I am Julf (Johan) Helsingius, Finnish citizen resident in the
Netherlands (so my region is Europe), male and currently employed
as chairman of the board at IoT service provider BaseN.
As far as I know, I don't have any conflict of interest, but
in the spirit of transparency I am currently serving as
co-chair for the RIPE cooperation working group.
As NCSG chair I have had to mainly focus on the administrative side,
with a lot of operational issues and procedures to sort out, so I am
looking forward to a possibility of getting my teeth into some actual
policy issues again.
As to qualifications, I have served as chair, board member and/or CEO
for many organisations, both commercial and non-commercial. My privacy
activism and strong belief in human rights is pretty well known, and
some of my activities earned me, among other things, the EFF Pioneer
award back in 1997, a year before my fellow Swedish-speaking Finn
Linus Torvalds, and four years before the other award recipient in
our group, Stephanie Perrin.
My interest in ICANN kind of goes back to a dinner at one of the PC
Forum events (1998?) organized by Ester Dyson, where I got to witness
an interesting discussion between Esther and Ira Magaziner, but more
recently I have spent 2 years as NomCom appointee to the GNSO Council
and 3 years as the GNSO Council liaison to the GAC, as well as chairing
the GNSO Standing Selection Committee and participating in a bunch of
Accountability WS2 working groups and the rather traumatic first EPDP.
As my employment is part-time these days, I have the time required.
Happy to answer any questions.
