This year’s DIDS conference, organised by the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS) and to be held on 10th and 11th March, at the Metropol hotel in Belgrade, will bear the slogan “Which Internet film are you in?” This sixth annual conference on the development of the Internet worldwide and on the .RS and .СРБ domains in Serbia will this time be a two day event, the first day being a regular programme for registered participants and the second day a regional professional Internet event for invitees.
What sets this year’s DIDS apart is the support it will receive from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the lead organisation for the administration of the Internet and its global structure.
In line with tradition, the programme of the Serbian Internet Domain Day event on 10th of March will be divided into three themed sessions, with some 30 relevant speakers and moderators from Serbia and abroad. In the first session titled "Masters of the Internet" the topic of discussion will be the forthcoming changes to the global administration of the Internet. Without proper and impartial translation of domains into IP addresses and their fair allocation to billions of connected devices, the Internet would become fragmented. As of September, oversight of these tasks is due to be transferred from the USA government to “all of us”, that is to the global Internet community. What will be the role of “all of us” and who does our Internet belong to – these are the questions that our overseas speakers at DIDS will be trying to answer: Jean-Jacques Sahel, ICANN vice-president for Europe, Martin Boyle, Senior Policy Advisor at the UK national registry and Leonid Todorov, Head of External Relations of the Russian registry and General Manager of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association (APTLD). Moderator of the first session will be Vladimir Radunović and a word of introduction will be given on behalf of RNIDS by Dušan Stojičević, chair of the Board of Governors. The second session, titled “Call E for Commerce” will be dedicated to e-commerce in all its aspects: legal/financial, promotional, logistical and software-related. Block moderator will be Miloš Petrović, with Dragan Varagić, Boris Ilić and representatives of several Serbian online stores taking part in the panel debate. The third session is titled “A Promising Domain”, and will feature examples of successful sites and online projects on the national .RS and .СРБ Internet domains. Moderator of the third session will be Radomir Lale Marković who, helped by their authors and founders, will present 10-or-so homegrown Internet sites.
The second day of DIDS, on 11th of March, will host the Regional Internet Forum, which will bring together representatives of the national registries of Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, as well as representatives of state institutions, local Internet communities and global Internet organisations. The first session, moderated by Vojislav Rodić, will comprise both a presentation of regional Internet activities and a preparatory meeting for the forthcoming EuroDIG conference in Sophia. Moderator of the second session will be Slobodan Marković, with a discussion on the application of the multi-stakeholder model in the administration of Internet organisations in the region. The third session will comprise discussion of the use of local writing systems on the Internet and technical issues faced by Internet registries, moderated by Dušan Stojičević.
DIDS, as previously, will be free to all participants, subject to registration, which is necessary due to the limited seating arrangements. Registration of participants for the first day of DIDS are open at dids.rs.