ICANN's board is in charge of administering and implementing changes to the domain name system. The at-large directors are intended to speak for ICANN's at-large members, a group of Internet users rather than representatives of business and technical interests. The five at-large directors will be selected through an online election in October. Each of the five will represent one geographical region: Africa, Asia/Australia/Pacific, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, and North America.

The candidates for Africa are:

• Alan Levin
• Nii Quaynor.

The candidates for Asia/Pacific are:

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For more stories on this topic:

• Johannes Chiang
• Lulin Gao
• Masanobu Katoh
• Sureswaran Ramadass.

• Maria Livanos Cattaui
• Alf Hansen
• Olivier Muron
• Oliver Popov
• Winfried Schüller.

The candidates for Latin America are:

• Raul Echeberria
• Ivan Moura Campos
• Patricio Poblete.

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The candidates for North America are:

• Lyman Chapin
• Donald Langenberg
• Lawrence Lessig
• Harris Miller.

The list of candidates was generated by ICANN's nominating committee. ICANN said 211 people expressed interest in being considered or were recommended for consideration. The committee received input from more than 400 people worldwide. The committee said the key factors it considered in making its decision were: a reputation for integrity and hard work; an ability to exercise independent judgment and willingness to disclose obligations and potential conflicts of interest; professional/volunteer roles and accomplishments; an understanding of the Internet's architecture and history; experience with the Internet's architecture; specific experience with the domain name and IP address systems; experience in international and/or multicultural environments; educational background; relevant skills or experience; commitment; and indications that candidates will have broad support in the At Large Membership.

But some questions have been raised as to whether the committee's choice of candidates really represents the diverse views of the At Large Membership. Few of the people on the list came from the segment of the At Large membership that has been critical of ICANN. However, ICANN has created a self-nomination process whereby self-nominees who can get nominations from 2 percent of their global regions will be added to the ballot.

The complete ballot of nominated candidates will be announced on Sept. 1, and will be followed by a voter education phase. The elections will take place from Oct. 1 to Oct. 10.

Biographies of the nominees are available here.