Hello everyone. ICANN has not yet started accepting applications for new gTLDs. To its credit, at its meeting in Cartagena the ICANN Board has been convinced of the seriousness of certain remaining issues enough to delay the launch of the new round despite severe pressure from potential applicants and ICANN's own contracted parties. However, the onus is now back upon us and others who took issue with the proposed creation procedures. We have made it clear what we did not like, in issues such as the Independent Objector (IO), the Dispute Resolution Service Provider (DRSP), and the regressive changes to in trademark-related takedown notices. Now we need to propose what we *do* want, simply and directly. This means, specifically, that we need to create specific wording changes to the new TLD Applicant Guidebook. The goal is to offer to the Board a ready-made set of changes that have: - Community approval as broad as possible - Wording that modifies the existing DAG as little as possible while still accomplishing our goals - Full consistency with existing GNSO policy and existing CWG consensus (on both Rec6 and applicant support) If we are able to do this, we will have presented both a vision for our approach to new gTLDs and a fully-charted method of execution. Doing so will enable us to take initiative, providing a constructive way forward for the Board to speed TLD introduction. This is a significant task. Without enough people to share the load this can't happen ... and if it doesn't, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves for missing this opportunity to get our policy goals across. If you are interested in helping with the background research or the 'wordsmithing' of changes to the Applicant Guidebook, please let me know as soon as possible. -- Evan Leibovitch Chair, At-Large gTLD Working Group