The 37th ICANN Meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya concluded in usual fashion today with the meeting of the ICANN Board. Today’s meeting of the Board was of exceptional importance to both the ICANN Board and the ICANN community. The Board met in total transparency as the community waited to see how the Board would be accountable for issues related to not executing the .xxx contract. Likewise, perspective New gTLD applicants anxiously awaited the Board’s decision on the EOI/Pre-Registration Process.

In total, the Board voted on eight (8) resolutions related to the implementation of New gTLDs. This could be an indication that the ball is rolling again, and perhaps ICANN is reaching consensus on a lot of key issues relating to the launch of New gTLDs.

Here is a breakdown of the chief issues discussed and the decisions that were made at Friday’s board meeting:
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New gTLD Update

The New gTLD Update and EOI Panel Discussion session, which took place on Monday, March 8th (11:00 – 13:00 EAT), was a key session for prospective applicants to attend. Although there are still several issues that need to be resolved before either an EOI/Pre-Registration process or an actual first round of applications can take place, ICANN seems more confident that a consensus is being reached.

The main event of this session, however, was the panel discussion regarding the EOI/Pre-Registration Model.

Several of the other topics discussed in this session were mentioned yesterday in our report on the GAC and GAC/GNSO meeting, therefore we will only briefly review some of the key points.

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