Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a great break over the Xmas and New Year period. We will all be back to work again soon, so make the most of it 🤓.

I have recently been appointed by the ALAC to participate on the GNSO Guidance Process Applicant Support team which is preparing a  guidance document for users and administrators for the next round of new gTLDs, 

Firstly,  I would be very interested to hear from anyone who applied for a new domain during the last round in 2012, whether you were successful or not. I'd like to hear

* What were the barriers you experienced during the application process?

* How could the process have been made more user-friendly?

* What did you know about the process before the round opened?

* What support did you get from ICANN (or anyone) during the application process?

From our region, I would have expected that more people would have applied for Applicant Support, yet there were very few (3), and only one was successful. ICANN had set aside US$2m for Financial assistance but the other two applicants did not qualify on one or both of the first two criteria

1) that their domain had a public interest objective that would benefit a community group

2) that their business plan demonstrated sustainable management of their domain name project should they be successful. 

3) that they could not afford the application fee

Secondly,  I would also be interested in hearing from anyone who is considering  applying for a new domain in the upcoming round although we are not sure when that will be.

* What do you need to know to be better prepared for this new round?

* What information do you need from ICANN?

* What other assistance do you think you might need - to make a successful application?

* What services would you expect from Applicant Support?

I would be very happy to take comments and suggestions from the APAC region, to the rest of the team, via this email list or directly to me via maureen.hilyard@gmail.com.  Any contributions would be very welcome.

Have a great 2023!

Regards

Maureen