ICANN

Despite a plan formalized during June's Paris meeting to reduce the number of ICANN meetings to 2 per year, the current format of 3 meetings per year doesn't look set to change for the near future.

But ICANN is trying to plan ahead as far as possible. As part of that, it has put out a request for candidates to host the next European meeting (scheduled for October 2009) and the following African meeting (February 2010).

Candidate venues will have to be to be easy to get to and provide accommodation catering for a wide variety of budgets to guarantee a large spread of participants, from international corporations to the single Internet user.

If you're interested, you can download the relevant documents here.

And you can also read Michele's take on this here.

There's a great resource for ICANN followers and meeting participants alike: the ICANNWiki.

An independent initiative, over the years it has become the default stop for information on who's who in the community, what's going on and where it's happening. For each major event, like an ICANN meeting (the wiki also covers other events like domain conferences), a guide is put up to help people find their way around.

At INDOM, we're great fans of the wiki. As it relies on sponsorship and volunteers, we decided to put our money where our mouth was and help with the Paris meeting pages.

So we've written and provided content for the wiki's Paris meeting guide pages. Check them out and if there's any other bits of useful info you'd like to see up there and we haven't thought of, please let us know!

The Méridien Montparnasse towers will host ICANN's 32nd international meeting in Paris, for a shortened week, from Monday June 23 to Thursday June 26, 2008. Photo SVG.

ICANN has just put up the agenda for the Paris meeting. An agenda with several changes to the standard ICANN meeting format.

The first is a shortened meeting week. As I'd written on this blog a few days ago, Paris will end with a Board meeting on the Thursday instead of the traditional Friday morning. Cost issues are being put forward as an explanation for the change.

The Paris week will start on Sunday June 22 with a small number of closed meetings. For most participants therefore, main proceedings kick off on Monday with the early morning Welcome Ceremony.

Regular ICANN followers will be pleased to see all the current hot topics on the agenda, including new gTLDs, IDNs, WHOIS and IPV6. In an effort to increase the business community's involvement, a new "class" of work sessions dubbed "Business Access Agenda" is also being introduced for Paris.

February's New Delhi meeting ran up a total budget of $1.7 million. Meeting costs are rising so much that ICANN is considering dropping from 3 to 2 meetings a year

There were a couple of interesting points re ICANN meetings during the last Board meeting, held via teleconference on March 27th. ICANN's Executive Officer and Vice President Paul Levins presented a plan to reduce the number of meetings from the current 3 per year to 2.

It seems the financial burden of organizing the meetings is just getting too much for ICANN. Since the end of last year, the corporation has already had to step in rather significantly as local hosts have found themselves less and less able to face mounting costs on their own.

The reason for the cost increases? Simply put: the success of the ICANN meetings. More and more people have been attending, and the forthcoming June Paris meeting is set to be ICANN's biggest yet.

Paul Levins advised the Board that there would have to be a transitional period, starting from June 2009, should the decision be taken to move away from the current 3 meetings a year format. He did not make it clear if such a decision would have to be green-lit by the Board.

He also gave some interesting budget figures. The full budget for New Delhi was $1.7 million and the current budget for Paris is $1.54 million.

"L'Hôtel de Ville" or the Paris town-hall, was first built in the 17th century and rebuilt after a fire in the 19th century. It houses stunning rooms like this one, the "salle des fêtes".

Toured the Paris town-hall a few days ago with fellow members of the Paris ICANN meeting launching group and ICANN's Kieren McCarthy. The reason we were there was to evaluate a possible location for the much-anticipated gala dinner event.

Actually it's fair to say that the whole meeting is much anticipated. As a blasé local, I have to admit I'd come to take the allure of Paris in summer for granted. Not so for the ICANN meeting attendees already planning their June trip to France for the meeting. A lot of people have told me that they plan on coming with their wives/husbands, or even members of the family, to combine what promises to be an intense week's work with a little well-deserved sight-seeing before or after the meeting.

The gala dinner will be one of the highlights of the week. If it does take place inside the town-hall, monument and history lovers will be in heaven. Much to my shame, I have to admit that my recent visit was the first time I'd been inside this public building with its elegant corridors, richly decorated rooms and grand reception halls…

Registration is already possible for the Paris meeting which, as is the case for every ICANN meeting, is free and open to all. Anyone planning to make the trip should register asap, especially as its possible to pre-register for both the welcome ceremony and the gala dinner, a first for an ICANN meeting and something which should make planning those two events a little easier.

Just days after my little blast at ICANN for being too slow about deciding things and not communicating well enough about those things that do get decided, ICANN has come up with a great new idea called a "briefing note".

The first is available right now on the ICANN website and gives an extremely useful overview of the major topics that were discussed at the New Delhi meeting. The usual ICANN jargon is deciphered and for each topic, a "next steps" item describes exactly that: what can be expected to happen next.

For example, for the introduction of new gTLDs which was the topic I based my previous rant on, we are told that "ICANN expects to start accepting bids for specific names at the end of 2008 at the earliest."

Clear, concise, and to the point. All I can say is well done ICANN, I stand corrected!

.BERLIN, .PARIS, and a number of other new gTLDs that have been talked about in recent months... we don't when or if they'll ever be launched. Does ICANN?

From the outside looking in, ICANN's processes can sometimes look painfully slow. Even those well versed in the complexities of international organisations probably get a little dispirited with ICANN's apparent lack of speed at times.

Looking over the minutes of the New Delhi board meeting, that slowness is painfully apparent. Take new gTLDs as an example. Under an item entitled "new gTLDs – nest steps", the board resolved to direct: "staff to continue its implementation work on New gTLDs (…) discuss some issues raised by the staff and Board regarding implementation (…) and provide information to the Board in a timely manner to enable the Board to discuss the recommendations and implementation issues and quickly determine a course of action for the introduction new gTLDs."

Hum, excuse me but where's the real news here? When do we get a tentative date for a new round of gTLDs? Or even just an idea of what type of gTLDs ICANN might consider in this, what would be the third round of new Internet domain creation since ICANN came into being in 1998.

Actually, seasoned ICANN-followers will tell you that some of the answers are already there, lurking under the surface of some rather difficult-to-follow reports and previous board resolutions. ICANN even has a new gTLD page up on its website to provide a summary of what is known so far.

The official ICANN line is that "the board is expected to consider the policy recommendation (for the introduction of new gTLDs) in early 2008". Well, it's early 2008 now and as the Delhi board minutes show, the board's still trying to get the necessary information to build up to that exciting moment when it will finally decide something.