YEAR-END ACTIVITY REVIEW
of The Foundation for Internet Development
for 2007

1. The SU Internet Registry development project
2. The Internet development in the schools project
3. The joint project of Polit.Ru and FID - "Cutting edge science"
4. Project "Internet in the world, and the world in the Internet"
5. Competition "Domain Grammar"
6. Conference "RELARN-2007"
7. Series of seminars "Open archtecture in programming and global communications
"
8. Project "Museum of Internet Development"
9. Website FID development
10. FID and the media

1. The SU Internet Registry development project

In 2007 the Foundation for Internet Development (FID) started collaboration with ICANN, with which it created, together with RIPN, a letter, which it spells out the further maintenance and SU. domain development principles. The letter was also placed on the ICANN site (http://icann.org/).

On September 19, 2007 RIPN and FID signed an "Agreement on the support and development of SU domains", which aims to create appropriate conditions for the functioning and further development of the SU domain. Today FID acts as a SU domain administrator.

On September 19, 2007, the FID conducted the press-conference "The common space of Russian language: SU Domains".

The following issues were subject to discussion during the conference:

• Zone development plans;
• New conditions of the domain registration for users;
• Decrease on domain prices;
• FID goal: By the end of 2008 to make it possible to register Cyrillic SU domains;
• How to make it possible to register using other languages spoken on the territory of the former USSR.

More then 60 journalists and people concerned took part in the conference. After the conference more then 40 articles were published in different Media resources.

In October 2007, a set of documents were created about the process of regulation of the registrars' accreditation and the registration of domain names at the SU. Register.

In October 2007, the accreditation of the new registrars at the SU Registry was started. Currently the applications for the accreditation as a registrator are still being accepted, 10 registrators have been licensed till now.

On December 3, 2007, the registration of second level domain in the SU Registry started at discount prices. From December 1, 2007 till January 1, 2007 the amount of domains registered increased by more then three times and counted 30,381.

2. The Internet development in the schools project

Interaction in school is never limited to the schooling process and informal contacts between the students. Today school students more and more use Internet resources. This includes different reasons: information search, entertainment, communication etc. According to the National Project "Education" all Russian schools are connected to fast speed Internet. Because of this, the possibilities for making the Net safe for the school students are being widely discussed. What the Internet for school kids actually is? What do they want it to be? How to make the Net more convenient and safe for school children? All these questions gave rise to a set of research, competitions, and educational activities organized within the scope of the Project "Internet from the point of view of school children".

Within the Project "The development of Internet in schools" the following types of work were conducted in 2007:

1. The organizing of competitions: In Moscow schools two competitions were conducted about the best web site with more then 100 school children from schools NN 1476 and 1189 participating in it.
2. The wide-scale socio-psychological research has been conducted, devoted to the investigation of the perception of the Internet in children and adolescents and the problems of interaction with the global net. For research purposes a special socio-psychological questionnaire was invented, which aimed to study the specifics of the perception of the Internet in school children and adolescents. The questionnaire contains 36 questions.  The socio-psychological research "Internet through the perception of school children" is being organized on a regular basis in Moscow and Moscow region schools, as well as in some other Russian towns (Kursk, Chita, Grozny). The data collected gets analyzed and published on the FID website. At the present moment more then 500 students took part in the questionnaire. 
3. The support was given by the profound study of Informatics, Physics and Math on the basis of the specialized Physics and Mathematics School N 1189 named after M.V. Kurchatov.

The total amount of children and adolescents that took part in different activities within the Project "School Internet Development" comes to more then 700.

3. The joint project of Polit.Ru and FID - "Cutting edge science"

This sector started at the end of 2005. The following subjects were chosen as key: science, society and state, the cutting edge as well as traditional Russian and world sciences, the educational basis of science, and high technologies.

For deeper understanding and getting more attention to the information concerned with "cutting edge" science, it was decided to break these items into several categories, of which the following ones are currently in progress:

"Cutting edge science" works with the Science Journalists Club, and acts as a co-organizer of offline discussions with the portal Scietific.RU, and collaborates with many paper and Internet Media and radio-stations on the spread of materials and the basic approaches of the project.

Such partnerships create possibilities for project content enrichment as the partners edit its materials in such journals as "In the world of science", "Social reality", "Public opinion journal, "Inside notes", "Untouchable supply", "Pro et Contra", etc.

In December 2005 - January 2007, the Project issued more then 280 big materials and around 3.3 thousand news articles. The intensive work mentioned above continues to be held. New interviews and articles on crucial subjects, as well as lectures and materials for seminars are being worked out.  The main task for the coming year is to make the project a leading one in the science-information sphere and use this position for the further promotion of the most cutting edge science and technology issues (in all sectors).

4. Project "Internet in the world, and the world in the Internet"

The project "Internet in the world, and the world in the Internet" is meant to be responsible for organizing competitions of scientific and research projects among college undergraduate, postgraduate students and young scientists. In 2006, the Foundation organized a pilot competition of review and analytical works among undergraduates and postgraduates. It was devoted to a wide range of problems in information communication technologies development, among which are the goals and future of internet-technologies, problems of information security, social and psychological aspects of communication in the information society. The participants and winners of the competition came from different cities and CIS countries' colleges and universities.

In 2007, the most contemporary problems of the information communication technologies development were monitored, which served as a basis for the 2008 competition theme. Also, the directives of the future competition, which is planned to start in January-February 2008, have already been worked out.

5. Competition "Domain Grammar"

The Foundation for Internet Development became a coorganizer of the competition "Domain Grammar". The task of the competition was to work out an educational course (lectures, seminars) about the principles of organizing the address system on the Internet for school children and students of pedagogical colleges. The participants were the school teachers and college professors.

The main purposes of the competition were:

• The spread of the idea of information communication technologies in Russia; 
• The spread of information to the general public about the system of addresses on the Internet;
• Assistance in creating the united information society in Russia; 
• The increase in trust in the internet-environment, the increase in attractiveness of the internet-environment for the users, investors and advertisers; 
• Assistance in spreading of ICT in all sectors of Russia's economy; 
• Maintenance of the high level of professional competence of Russian specialists in the sphere of information communications and high technologies. 

Awards ceremony took place at the 11^th Russian Internet Forum (RIF-2007) on April 5-7, 2007 in the resort place "Lesnye dali".

The competition took place over 6 months. School teachers and college professors from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Saratov, Magnitogorsk, Novocherkassk and other Russian cities participated in it. They presented for the jury educational courses for school children and college students about the principles of the address organizing system on the Internet.

In their works participants tried to tell, in an interesting and understandable way, about the domain name system, organizations, which manage the Internet infrastructure, and about domains of different levels and purposes.

All competition winners received from the FID prizes in the amount of 10-20 thousand rubles depending on the place gained.

Those educational courses which won will not stay in the scope of the competition only. They are already receiving feedback. The school sector of the RELARN Association presented these works at the 14^th conference of regional scientific and educational networks "RELARN-2007", which took place on June 2-9, and further recommended them for usage in educational programs.

6. Conference "RELARN-2007"

The Foundation for Internet Development acted as a coorganizer of the XIV Conference of scientific and educational networks "RELARN-2007", which took place on June 6-9, 2007.

The Conference was organized on the ship "Georgy Zhukov", which came by way of Nizhny Novgorod - Yaroslav - Moscow.

228 people participated in the work of the Conference, and came from 32 places in Russian and the Netherlands, representing 80 organizations. There were 5 sections:

1. Infrastructure, technologies, services of scientific and educational networks;
2. GLORIAD and the international collaboration in scientific networks; 
3. Technological and information services on the Internet; 
4. Contemporary information technologies in science, technologies and education;
5. Resources and activities of the participants of educational process in information educational environments (Intranet and Internet).  

In the section, devoted to the modern information technologies in science, technologies and education, and organized by FID, was widely discussed the question of implementing distance technologies in the educational processes, which give rise to rich opportunities for solving different problems in organizing the independent work among students. The implementation of information and telecommunications in educational process erases the differences between such forms of traditional education as on-campus, off-campus and other and gives ties to appearing the new integral form of education.

7. Series of seminars "Open archtecture in programming and global communications

FID acts as the organizer of the series of seminars "Open architecture in programming and global communications". In 2007, three seminars were organized with more then 120 participants taking part. 

One of the biggest and most interesting seminars was held on May 31, 2007. At the seminar Marshall Kirk MacKusic presented his speech "Twenty years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T owned to freely redistributable".

He talked about the beginning of operational systems in the BSD Unix family, including FreeBSD. The report resulted in a follow-up discussion during which the participants tackled the problems of the history and prospective of the open operational systems development, as well as the highly respected speaker had to ask many questions. The speech was translated from English into Russian, and 72 people participated. The audio-recording of the speech can be found on the FID website.

8. Project "Museum of Internet Development"

One of the projects of the Foundation is the virtual museum of internet history. The project of internet development is an attempt to give an overview of the world and Russian Internet from the first days of its existence. Virtual halls and expositions of the Museum tell about the founders and first users of the Internet, the periods they came through in their development, and about the most significant Net history events. In the museum are presented different exhibition items: maps, photographs, documents and other materials, which illustrate the Net history. In the Museum you can read the stories of the Founding Fathers of the Russian Internet, who were interviewed by the FID.

Today 6 Halls of the Museum are available for visitors: "The end of 1970-1980s: how everything started", "How the domestic Internet started", "The new era of the Internet and the globalization of the country"", "Internet-crisis", "Homo interneticus", "Internet in figures", as well as the hall of "Resources".

In 2007, new material kept being collected for the new halls of the Museum. For instance, two new hall exhibitions are being currently edited and laid out  - "Scientific Networks" and "The Future of the Internet", which will be published on the FID website in 2008.

9. Website FID development

In 2007 an intensive work on FID website development was carried out. Several new sections of the website were made, as well as renewed already existing sections, such as "The Project of Internet development in schools", "Internet in the world, the world in Internet", the competition "Domain Grammar", project "Cutting edge science", "The Project of the SU Registry development" etc.

A special sector was created on the website in order to highlight all the events organized by FID. The news lines are updated all the time, telling about new FID projects as well as new developments in the Internet.

In 2007 the structure and design of the website experienced changes. We plan to create a separate sector about the SU Registry Development, as this subject has gained more attention since November 2007.

Today around 430 visitors come to the site a day, which is 4 times more than the amount before the second level domain registration under the new terms started.

Some statistics about http://www.fid.su visitors.

10. FID and the media

In 2007 more then 30 print and electronic Media resources were talking about FID activities, resulting in more then 60 publications, connected to FID work.