IT companies meet Bulgarian President, PM, minister of ITC, and MP

July 4-5 was the day when nine executives from world-known organizations came to Sofia to meet the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of IT and communications*, and members of the Parliament.

Topics of discussions were aimed at how to boost Bulgaria inot the world of the Information Society. Vint Cerf, George Sadowsky and Esther Dyson are member of the President’s IT Advisory Committee, of which I have the honor to server as chair since March 2002.

Vint Cerf, widely known as one of the “fathers of the Internet” was awarded with “St.St. Cyril and Methodius” in the Coat of Arms by the Bulgarian President at a wonderful ceremony at the office of the President.

See some more information about their visit, including pictures and explanation of what is achieved:

List of Guests (in alphabetical order):

Fred Baker – member of the Board of the Internet Society, CISCO Fellow
Vint Cerf – vice president of Google, member of the Bulgarian President’s IT Advisory Council (PITAC), chairman of ICANN Board
Brian Cute, VeriSign, Vice President, Governmental Relations
Gabriel Dusil, VeriSign Security Services (London)
Esther Dyson – author of the book Release 2.0, founding chairperson of ICANN, Member of the PITAC
Philpp Grabensee – Chairman of the Board of Afilias
George Sadowsky – Member of the Bulgarian President’s IT Advisory Council, Executive Director of GIPI
Lynn St. Amour – President and CEO of the Internet Society
Edward Viltz – President and CEO of PIR

The guests participated in a session of the Bulgarian President’s IT Council:

After that, Vint Cerf was awarded with the highest degree of “St.St. Cyril and Methodius” order – in the Coat of Arms:

After that meeting, the guests met with the Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev:

Throughout the two days, the delegation had a number of meetings with the Chairman of the Governmental Agency for IT and Communications*:

The following announcements were made during the two days:

VeriSign will launch a regional resolution server in Bulgaria;

PIR will launch Eastern European Outreach Pilot Program for .ORG

Afilias signed a letter of intent with the Bulgarian Public Internet Registry for technical back-end of the “.bg” top level domain. The Bulgarian Public Internet Registry consists of representatives from the government, the academic network, the ISP Association and the Internet Society. It is scheduled to apply for re-delegation through the appropriate processes at IANA.
ISOC will help in the preparation of a regional ccTLD workshop in Sofia, to take place in October 2006.

ICANN will send its President and CEO as a keynote speaker, and will support the SAITC* in organizing a regional governmental workshop on Internet Governance end of October in Sofia.

And Vint’s talk at the press-conference in Sofia made the news worldwide.

These are the things we’ll be doing together in the next few months – SAITC, ISOC-Bulgaria, and all other relevant organizations. My special thanks go to all my Bulgarian colleagues, who made this visit possible – and I will not count all of them, in order not to miss someone, but thanks go to institutions as a whole – SAITC, The Office of the President, the Council of Ministers.

The visit was a very successful one, and now it will continue with a follow-up by me and other interested parties.

You can see more pictures from the visit at the ISOC-Bulgaria web site.
____
* – The precise name is “State Agency for Information Technologies and Communications” (SAITC)