CENTR’s longstanding co-chair of the Technical Working Group, Ulrich Wisser, recently left Internetstiftelsen to start a new chapter. We took the opportunity to look back at his time in the CENTR community and his invaluable contribution as a Working Group chair, and to ask him a few questions.
Can you tell us a bit more about your background and what led you to Internetstiftelsen?
We moved to Sweden in 1999. I had been working with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in Germany already and continued to do so in Sweden. In 2002 I started working for a Swedish SEO startup developing software for pay-per-click tracking. In 2007 the .se registry was looking for a Perl developer and I got the job. I started on the 1st of June. In July child number four, my daughter Alva, was born. My first task was to implement DNSSEC support in all production systems. At the time .se even had an inhouse registrar. That made me learn a lot about the infrastructure in a very short time.
What is your first memory of the CENTR community?
At first I followed only the tech mailing list. After a few years I managed to convince my boss to let me attend the CENTR Tech meetings. What I found was a group of really tech-interested and knowledgeable people, who were very open and welcoming.
What will you miss most about the CENTR community?
The open exchange of successes and failures is really astonishing. Everybody is giving away so much operational knowledge that is also so very specific to our industry.
From your technical point of view, what do you think will be the main challenges in the coming years for ccTLDs?
Unfortunately I believe the greatest challenge will be compliance. The EU will increase its ruling over the internet and will demand a lot more from ccTLDs. For the smallest ccTLDs there might even be some technical requirements they must implement, but for most ccTLDs it will be a fight with compliance documentation and auditing.
CENTR’s General Manager Peter Van Roste added: “On behalf of the CENTR team I would like to thank Ulrich for the 5 years of service to the CENTR Community in his role as Co-Chair of the Technical Working Group. He could always be counted on to be the thoughtful and constructive voice in the room. Ulrich, you will be missed!”
