of working and living with ICTs during a much appreciated lunch meeting which favored networking.

The Lacnic 10 Years meeting formally closed with a gala dinner at Quinta de Arteaga, located in the outskirts of Montevideo, which featured a performance by Ruben Rada, a Uruguayan singer-songwriter winner of the 2011 Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and where Lacnic staff members were also honored.

Read again: “10 years Lacnic: Internet and values” by Raúl Echeberría