https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann71-virtual-meeting-improvements--updates-1-6-2021-en

1 June 2021

Ashwin Rangan, SVP, Engineering and Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The shift to virtual meetings over the past year has given us a fantastic opportunity to expand and improve upon our virtual meeting format. It has, however, been something of a whirlwind, since we have had less time than usual to onboard and introduce new features. With ICANN70 under our belts and ICANN71 just around the corner, we'd like to highlight some of the recent updates and enhancements that have been implemented for ICANN meetings through some of ICANN org's platforms.

• ICANN has linked registration with the meeting schedule using ICANN Account, which enables attendees to register and login with the same credentials in both places.
• New 1:1 meeting feature – Our community requested some sort of "hallway" meeting space to allow for the ad hoc conversations we have been sorely missing since our shift to virtual. During ICANN70, ICANN offered all registered attendees the opportunity to schedule their own 1:1 meetings with other registrants through the third party ICANN meetings platform operated by Pathable. ICANN will continue to provide this service to all registered participants for ICANN71
• Automated Real-Time Transcription (RTT) – During ICANN70, ICANN org introduced automated RTT on Zoom in English only when English was spoken. For ICANN71, we are now able to offer automated RTT in English at all times, regardless of the language being spoken. Automated captions are available for your own meetings as well and can be enabled within your meeting settings in the Zoom web portal.

Zoom itself has also released several updates to their platform, including the highly anticipated Immersive View. This new gallery view includes pre-built scenes, such as a classroom or a café, and places video participants into seats within the scene to promote engagement. We've also seen some changes to existing tools, such as annotation: a new vanishing pen tool allows you to highlight text or objects on a shared screen without having to manually undo the annotation. There is also the addition of a full suite of emoji for in-meeting reactions; previously participants were limited to far fewer.

Just over a year ago, ICANN67 – as a virtual meeting – was a novelty. In that short span of roughly 15 months, both ICANN meetings and the Zoom platform have evolved substantially. We are always looking for opportunities to enhance our meetings as this space evolves, and will provide updates whenever significant changes occur.