Dear WG members,

As discussed in the WG face-to-face session in Copenhagen, the leadership team is organizing a webinar and session at ICANN59 to promote broad community discussion in the issue of geographic names at the top level, a topic within the WG’s Charter. Please find additional details below. We hope you can join these sessions.

Please feel free to share this invitation with any other community members who might be interested in participating.

Kind regards,

Emily

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The leadership team of the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process Working Group is seeking your input on the issue of geographic names at the top level. All are welcome and encouraged to participate and contribute their perspectives.

The following upcoming activities are intended to facilitate a broad community-wide dialogue on this topic to feed into the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP:

Webinar session on Tuesday 25 April 2017 – Two webinars will take place; one from 15:00-17:00 UTC and the second from 22:00-0:00 UTC. All community members are welcome to submit positions on the treatment of geographic names at the top level to be presented in the webinars. Depending on the number of positions submitted, the sessions may contain the same presentations or different presentations. The webinars will be recorded and archived. Details will follow.

• If you would like to attend the webinar, please email Geo-Names-Session@icann.org. Registration is not required, but your response will help us plan and will allow us to send updates to you.

• If you would like to submit a position to present at the webinar, please send an email by 7 April 2017 with your name, group or affiliation (if applicable), and your time zone to Geo-Names-Session@icann.org.

• The deadline for presentations is 18 April 2017. Each presenter will be asked to prepare a 10 minute initial presentation and be available to answer questions on the webinar. We suggest preparing a maximum of 5 slides. If, in addition to the slides, you would like to make a more complete written contribution available, you may do so, and we will distribute those to each of the attendees and make them available to the public. Please send all slides and other contributions to Geo-Names-Session@icann.org.

The webinar will be the beginning of a discussion that will continue at ICANN59. The leadership team will be holding an extended session in Johannesburg to work through the positions presented in the webinars and to propose solutions seeking common ground on a way forward.

Additional information about the webinar and the Johannesburg session will soon be available on the WG wiki page: https://community.icann.org/x/p77RAw[community.icann.org]. If you have any questions about the webinar or the ICANN59 session, please email Geo-Names-Session@icann.org.

Kind regards,

Avri Doria and Jeff Neuman (WG Co-Chairs)

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