'Can everyone mute?' Coronavirus means we must telecommute. We're not ready
On Thursday morning, as the number of new coronavirus cases in California climbed past 50, crates of telecommunications equipment and prefabricated sound isolation booths started arriving at the Playa Vista, Calif., headquarters of ICANN, the organization tasked with overseeing the deepest levels of the internet.
ICANN, which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was originally set to hold its March meeting in Cancun, where policy and tech wonks from around the world would convene to hammer out the minutiae of global internet governance.
Instead, they decided to host in Los Angeles what might be the world's largest-ever working conference call.
Nearly 3,000 people from 150 countries speaking three live-translated languages will participate for four days, with quick-turnaround transcriptions translated into all the official languages of the U.N. to make sure no one is left out of the discussion.
The operation is running on Zoom, the teleconferencing platform whose stock has surged nearly 70% since the beginning of the year in response to the virus-driven demand for telecommuting, augmented by software and systems that ICANN has built over the years to facilitate mass meetings and quick translation.
While Zoom
