The agenda by Don (thank you!) shows, that the working groups still need staffing. So I would like to offer my support.

My name is Lars Steffen (www.linkedin.com/in/larssteffen) and I am currently working for eco – Association of the German Internet Industry (www.international.eco.de). With around 800 member companies, it is the largest internet industry association in Europe. Together with Thomas Rickert, who some of you know from GNSO and CCWG, I am responsible for the eco Names & Numbers Forum as a Member Services Manager based in Cologne, Germany. The eco Names & Numbers Forum unites world-wide more than 120 registries, registrars, resellers, secondary market companies and consultants from the domain industry (www.numbers.eco.de/international.html).

To represent the interests of our members from the domain industry, we are active in a range of committees, including EuroISPA (European Internet Service Providers Association), ICANN (GNSO, ISPCP, ICG, CCWG), IETF, IGF and EuroDIG. eco also runs DE-CIX (www.de-cix.net), the world’s leading Internet exchange point and the Certified Senders Alliance (www.certified-senders.eu).

With this background of valuable networks and due to the fact that UA is a very important issue for a respectable number of eco members, I´d like to join the Community Outreach Project Group to contribute Business community & consumer outreach. After working for eco for 15 months and attending three ICANN meetings so far, for me this will be the first engagement in an ICANN working group.  So I will both try to do my best supporting the UASG’s goals and appreciate any advice for ICANN rookies :)

Before joining eco I worked six years for a smaller ISP and Registrar/Reseller iWelt AG in Franconia, Germany (www.iwelt.de) in different positions: head of Marketing/Communications, head of Web Development, head of  Sales.