[bc-gnso] Two-Week Countdown to Sydney!

["BC Secretariat" <secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Two-Week Countdown to Sydney!

8 June 2009

ICANN's 35th International Public Meeting is just two weeks away. The 
conference will be held 21-26 June 2009 at the Hilton Sydney.

A full schedule for the meeting, including a synopsis of each session being 
held throughout the week, is available on the ICANN Sydney Meeting website 
at http://syd.icann.org.

Highlights

Two main issues will likely dominate the conference: new generic 
Top-Level-Domains (gTLDs), and Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs). 
Workshops on the status of the new gTLD process, as well as the IDN 
Fast-Track process, will take place on Monday.

A Joint AC/SO Meeting, in which representatives from ICANN's constituent 
groups will be discussing the roles and responsibilities of Advisory 
Committees, Supporting Organisations, Policy Staff and Board Members in 
ICANN's processes, is also on Monday's agenda .

Other highlights include: the ccNSO Tech Day (Monday); an Improving 
Institutional Confidence Workshop (Wednesday); a forum on Abuse of the DNS 
(Thursday); and a public meeting of the Board's Public Participation 
Committee (Wednesday).

Social events

Two evenings of social events are also written into the calendar. Monday 
night will see a cocktail reception at the Hilton, followed by "restaurant 
night" on the waterfront in Sydney where several restaurants will offer a 
special 20% discount to ICANN Meeting attendees.

On Wednesday, a Gala Event will be held at Sydney's Overseas Passenger 
Terminal - where the world's luxury liners dock - with a spectacular view 
across Sydney harbour to the famous Opera House and Bridge. An after-party 
will be held at The Argyle bar.

Remote participation

Are you unable to attend in person, but still wish to follow events online? 
You will find extensive remote participation tools on the meeting website at 
http://syd.icann.org. Most sessions will have live, multilingual audio 
streaming, web chat rooms, and downloadable presentations.

The main room and all ccNSO events will be broadcast live using Adobe's 
Connect software, which allows you to not only hear and see what is going on 
in the room but also see the presentations, a real-time text transcript, and 
interact in a chatroom at the same time.

To access the interactive room you just need to go to a given meeting's 
webpage and a single link will launch it (please note: this system may not 
work with all Linux users).

For sessions outside those two rooms, visit the session's specific webpage 
from the schedule and you will be able to choose from listening to audio 
feeds in multiple languages, to interacting in live web chatrooms and/or 
downloading speaker presentations.

If you wish to ask a question in the public forum on Thursday, visit our 
online question box at http://syd.icann.org/public-forum.

General information

Other information regarding Sydney itself, including suggestions on things 
to do, travel and visa issues, transportation, and tourist advice are all 
available on the Sydney meeting website at http://syd.icann.org.

We look forward to seeing you there.

ICANN Staff

Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat