[council] Call for Volunteers: Developing the Process for Root IDN Table Creation and Maintenance

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-18jun12-en.htm
Call for Volunteers: Developing the Process for Root IDN Table Creation and 
Maintenance
18 June 2012

* Deadline for responses is 13 July 2012

ICANN is seeking volunteers to work on advancing IDN capabilities in the DNS. 
The project 2.1 "Root IDN Table Process" part of the IDN Variant TLD Program, 
is designed to develop, in consultation with the community, the process to 
define:

 *   allowed code points,
 *   corresponding variant code points, and
 *   related allowed states for IDN Variant TLDs.

ICANN is soliciting participation from volunteers with the following areas of 
expertise: IDNA, DNS, Linguistics/Unicode, Policy.

The project team will include additional consultant expertise to help in the 
process.

ICANN has a limited budget to support team meetings such as travel, 
accommodation, and other expenses.

General responsibilities for volunteers:

 *   Contribute to developing the Process for Root IDN Table Creation and 
Maintenance
 *   Research and provide input on issues discussed during meetings
 *   Attend two face-to-face meetings (likely during the last week of August in 
Los Angeles, US, and mid-October 2012 in Toronto, Canada)
 *   Participate in regular teleconferences (time to be determined)
 *   Expected time commitment of 2 to 4 hours per week during a 4-month period

IDNA Expertise qualifications:

 *   Expertise with IDNA and preferably active on internationalization work
 *   Participation in relevant IDNA working groups

DNS Expertise qualifications:

 *   Expertise with DNS standards
 *   Active in related DNS technical fora (e.g., IETF DNSext, DNSop)

Linguistics/Unicode expertise qualifications:

 *   Expertise in linguistics
 *   Familiarity with Unicode

Policy expertise qualifications:

 *   Participation in ICANN's policy development process; or
 *   Have participated in, at least, one ICANN working group, preferably on IDN 
related issues

Selection and Recruitment Process for Case Study Members:

 *   Indications of interest should be sent to 
idnvarianttlds@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:idnvarianttlds@xxxxxxxxx> no later than 13 July 
2012.
 *   Interested experts are invited to submit a résumé (Curriculum Vitae) and 
an expression of interest statement demonstrating how they meet the 
qualifications for one or more of the areas of expertise specified above.
 *   The ICANN IDN Variant TLD Program team will select the team members 
ensuring a diverse composition of the members in terms of language/script 
communities represented.
 *   Applicants will be notified no later than 30 July 2012.

Background on the IDN Variant TLD Program

On 20 April 2011, ICANN announced the IDN Variant Issues Project to explore the 
benefits and risks associated with the potential inclusion of IDN variant TLDs 
in the DNS root zone. This project was initiated in response to a 2010 ICANN 
Board of Directors 
resolution<http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/resolutions-25sep10-en.htm#2.5>.
 Two phases of the project have been completed to date.

Phase I involved the formation of six case study teams for the Arabic, Chinese, 
Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek and Latin scripts. These teams were comprised of 
community experts with support from ICANN that worked on identifying issues 
related to IDN variant TLDs for each particular script, resulting in the 
publication in October 2011 of six individual reports detailing their findings.

Phase II focused on integrating those six case study reports into the 
Integrated Issues Report. To complete this phase, ICANN formed a coordination 
team comprised of experts from each of the case study teams. The coordination 
team advised ICANN on completing the Integrated Issues Report, which summarizes 
and categorizes the various issues related to the identification and management 
of IDN variant TLDs.

The next phase (phase III) outlined in the proposed program 
plan<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/idn-variant-tld-revised-program-plan-04may12-en.htm>
 includes a number of activities resulting from the issues identified in the 
final Integrated Issues 
Report<http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/idn-vip-integrated-issues-final-clean-20feb12-en.pdf>
 [PDF, 2.15 MB]. The work is now focused on using the approach outlined in the 
Integrated Issues Report to define milestones that must be completed to manage 
the implementation of IDN variant TLDs.

The goal of the program is to define the necessary processes that must be in 
place to enable the management of variant TLDs. This incorporates the creation 
and maintenance of IDN tables for the root zone, and updating operational 
processes as appropriate to allow for the implementation of the IDN variant 
TLDs.


Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org