Preparing for an ICANN meeting has now become a full-time job for many participants, from ICANN Staff to the numerous volunteers that contribute to the bulk of the ICANN processes.
The preparations for one of the 3 yearly International Meetings start as soon as the previous one is over, sometimes even before that. A full meeting planning team is in operation at ICANN, but input is also required from the Supporting Organisations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) that make up the ICANN structure.
As the body responsible for setting generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) policy, the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation) is part of that planning. At each meeting, we work on our own agenda and strive to meet the deadlines set for its publication. We interact with the other SOs and ACs as everyone tries to fit into the increasingly busy schedule that is an ICANN meeting week.
It is as part of this preparatory work that we have learned that the GAC/Board discussions on new gTLDs that started in Brussels in February and continued at the San Francisco ICANN meeting in March are set to once again disrupt the normal business of community discussions and policy development that is the raison-d'être of an ICANN meeting.
