FYI IDNs have been of great importance to APRALO and EURALO - I would think that it would also be important for Spanish speakers, as it allows for accents ad characters in the tld, making them more sensible in the native language. Jacqueline A. Morris Technology should be like oxygen: Ubiquitous, Necessary, Invisible and Free. (after Chris Lehmann ) News Alert http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-18jun12-en.htm ________________________________ Call for Volunteers: Developing the Process for Root IDN Table Creation and Maintenance 18 June 2012 * Deadline for responses is 13 July 2012 ICANN is seeking volunteers to work on advancing IDN capabilities in the DNS. The project 2.1 "Root IDN Table Process" part of the IDN Variant TLD Program, is designed to develop, in consultation with the community, the process to define: allowed code points, corresponding variant code points, and related allowed states for IDN Variant TLDs. ICANN is soliciting participation from volunteers with the following areas of expertise: IDNA, DNS, Linguistics/Unicode, Policy. The project team will include additional consultant expertise to help in the process. ICANN has a limited budget to support team meetings such as travel, accommodation, and other expenses. General responsibilities for volunteers: Contribute to developing the Process for Root IDN Table Creation and Maintenance Research and provide input on issues discussed during meetings Attend two face-to-face meetings (likely during the last week of August in Los Angeles, US, and mid-October 2012 in Toronto, Canada) Participate in regular teleconferences (time to be determined) Expected time commitment of 2 to 4 hours per week during a 4-month period IDNA Expertise qualifications: Expertise with IDNA and preferably active on internationalization work Participation in relevant IDNA working groups DNS Expertise qualifications: Expertise with DNS standards Active in related DNS technical fora (e.g., IETF DNSext, DNSop) Linguistics/Unicode expertise qualifications: Expertise in linguistics Familiarity with Unicode Policy expertise qualifications: Participation in ICANN's policy development process; or Have participated in, at least, one ICANN working group, preferably on IDN related issues Selection and Recruitment Process for Case Study Members: Indications of interest should be sent to idnvarianttlds@icann.org no later than 13 July 2012. Interested experts are invited to submit a résumé (Curriculum Vitae) and an expression of interest statement demonstrating how they meet the qualifications for one or more of the areas of expertise specified above. The ICANN IDN Variant TLD Program team will select the team members ensuring a diverse composition of the members in terms of language/script communities represented. Applicants will be notified no later than 30 July 2012. Background on the IDN Variant TLD Program On 20 April 2011, ICANN announced the IDN Variant Issues Project to explore the benefits and risks associated with the potential inclusion of IDN variant TLDs in the DNS root zone. This project was initiated in response to a 2010 ICANN Board of Directors resolution. Two phases of the project have been completed to date. Phase I involved the formation of six case study teams for the Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek and Latin scripts. These teams were comprised of community experts with support from ICANN that worked on identifying issues related to IDN variant TLDs for each particular script, resulting in the publication in October 2011 of six individual reports detailing their findings. Phase II focused on integrating those six case study reports into the Integrated Issues Report. To complete this phase, ICANN formed a coordination team comprised of experts from each of the case study teams. The coordination team advised ICANN on completing the Integrated Issues Report, which summarizes and categorizes the various issues related to the identification and management of IDN variant TLDs. The next phase (phase III) outlined in the proposed program plan includes a number of activities resulting from the issues identified in the final Integrated Issues Report [PDF, 2.15 MB]. The work is now focused on using the approach outlined in the Integrated Issues Report to define milestones that must be completed to manage the implementation of IDN variant TLDs. The goal of the program is to define the necessary processes that must be in place to enable the management of variant TLDs. This incorporates the creation and maintenance of IDN tables for the root zone, and updating operational processes as appropriate to allow for the implementation of the IDN variant TLDs.