The new year is finally upon us, and I hope we are all rested and ready for the challenges that lie ahead. I am currently in Washington, D.C., meeting with ICANN stakeholders and community members, on my way to Los Angeles for the next Board Workshop.
This time around, we will be doing the workshop a little differently. Unlike previous workshops, we will be meeting for an additional day at the beginning, which will be for the Board only. We’ll be using this extra time to discuss important topics, such as preparing a consultation paper on the replenishment of the reserve fund and understanding the trends in the China domain name registration market.
Starting on Friday, 2 February, the Board Committees will meet to conduct their regular business. Ahead of the workshop, the Board Technical Committee will be meeting and holding a public session, tomorrow, 24 January. I hope you can join.
On Saturday, 3 February, we begin the day with a one-on-one dialogue with ICANN President and CEO Göran Marby, which we do at all of our workshops. He will share with the Board his current priorities and efforts, and then we’ll have an opportunity to discuss them together. After that, we will hold a discussion on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, led by Göran. We will then hold a session on GAC Advice, including the Curative Rights Protection Mechanisms, led by Becky Burr.
Following that session, we’ll hold a public session, led by Avri Doria, that will feature a policy update on GEO Names as TLDs, covering the status of community work and identified issues. Ram Mohan will then lead a discussion on the potential impact of new technologies on the root server system. The rest of the day will be spent discussing financials. Göran will lead a public session on the FY19 Draft Budget Review, followed by a discussion on the FY18 financial status. I strongly encourage those of you following the budget process to join this public session. Please read Göran’s blog and participate in the public comment process on the proposed budget.
The workshop will resume on Sunday, 4 February, with a public session led by Maarten Botterman, focused on the Board’s FY18 priorities and associated deliverables, including a Board consultation paper proposing an analysis of how to ensure that policies and recommendations to the Board are aligned with ICANN's mission. We will also hold a public Board meeting.
We will spend the rest of the day in discussions about DNS abuse reporting and related activities by ICANN Contractual Compliance, the new proposed Independent Review Process (IRP) system, strategic and long term financial planning, and the latest from the Cross-Community Working Group on Work Stream 2.
As you can tell, we have a robust workshop ahead of us, and many public sessions that I hope you can join. We will be providing you an update on this workshop in the following days. For those of you who will be attending ICANN61 in Puerto Rico, I look forward to seeing you.