[UA-discuss] Happy birthday to a super hero: DOCTOR DATA!!!!

[Ajay DATA]

Thank you Dear Don for your kind words , wishes and acknowledgement of  work we did together in the interest the global community.

I will cherish this email forever. 

I have wonderful memories of working in UASG along side of your support. I look forward to talk to you soon. 

I just finishing speaking in a  UA day event, which  was organised by NASSCOM. 

Always there to contribute for UA. 

My bestest regards.

Ajay Data 

On March 22, 2024 8:40:24 AM GMT+05:30, Don Hollander via UA-discuss <ua-discuss at icann.org> wrote:
>Caution: A Very Nerdy Post (VNP – not VPN)
>
>Today celebrates the birth of a fellow who lives to his own values and
>has given significant time to institutions that we’ve both been
>involved in – me professionally and he quite voluntarily.
>
>Dr Ajay Data has marched to his own drum beat and has worked to make
>the Internet a more inclusive space.
>
>For those that don’t know, the Internet is very much at its core
>English Centric.   Regional and global gatherings are conducted in
>English.  And the underlying code and parameters are also English (or
>ASCII for those who want to be pedantic) based.
>
>More than a decade ago, the parameters that are more visible to the eye
>(domain names and email addresses) began to cater for non-English
>languages.  Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, a dozen different
>scripts used in India, Māori, Russian, Thai and more.  [Arabic and
>Hebrew are not only different scripts, they read right to left which
>adds additional complexity!]
>
>Ajay heard about this and thought that he saw an opportunity.   He set
>his programming team to the development of some software that would
>support these scripts in the Internet.  He started with email and went
>on to other email adjacent utilities.   There were a few others who
>were also pursuing this prize – one in China, another in Taiwan,
>another in Thailand.   But none made it as far as Ajay’s team.  He had
>a commercial product that he was able to adjust for every language and
>script and it was accessible at a relatively reasonable price.   
>
>But it wasn’t flying off the shelf, so to speak.
>
>There was a group called the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG)
>that was working to encourage all developers to make adjustments to
>their own software to support all domains and all email addresses.  
>But it was for many years only Ajay’s XgenPlus that was readily
>available.   
>
>So, he decided to join and participate with this UASG group.  He was
>quite active, he supported his staff being active, and he went on to
>become The Chair – a position he held for four years.   
>
>Progress in getting other applications to support all these new scripts
>has been surprisingly (to me anyway) slow – even Glacially (pre climate
>change) slow.
>
>Ajay has retired from the UASG – he was term limited – and moved on to
>other things.  But we see him popping up at a lot of events in India
>that will encourage young people to get involved, to become
>entrepreneurial.  
>
>Ajay and I had different strategies for achieving the UASG objectives. 
>I thought we should just raise awareness of the issues to CIOs or their
>counterparts around the world and problem would be solved
>lickity-split.   Though raising awareness was hard enough, when we did
>reach people they told us there was no real world demand and they had
>plenty of other tasks to work on.
>
>Ajay’s strategy was to generate demand by going to large countries
>where English is not so endemic and get their governments to include UA
>capabilities in their own purchasing criteria.   While this worked at a
>state level in India, not wider – because there were too few suppliers
>who could meet the requirements.   And these governments had plenty of
>other things to pursue.
>For the people who care about the plumbing of the Internet, this is
>another quixotic objective.   They have been working on IPv6 and DNSSEC
>for even longer – and still with limited success other than places
>where there is one or two very influential people who have effectively
>mandated success – Sweden, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands come to mind.
>
>But this is a note to recognise Dr Ajay Data (great name for an IT guy)
>and his birthday and to thank him for his efforts, his achievements,
>and his friendship.
>Sent from my iPad
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-- 
Sent from my Android device with XGen Email.
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