I was helping an ICANN sub-group on an interesting situation that involved the old Soviet Union. ICANN controls all the country domain names, such as .us, .uk, .de (for Germany.) I remember leaning over to a colleague when we decided to give the little island of Tuvalu .tv, that we gave them quite a prize. I lost touch with the board after my term was up and moved on.

Well leave it to my dear friend Anna Kournikova to pull me back into things. We had a bet in Miami that if I could hit at least one of her serves, she would join me on a trip to Moscow to show me her birthplace. Three hours later, she took pity on me and I was able to get one back over the net.

While in Moscow, she took me around to see her friends and to see some amazing sites throughout the city. I certainly didn't feel like a tourist with her showing me through the city and enjoyed walking with a celebrity in her hometown.

She took me to this one party just outside Moscow where I ran into an old friend from my ICANN days. It turns out that he was getting back involved with the old Soviet Union’s .su country code. I remember when we established the .ru country code for Russia after the Soviet Union fell. Apparently the .su never went away, and people kept registering domains with it.

My friend was telling me that there are over 10,000 websites with the .su domain, and 50 more registering everyday. These websites are making it harder for ICANN to get rid of this country domain name.

Knowing that Anna had zero interest in ICANN, I exchanged email addresses with my friend and promised to keep in touch. Anna and I spent the rest of the weekend touring the city, and I promised to get tennis lessons when we got back!