Dear All, Please see an announcement on recent changes to the Silicon Valley in San Francisco meeting schedule: ICANN 40 - Silicon Valley Meeting Schedule Changes http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-10mar11-en.htm 10 March 2011 Continuing discussions between the Board and the Governmental Advisory Committee have resulted in schedule changes for ICANN's upcoming meeting Silicon Valley - San Francisco Public Meeting. The Board and the GAC made progress in their Brussels consultations in narrowing the outstanding issues, as evidenced in the reporting of anticipated changes made in response to GAC's scorecard. As a result, and to increase the likelihood of additional areas of agreement, the Board and GAC have agreed on the need to expand the planned consultation at the upcoming Silicon Valley meeting. The main schedule highlights are: * The addition of the planned Board-GAC consultations in two separate sessions, on Tuesday and Thursday. These consultations were noticed by the ICANN Board <http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-25jan11-en.htm#5> and will follow the same protocol as the recent meeting in Brussels: the Board and GAC will continue their dialogue and the public will be allowed to observe. * Tuesday, 15 March: 9:00am - 5:00pm * Thursday, 17 March: 8:00am - 4:00pm * As part of ICANN's multi-stakeholder, bottom-up process, two other sessions will allow the community to provide feedback on the new gTLD program and the GAC-Board consultations in particular. These are scheduled for: * Monday, 14 March: 2:00pm - 4:30pm * Wednesday, 16 March: 9:00am - 12:00pm * The public forum, offering participants the chance to offer their views on a wide range of important Internet-related topics, this will occur on Thursday, 17 March, 4:00pm - 6:00pm. * The Getting Ready - The New gTLD Questionnaire session that was scheduled for Thursday, 17 March, conflicts with other gTLD sessions and will be rescheduled for an online session after the meeting. The Silicon Valley meeting schedule will be updated shortly. We apologize for these last minute changes, which we know may cause some inconvenience. However, given the extraordinary nature of the topics and the opportunity presented, ICANN leaders thought time should be devoted to this. We hope this notice allows you time to adjust your schedules accordingly. For those unable to attend in person, remote participation will be available. See details for each session on the schedule. Resources: Briefing Papers for ICANN Board-GAC Consultations <http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-6-21feb11-en.htm> GAC indicative Scorecard <http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/gac-scorecard-23feb11-en.pdf> [PDF, 332 KB] on New gTLD Outstanding Issues Board Notes GAC Actionable Scorecard <http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/board-notes-gac-scorecard-04mar11- en.pdf> [PDF, 814 KB] New gTLD Public Comment Summary <http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-22feb11-en.htm> & Analyses and support documents New gTLD Program <http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm> ** Regards, Heidi Ullrich, Matthias Langenegger, Seth Greene, Gisella Gruber-White, Marilyn Vernon, ICANN At-Large Staff