These regional meetings are a chance for ICANN staff and representatives from gTLD registries and ICANN-accredited registrars to meet informally to discuss topics important to our industry and business relationships. They happen regularly in different locations (regions) around the world. Previous meetings, for example, took place in Shanghai, Prague, New Orleans, and Rome.

Although the meeting is tailored to regional ICANN-accredited registrars and gTLD registries, other registrars and registries located around the globe that may have a regional or business interest also attend.

At this regional meeting staff is planning to introduce a new feature dedicated to newcomers to the ICANN process on the morning of the first day.

The agenda is not final yet, however some of the anticipated agenda items are:

• Registrar/Registry Onboarding with new gTLDs
• RAA Amendments
• Developments in Contractual Compliance
• Policy updates
• ICANN restructuring update
• Internet Security Developments

The joint registrar and registry regional meeting model was introduced in 2006 as an educational opportunity for ICANN and its contracted parties to share information about registry and registrar operations within the domain name industry. The model has evolved over time based on feedback received and changes in the domain registration environment. The meetings largely focused on the policies and procedures registration service providers are obligated to implement and enforce as a result of either their contract with ICANN or with one another.

These regional meetings are distinguished from the regular international ICANN meetings in that they are not structured, for example, to influence policy development. If you are interested in the policy development and a broader interaction with ICANN stakeholders, please join the upcoming ICANN Meetings in person or through remote participation. The next international ICANN Meeting is scheduled for Beijing in April 2013.

All presentation materials will be published on the ICANN website after the meeting.

The space to attend this meeting is limited and interested registrars and registries are asked to pre-register. Other parties who may be interested in becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar or gTLD registry and wish to attend as observers should contact regionalevents@icann.org for further details.

We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam!

These are associated with: Egypt, the Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

See the full announcement here: http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-21jan10-en.htm

So what does that mean?

It means that these may now initiate the String Delegation process, which is the last step before the strings are actually in the DNS root zone and hence available for use.

The remaining 12 requests are still being processed and at ICANN we are very much looking forward to completing more requests as well as receiving additional new requests

Overall, the Fast Track Process has three main steps:

1) Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory). Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.

2) String Evaluation: incoming requests to ICANN in accordance with the criteria described above: the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s). Applications are received through an online system available together with additional material supporting the process at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/

3) String Delegation: requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management.

The First International Conference for ccTLD registries and registrars from that region was held on 8-10 September 2008 and was initiated by the .ru ccTLD Coordination Center. The conference took place in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and gathered more then 90 participants from 25 countries, world internet experts, representatives of international organizations such as WIPO, ICANN, CENTR, etc. Attendees and the ccTLD community from the region highly evaluated the initiative and the organizers and participants decided to have the conference as an annual event.

The program of the 2009 conference is listed here.

The conference is with limited participation – for Representatives of ccTLD registries and registrars of CIS, Eastern and Central Europe. Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Speakers are being invited by the organizers only. Note that ICANN is not an organizer of this event, so if you have questions, address them to the organizers at meeting2009@cctld.ru.