https://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-23aug12-en.htm IDN Variant TLD Program Update 23 August 2012 The IDN Variant TLD Program has the following two updates: 1. Volunteer Team formed to assist the development of the Label Generation Ruleset Process for the Domain Name System (DNS) Root Zone ICANN is pleased to announce the formation of a global volunteer team, comprised of community experts, who will work with ICANN on the project to define the Label Generation Ruleset Process for the DNS root zone. This project is part of the IDN Variant TLD Program (see below) that is intended to lead to the delegation of IDN Variant TLDs. Delegation of these types of IDN TLDs is expected to broaden global participation in the domain name system, but must be accomplished in a way that ensures good user experience. This particular project will develop the process to define allowed code points, corresponding exchangeable variant code points, and related allowed states for IDN Variant TLDs. The project requires significant technical expertise and the individual members of the volunteer team (listed below) possess capabilities in IDNA, Domain Name System, Linguistics, Unicode and Policy Development. The volunteer team will undertake the work through periodic teleconference calls and two face-to-face meetings. The first meeting will be on 29-30 August 2012 in Los Angeles, United States. The second two-day working session is planned during the ICANN meeting in Toronto, Canada. There will be an open public session in the Toronto meeting at which ICANN staff and volunteer team representatives will present an update on the progress and answer questions. The volunteer team is comprised of the following members from 18 countries and territories: Fahd A. Batayneh Chris Dillon Neha Gupta Sarmad Hussain Akshat Joshi Daniel Kalchev Yoav Keren Dmitry Kohmanyuk Mahesh Kulkarni Nadya Morozova Panagiotis Papaspiliopoulos Alireza Saleh Vaggelis Segredakis James Seng Vladimir Shadrunov Syed Iftikhar H. Shah Will Shorter Alexei Sozonov Mirjana Tasic Joseph Yee Yoshiro Yoneya Zhoucai (Joe) Zhang Linlin Zhou Team Observers: Rinalia Abdul Rahim Edmon Chung Raymond Doctor 2. Updated IDN Variant TLD Program posted ICANN has updated the IDN Variant TLD Program Plan<https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/idn-variant-tld-updated-plan-23aug12-...> [PDF, 576 KB] that describes the projects that are intended to lead to the delegation of IDN variant TLDs. The plan defines the processes that must be in place to enable the delegation and management of IDN Variant TLDs. Two previous versions of the plan have been posted for public comment<https://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/idn-variant-tld-revised-program...> and discussed with the community during the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica in March 2012. This latest version reflects the latest public input. The Program follows on from the IDN Variant Issues Project that completed its work with the publication of the final Integrated Issues Report<https://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/idn-vip-integrated-issues-final-clean...> [PDF, 2.15 MB] on 20 February 2012. Interested members of the community can receive updates and participate in the discussion of the variant work by subscribing to the vip@icann.org<mailto:vip@icann.org> mailing list (https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/vip) or by visiting the Community Wiki at: https://community.icann.org/display/VIP/ Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org