Governments to focus on new gTLDs during ICANN’s new eight-day Toronto meeting

ICANN may have received a bit of flak for cancelling Fridays earlier this year, but as it turns out ICANN meetings are getting longer, not shorter.

The recently published schedule for next month’s Toronto meeting covers eight days, from Friday October 12 to Friday October 19.

The official start of the event will as always be on the Monday (with the work really starting on the Saturday) and the official end will be on Thursday for the second time in a row.

But this time there’s also going to be some special-interest sessions on both Fridays too.

In a change to the usual order of things, the Governmental Advisory Committee has scrapped some of its meetings with other ICANN advisory committees and supporting organizations.

Instead, word is that the GAC plans to focus almost entirely on developing its new gTLD Early Warnings — preliminary warnings about objectionable applications — during the Toronto meeting.

It’s replacing its smaller inter-committee sessions with a one-off High-Level Meeting with SO and AC heads, which we understand is designed to bring newly participating governments up to speed on how ICANN works.

Should we expect to see a bigger GAC in Toronto, now that governments have the opportunity to start complaining about specific applications? It certainly seems possible.

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Tagged: early warnings, gac, ICANN, icann 45, new gTLDs, toronto