I was on the call this morning. Not a lot to report. I believe the proposal on the table is along the following lines: 1. ICANN will set a date on which to collect "Expressions of Interest." Or you might call it "New TLD Applications, Stage 1." 2. These filings will contain the name of the entity filing for the TLD, the string sought by the application, and a check for an amount to be agreed. The discussion ranged from $50K on the low end to the full application fee of $185K on the high end. No common view on what the sum should be, though everyone identified pros and cons for each end of the spectrum. 3. The rule would be that only entities filing these "Expressions of Interest" would be allowed to apply in this gTLD round. No one had confidence in an anonymous process. If it were just optional, no one thought anyone would do it except those who had already announced. 4. Disagreement on whether there should be a check box on the "Expression of Interest" form to indicate whether the applicant was planning to apply under the "Community" evaluation criteria. I thought this was a good idea. Others disagreed. That's about it. No discussion of what ICANN will do with these things once it gets them. Frankly, I have a very hard time evaluating whether this is a good idea or not without understanding how the filings will be used by ICANN and the community. Part of me thinks we should finish the process we started. Part of me thinks the proposal above might help move things along by at least identifying the players and strings. It's probably the sort of thing where we need more guidance from the Board and Staff on what they see as the process forward. Bret