.paris
The evening event is the gala at the Hôtel de Ville, and while transport through the Metro has been organized, we take a cab and end up with a former Tsahal intel operative and a former South Lebanon Army operative chattering happily about old time in the front seat, while Amadeu and I head to an event who's outcome we do not yet know ...
The Hôtel de Ville is impressive, and despite having brought the wrong ticket, I'm let in, my ticket being the equivalent or more exclusive (in spite of the fact I'd given it away and unaware I'd two of the precious things or that I had the wrong ticket). Mirrors, flags and so on. We work our way towards the front and the acoustics are amazingly bad. The French is "wao wao wao wao", then the translation in English is "wah wah wah wah", but eventually I can lip-read and some of the text is intelligible.
Charles de Gaulle spoke here upon the liberation of Paris from the Nazis in 1944. Fortunately, he had a mic and his speech was recorded. It is what should be taught, not The Little Prince. Imagine having a president who didn't merely speak intelligibly, but was more than just glib rhetorical moments. It is the "I have a Dream" voice and text for the French.
Then the moment. Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor for innovation, announced the city's official support for .paris. We'd done it. Sebastian for Paris, Dirk for Berlin, Amadeu for an as yet unidentified city, we'd gotten the city TLD model an actual face. As early as that morning we'd not known if that phrase would be in the text. Champagne was served and while Germany and Turkey contested the field of honor on the wide-screens just outside the hall, along with most of the attendees, Amadeu and I just sat on the now-empty stage and chatted with friends working on cities or linguistic and cultural proposals or watched the "ICANN kids" play act the capture of Paris by Pyrates.
At some point I got pulled of for 15 minutes of fame on Catalan video and gave a surprisingly good television interview. I'd no idea I was actually presentable and comprehensible. The subject was the .cat cultural and linguistic TLD, and my crimes were having written the original sponsor TLD paper, the ancestor of .coop, .aero and .museum, and having been the CTO of the .cat proposal, at least on paper, at least as far as ICANN and other Catalan sponsors were concerned.
