The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process was successfully launched, as planned on 16 November 2009. It was done at exactly 00:00UTC with a very joyful count-down by the Fast Track Staff Team – followed by a wooohooo
The launch went smoothly. We have since monitored the system and everything is working.
As of 10pm Pacific [...]

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As we (at ICANN staff) have been preparing for the Fast Track launch, for tomorrow, it was suggested to me that I write a blog post about it. I could have written about all the hard work, the long hours, the aggressive testing of the online system, keeping it simple and yet flexible for all [...]

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The CEO and the Chairman, along with a number of Board members, community members and staff will be present at the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh next week.

Here is a quick rundown of ICANN-related events and information for participating both in person and remotely.

Open Forum
There are two main sessions from the ICANN [...]

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في ختام اجتماع الآيكان في مدينة سيول بكوريا الجنوبية الأسبوع الماضي وتحديداً يوم الجمعة ٣٠ أكتوبر ٢٠٠٩، وافق مجلس إدارة الآيكان على الخطة التنفيذية لتطبيق أسماء النطاقات الدولية من خلال ما يعرف بعملية المسار السريع لأسماء نطاقات المستوى الأعلى لرموز الدول. وهذا القرار يعني ببساطة أن الدول التي لغاتها الرسمية لغات غير الإنجليزية، أو [...]

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If you are a regular ICANN community member, it is likely you are currently feeling overwhelmed by the amount of material that has appeared in the past week. So here is a quick guide to help make sense of it all.
Sections are:

JPA/Affirmation
Applicant Guidebook/new gTLDs
Fast Track/IDNs
Public comment periods
Seoul meeting
And the remainder

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As ICANN staff, it is hard to avoid the news when your organisation is the subject of a hearing held by the United States Congress. This week we saw another such hearing, where the House Judiciary committee discussed the future deployment of new top-level domains.
A number of people testified, including my colleague Doug Brent, but [...]

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Variant top-level domains (TLDs) and how they are managed is one of the most hotly discussed topics we are facing at the moment. What are variant TLDs, you ask? Well, that’s where the discussion begins…
ICANN’s staff is currently producing implementation plans for both the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process and the New gTLD Process. What [...]

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قامت آيكان على مدار الأيام القليلة الماضية بنشر مجموعة من المستندات في إطار الاستعداد لاجتماع سيدني (٢١-٢٦ يونيو
٢٠٠٩) تمهيدا لمناقشتها خلال الاجتماع. وتشمل هذه المستندات ما يلي
المسار السريع لأسماء النطاقات الدولية لرمز الدولة: تم نشر الإصدار الثالث لمسودة خطة التنفيذ، ونسخة معدلة لاقتراح وثيقة المسئولية، وكذلك التفاصيل الخاصة بالمساهمة المالية المقترحة لدعم تطبيق أسماء [...]

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Over the weekend, we published quite a bit of material. It was published now to meet a request by the Board and the community that we post three business weeks prior to the start of a meeting; these series of postings ensure that the bulk of materials being considered during Sydney will meet this goal.

With Sydney opening on Monday 22 June, we strived to have this information up before this morning, Monday 1 June.

As such, it is probably as comprehensive a set of documents as ICANN has published for any meeting – addressing hard issues on IDNs, an important report on intellectual property issues as related to domain names, another huge piece of comment and analysis related to new TLDs, new financial analysis, more on community travel (which is coming), and other areas. I’m also pretty confident that this is the earliest (relative to an ICANN meeting) that this kind of material has been available.

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