A Trinida­di­an tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist was the lone rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Caribbean to par­tic­i­pate in a ma­jor In­ter­net event, held re­cent­ly at a high se­cu­ri­ty da­ta cen­ter in Culpeper, Vir­ginia, Unit­ed States. Bevil Wood­ing was se­lect­ed by the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN) to serve as one of 21 trust­ed com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive (TCRs) to par­tic­i­pate in the KSK process. The role of the TCR is to par­tic­i­pate in the key gen­er­a­tion, key back-up and key sign­ing process for the root to en­sure its neu­tral­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Wood­ing, an In­ter­net pi­o­neer in Trinidad and cur­rent­ly one of the re­gion's lead­ing voic­es for the use of tech­nol­o­gy for Caribbean de­vel­op­ment, is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion found­ed in Trinidad and now op­er­at­ing in more than 95 coun­tries. ICANN host­ed the eight-hour cer­e­mo­ny in a se­cure fa­cil­i­ty in Vir­ginia, dur­ing which par­tic­i­pants wit­nessed the process re­quired to en­sure that the so-called key-sign­ing-key (KSK) was gen­er­at­ed cor­rect­ly. ICANN al­so en­sured that every as­pect of the equip­ment, soft­ware and pro­ce­dures as­so­ci­at­ed with its gen­er­a­tion were ver­i­fied to be ac­cept­able and trust­wor­thy. A main ob­jec­tive of the cer­e­mo­ny was to en­sure that there is wide­spread con­fi­dence through­out the tech­ni­cal In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty that the root zone, once signed, can be re­lied up­on.

"It was a priv­i­lege to rep­re­sent the re­gion in such an his­toric event. The fact that the Caribbean was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this im­por­tant mile­stone for the In­ter­net is tes­ta­ment to pri­or­i­ty the In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty places on re­gion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion," said Wood­ing. Wood­ing wears many hats. He serves as an out­reach man­ag­er for US-based non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, Pack­et Clear­ing House, and is joint­ly re­spon­si­ble for the high­ly suc­cess­ful Caribbean ICT Road­show. He is one of the ear­ly adopters of the In­ter­net in T&T and, as a co-founder of soft­ware de­vel­op­ment pi­o­neer, Teleios Sys­tems, was re­spon­si­ble for has nu­mer­ous Web de­vel­op­ment projects, most no­tably for the Gov­ern­ment and the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at, based in Lon­don. He has fa­cil­i­tat­ed sem­i­nars and work­shops on e-gov­ern­ment, strate­gic man­age­ment and the In­ter­net in the US, Africa, Eu­rope and the Caribbean.