[council] IDN Variant TLD Program Update

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

https://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-23aug12-en.htm
IDN Variant TLD Program Update
23 August 2012

The IDN Variant TLD Program has the following two updates:

1.     Volunteer Team formed to assist the development of the Label Generation 
Ruleset Process for the Domain Name System (DNS) Root Zone

ICANN is pleased to announce the formation of a global volunteer team, 
comprised of community experts, who will work with ICANN on the project to 
define the Label Generation Ruleset Process for the DNS root zone. This project 
is part of the IDN Variant TLD Program (see below) that is intended to lead to 
the delegation of IDN Variant TLDs.  Delegation of these types of IDN TLDs is 
expected to broaden global participation in the domain name system, but must be 
accomplished in a way that ensures good user experience.

This particular project will develop  the process to define allowed code 
points, corresponding exchangeable variant code points, and related allowed 
states for IDN Variant TLDs.

The project requires significant technical expertise and the individual members 
of the volunteer team (listed below) possess capabilities in IDNA, Domain Name 
System, Linguistics, Unicode and Policy Development.

The volunteer team will undertake the work through periodic teleconference 
calls and two face-to-face meetings. The first meeting will be on 29-30 August 
2012 in Los Angeles, United States. The second two-day working session is 
planned during the ICANN meeting in Toronto, Canada. There will be an open 
public session in the Toronto meeting at which ICANN staff and volunteer team 
representatives will present an update on the progress and answer questions.

The volunteer team is comprised of the following members from 18 countries and 
territories:

Fahd A. Batayneh
Chris Dillon
Neha Gupta
Sarmad Hussain
Akshat Joshi
Daniel Kalchev
Yoav Keren
Dmitry Kohmanyuk
Mahesh Kulkarni
Nadya Morozova
Panagiotis Papaspiliopoulos
Alireza Saleh
Vaggelis Segredakis
James Seng
Vladimir Shadrunov
Syed Iftikhar H.  Shah
Will Shorter
Alexei Sozonov
Mirjana Tasic
Joseph Yee
Yoshiro Yoneya
Zhoucai (Joe) Zhang
Linlin Zhou
Team Observers:
Rinalia Abdul Rahim
Edmon Chung
Raymond Doctor

2.     Updated IDN Variant TLD Program posted

ICANN has updated the IDN Variant TLD Program 
Plan<https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/idn-variant-tld-updated-plan-23aug12-en.pdf>
 [PDF, 576 KB] that describes the projects that are intended to lead to the 
delegation of IDN variant TLDs. The plan defines the processes that must be in 
place to enable the delegation and management of IDN Variant TLDs.

Two previous versions of the plan have been posted for public 
comment<https://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/idn-variant-tld-revised-program-plan-04may12-en.htm>
 and discussed with the community during the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica in 
March 2012. This latest version reflects the latest public input.

The Program follows on from the IDN Variant Issues Project that completed its 
work with the publication of the final Integrated Issues 
Report<https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/idn-vip-integrated-issues-final-clean-20feb12-en.pdf>
 [PDF, 2.15 MB] on 20 February 2012.

Interested members of the community can receive updates and participate in the 
discussion of the variant work by subscribing to the 
vip@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:vip@xxxxxxxxx> mailing list 
(https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/vip) or by visiting the Community Wiki 
at: https://community.icann.org/display/VIP/


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