ICANN’s meetings, their structure, content, and everything else about them have always been very important – and everything about them has been a subject of debate since the very first one was convened. In fact, there are as many opinions about aspects of the meetings as there are members of the community – but everyone agrees on one thing: they’re an essential part of the ICANN process.

Over the course of time, various consultations have been held about how meetings should evolve and change with the times. Most of these have started with a proposal, with the community asked to comment on that proposal. This time around we’re reversing the process, starting with collecting the community’s views and then building proposals based on those views – we think this truly bottom-up-based process is the right way to proceed.

The Board’s Public Participation Committee, in concert with the ICANN staff, has designed a three-stage consultation process to run throughout most of calendar year 2010. Each of the three stages of the consultation will be available in the six UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian.

As ICANN enters its second decade, the time is right to look at the meetings ICANN holds each year from a holistic and truly bottom-up perspective, to ensure that our meetings optimally serve you, the community, in the most cost-effective and stakeholder-focussed ways possible.

Interested in Learning More?

ICANN has established a special microsite on www.icann.org for this consultation. You can find it at www.icann.org/en/meetings2010.  You can take the survey now at https://www.bigpulse.com/33025/register; it will be open until 23:59 UTC on 5th July.

A solicitation for participating in the survey will go out to community email lists too, as well as individuals who registered for the last few ICANN meetings.