Speaker biographies

Peter Dengate-Thrush

Peter Dengate-Thrush is a barrister practicing in civil litigation and specializing in intellectual property, competition, and Internet law.

He was the legal advisor to InternetNZ from 1996 to 1999, advising it on the formation of its registry company (Domainz) and acting in early domain name disputes in which the registry was named. He served as chair from December 1999 for two terms. He is a past chair of InternetNZ's International Affairs Committee, and a member of its Legal and Regulatory Committee (see www.internetnz.org.nz).

He has been active in the setting up and developing of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association (APTLD), the body of national domain name registry managers for the Asia Pacific region, and is the immediate past chair (see www.aptld.org).

Peter has been involved in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since its inception. As a member of the Boston Working Group, he provided comment in 1998 on the early drafts of the ICANN bylaws, and as President of AIPPI-NZ, he co-chaired one of the preformation meetings of the Intellectual Property Constituency in Wellington, New Zealand. In 1999 he was appointed to ICANN's Independent Review Advisory Committee, or IRAC, a multi-national panel of legal experts charged with defining the principles of independent review of the actions of the Board of ICANN. He contributed to InternetNZ's submission to WIPO 1 and served on ICANN's Working Group A, which led to the development of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). He is currently on the President's Strategy, Board Finance, Board Governance, and Executive committees.

Peter has been a leader of the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) community, serving for many years on the Administrative Committee of the World Wide Alliance of ccTLDs. In that role he originated the call for the formation of a Support Organization for ccTLDs in ICANN and chaired the many meetings at which its bylaws were debated (see www.wwtld.org). He served on the launching group of the Country Code Name Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and was selected as a board member after an international vote of ccTLD managers in the ccNSO in December 2004.

Peter Dengate-Thrush was originally selected for the ICANN Board by the ccNSO in 2005. His current three-year term expires six months after the conclusion of the 2010 annual meeting.

Rajnesh Singh

Rajnesh Singh joined the Internet Society in 2008 as Regional Manager for South and Southeast Asia.

Before joining ISOC, Rajnesh held executive management roles, primarily in the technology sector, and has consulted on communications and power infrastructure, project management, and business strategy for medium to large companies and organisations in the Asia Pacific region. He has also held advisory roles across multiple sectors, ranging from governmental organizations to sporting organizations and the private sector.

Rajnesh has worked extensively with the Asia Pacific Internet community, and has held several leadership roles, including Chair of ICANN's Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation (APRALO), Chair of the Pacific Islands Chapter of ISOC (PICISOC), and the IPv6 Forum. He has worked extensively on ICT policy, training, and capacity building in the region and has been active in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since its inaugural meeting. His current areas of interest are ICT policy in developing and emerging economies, Internet evolution, and effective business strategies for developing markets. Rajnesh speaks multiple languages including English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Fijian, and some French.

Raúl Echeberría

Raúl Echeberría is member of the Uruguayan Government Ad Hoc Advisory Council in Electronic Commerce and a Member of the Uruguayan Government Ad Hoc Advisory Council in Internet 2 projects. He has authored many published articles covering topics related to Internet issues. He is a regular speaker at international forums, including regional Internet registry meetings in all of the regions (ARIN, APNIC, RIPE NCC, LACNIC, AFRINIC), WSIS regional and global meetings, and the Internet Society Workshop at WSIS 2003. He was a member of the Name Council of ICANN and a founding member of the Non Commercial Domain Name Holders Constituency of ICANN and co-writer of the first Charter. Raul holds a Masters in Information Technologies from the Universitario Autónomo del Sur, Uruguay, and did post-graduate studies in Top Level Business Management, at the Unversidad de Montevideo, Uruguay.

Paul Wilson

Paul Wilson was appointed as Director General of APNIC in August 1998, bringing with him some 10 years of technical and business experience in the Internet industry.

In 1989, Paul became a founding staff member as Technical Director, and later (in 1992) as Chief Executive Officer at Pegasus Networks, the first private ISP to be established in Australia. During a period of 8 years with Pegasus, he oversaw the successful growth of the company as a renowned service provider in Australia. During this time he also worked on Internet projects in many developing countries and as a consultant to the United Nations and other international agencies.

Since 1994 Paul has worked with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) on their Pan-Asia Networking (PAN) Programme, in support of PAN projects in Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, PNG, and China. As a primary consultant on Internet projects, he helped to introduce Internet services for the first time in several of these countries.

APNIC is the Regional Internet Address Registry for the Asia Pacific, administering IP addresses and related resources which are fundamental to the growth and stability of the Internet. It is one of only five such organisations operating in the world today. Since Paul joined APNIC in 1998, the APNIC Secretariat has grown from 6 staff to 55 staff, and now serves over 1,600 of the largest ISPs in the Asia Pacific region.

In 2000, Paul was inducted into the Australian Internet Hall of Fame, in recognition of his contributions to the development of the Internet.

Merike Kaeo

Merike Kaeo is Chief Network Security Architect at Double Shot Security. She is the author of Designing Network Security, published by Cisco Press, which has been published in eight languages and is being used as a curriculum textbook in a variety of network security courses. Merike was a lead member of the first Cisco security initiative, has acted as a technical advisor for numerous security start-up companies, and has been an instructor and speaker at a variety of global security-related conferences.

Merike is a member of the IEEE and was the co-chair of the IETF IPPM (IP Performance Metrics) working group from 2000-2003. Prior to founder her own company, Merike was employed by Cisco Systems, Inc., where she worked primarily on technical issues relating to router performance, network routing protocols, network design, and network security. Merike started her networking and information security career in 1988 at the National Institute of Health, designing and implementing the original FDDI backbone for the NIH campus using Cisco routers.

Che-Hoo Cheng

Che-Hoo is a well-known Internet pioneer in Hong Kong. In The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), he helped to set up the first Internet link in Hong Kong in 1991, he helped to set up .hk domain name registration service in 1993/94 and he set up Hong Kong Internet Exchange (HKIX) in 1995. He was also in charge of the set-up and operations of the campus network for the whole university and worked for the university for more than 15 years. Che-Hoo has also worked at Level 3 as Senior Director, Global IP Services, Asia and at the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation (HKIRC) as CEO. Che-Hoo was a key figure in getting ICANN to recognise the .ASIA domain name. Che-Hoo holds/held key positions in Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association (HKISPA), Hong Kong Information Technology Federation (HKITF), DotAsia? Organisation and the Internet Society Hong Kong Chapter (ISOC-HK).