There is a considerable amount of interest in the upcoming Board/GAC consultation on new gTLDs to be held in Brussels on 28 February and 1 March 2011. This message is intended as an update to information we have already posted on the consultation.
As I’m sure you will all appreciate, the GAC and the Board have been working extremely hard since Cartagena to get documentation and briefings in order to assist the discussions that will take place in Brussels. Informal conference calls are being convened with the Board, GAC and staff prior to the meeting in order to obtain a clear understanding of what the remaining differences are so that the time in the meeting is focused on resolving the outstanding issues. It is intended that briefing papers on the topics to be discussed at the meeting will be posted prior to the meeting.
Similarly, ICANN’s meeting team has been working hard on ensuring that, logistically, we have a meeting that is accessible not only to those participating, but also for those interested members of the community either in person or through the normal channels of remote participation that we provide at an ICANN meeting.
Many of these arrangements are still being finalized, but I am able to tell you the following:
Date: Monday 28 February 2010 and Tuesday 1 March 2010. Start and finish times for each day are likely to be between 0830 and 1730.
Meeting location: The Square Brussels Meeting Centre, Mont des Arts – Kunstberg, Brussels (this is where we held the Brussels meeting in June 2010).
Registration: for those attending in person, you will be required to collect your badge from the registration desk.
For those participating remotely: Through adobe connect you will be able to listen to the meeting, in addition to viewing presentations and live scribing. There will not be any interpreters for this meeting — neither the GAC or the Board have used interpreters for any of their previous meetings and it was not a request for this consultation.
Internet connectivity: will be the same as you would expect at an ICANN meeting.
RSVP: on 2 February we posted an announcement asking observers wishing to attend the meeting to advise us by 8 February via an RSVP email address. Thank you to those who responded. As we noted in the announcement we have limited space available for the meeting and we wanted to ensure that no-one is disappointed by not being able to be in the room when the consultation occurs. We will be responding regarding availability to those who responded in the near future.
We appreciate your interest in this meeting, and we will keep the community updated as we work through the final details of the logistics and agenda for the meeting.