ICANN Leadership Confusion?

Yesterday afternoon ICANN held a press conference in Prague to announce two things:

• the new CEO who would replace Rod Beckstrom
• the interim CEO who would fill the role between Beckstrom’s departure and October 1

The new CEO from October 1 2012 will be Fadi Chehadé but until he takes the reins ICANN’s Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah will be interim CEO.

So this week’s meeting in Prague is a little bit odd. There are currently 3 ICANN CEOs in the building.

Rod Beckstrom is officially CEO until July 1st, but it would be quite futile to address any concerns to someone with only a few days left in the job.

So what about the other two?

Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah has been around for some time, so he obviously has a handle on what’s going on, but will he be sitting in the CEO chair at meetings this week?

And what of Fadi Chehadé?

I assume he’ll be in attendance at a lot of the meetings this week, but he is still in a learning phase.

Confused?