Dear Councilors,

Please see the email below, which I am forwarding on behalf of Cyrus Namazi and our colleagues working on ICANN's IDN Variants Project. 

Since no IDN variants can be delegated into the root zone unless and until a set of uniform label generation rulesets (LGRs) have been developed and integrated for each community's script, we are very much in need of technical and linguistic experts who can serve as LGR panel members. Cyrus and his team will therefore be extremely grateful if you could assist us by forwarding the information and request below to your community and contacts so that we can quickly populate each LGR panel. 

At the moment, LGR panels are needed for the following 17 scripts (which represent IDN TLD applications in both the New gTLD and ccTLD IDN programs): Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, Greek, Latin, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Thai and Georgian. ICANN's call for LGR panelists, with further details about the type of qualifications required, can be accessed at http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds/call-for-panels-lgr-11jul13-en.pdf.

Cyrus' email follows below:

Dear GNSO Council members,

I am reaching out to ask for your help in recruiting volunteers to establish and participate in panels to define Label Generation Rules (LGRs) for the root zone.  There is a pressing need for these panels, as LGRs must be established for each script in order to create a set of rules for IDNA labels in the root zone.

 

As you know the root zone of the Internet is expanding to include a wide range of new labels, including Top-Level Domains (TLDs) in non-Latin scripts. To deliver on the promise of “One World, One Internet” it is essential to ensure that scripts and languages are represented accurately and comprehensively in the root of the Internet.

 

I am pleased to report that an Arabic LGR panel is now seated and working diligently to create the label generation rules for the Arabic script.  However, panels for Chinese, Cyrillic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Neo-Brahmi scripts or any other interested script communities still need to be formed.

 

Each panel should be comprised of volunteers with a diverse range of interests, expertise in a variety of disciplines, ranging from technical to linguistic script expertise, and share a commitment to driving the proliferation of a multi-lingual Internet.

 

I encourage you to help reach out to your network and help me spread the word regarding the need for LGR panel members, including chairs, for each script.  If you know someone who is interested, please have them contact an IDN team member via email at idntlds@icann.org, seek out a member of our staff at ICANN 50 in London, or contact me directly.  More information is also posted at https://community.icann.org/display/croscomlgrprocedure/Root+Zone+LGR+Project.

 

Thank you in advance for your support.