Ordre du jour

Preparation Information for GAC Members

GAC Hybrid Meeting at ICANN81

Istanbul, Türkiye

(GAC Members login recommended)

The ICANN81 Annual General Meeting will be held in Istanbul, Türkiye from Saturday 9 November through Thursday 14 November 2024. The 6-day meeting will be conducted as a hybrid event to accommodate both in-person and virtual attendance and the GAC schedule has been developed by the committee to leverage that hybrid format.

The meeting will present many opportunities for government attendee discussions and deliberations with time for the committee’s various policy and advice priorities and bandwidth for Members to participate in important cross-community endeavors. During the meeting, committee members will continue their work on several key topics that have attracted priority attention from governments throughout the last several years. These topics will include (1) discussions regarding the program for the next round of new generic top-level domains; (2) Registration Data Services (RDS/WHOIS) and data protection policies; and (3) DNS abuse mitigation measures.

As the committee continues to evolve its growing emphasis on capacity development for GAC delegates, the Istanbul meeting will incorporate informational and knowledge building sessions during the meeting. During sessions on 9 November (Saturday afternoon) the meeting agenda will feature capacity building sessions focused on issues of priority to members in the Middle East and North Africa region, including regional cooperation and engagement initiatives.

Much of the GAC’s remaining program later in the week will be devoted to the drafting and preparations of the ICANN81 GAC Communiqué.

GAC Meeting Schedule:

• The GAC ICANN 81 block Schedule
• The overall ICANN81 block schedule 
• The complete schedule of ICANN81 Meeting “Prep Week” Webinars is available at:
  https://icann81.sched.com/ 

Health and Safety

ICANN org monitors local health and safety risks in addition to relevant advisories and guidance from governmental and related public agencies.  We also work closely with our local partners supporting the event to develop and implement comprehensive event safety plans and procedures for a safe, healthy and productive meeting.

More details on health and safety measures for ICANN81 are available under “FAQ” section at: https://meetings.icann.org/en/meetings/icann81/#faq

This information will be updated as events warrant.

Event Registration - Mandatory for in-person attendees

Anyone planning to attend ICANN81 in-person will be required to pre-register for the meeting no later than 8 November 2024. This will allow the ICANN Meetings Team to allocate on-site resources effectively. Registration for the meeting is now open.

• Sign into Your ICANN Account or create an account here. 
• Register by selecting the Meeting Registration tile.
• Click on the Registration link. 

GAC Support staff will reach out regularly to the full GAC mailing list to remind all potential delegate attendees (both in-person and remote) to register for the meeting.

At the bottom of this page, GAC Support staff has created individual web links to each GAC plenary session to enable attendees to access session connection information and supporting documentation as they are made available.

Meeting Page Updates

This page will continue to be updated as additional information (e.g., session agendas, pre-meeting briefings, etc.) about ICANN81 becomes available.

Calendar Invitations:

It has become standard GAC practice to directly email calendar invitations to all GAC participants for all individual GAC sessions, community plenary (cross-community) sessions and notable community working group sessions. This will be done again for the hybrid format ICANN81 Annual General Meeting. 

The initial emailed calendar invitations for individual sessions are typically transmitted to GAC representatives and delegates a week or so before each public meeting. Specific call connection details are then added to the invitations as they become available the day before each session. 

For ICANN81, invitations are expected to be sent during the ICANN Prep Week.


ICANN81 Zoom and Real Time Transcriptions (RTT):

• GAC Members will receive Zoom link and RTT information via email in direct session calendar invite updates. 
• Links to session recording and transcripts will be posted after the public meeting week concludes.
  
  

GAC Briefings

[Until the start of the ICANN81meeting, this content section will be amended from time to time with web links as various pre-session written briefings and other materials become available.]

In preparation for GAC Public Meetings, GAC topic leads and Support Staff have traditionally prepared a number of topical briefings for GAC members that provide (1) information about the objectives for each session topic, (2) updates on recent developments regarding the topic, (3) previews of the proposed session agendas and (4) links to other resources of information about the session subject matter. These briefings are supported by other ICANN org staff, as appropriate, to ensure factual accuracy. 

Pre-ICANN81 GAC Webinars

Prior to the ICANN81 Annual General Meeting, GAC participants had the opportunity to attend two (2) onboarding webinars dedicated to informing new participants about GAC operational basics and preparing attendees for their first ICANN meeting. 

The first webinar scheduled, on 3 October, was designed to help new GAC participants understand the basic operational functions of the committee.

The second webinar, scheduled on 9 October, shared with new committee participants the key pieces of information that they might find helpful for them to prepare for the meeting and to participate effectively. 

Both webinars offered basic informational foundations useful for all participants. Links to both webinar events can be found on the “agenda” section of this GAC ICANN81 Meeting page.

Other Pre-meeting Calls and Meetings:

- Final Bilateral Prep Call for GAC 

on Monday 28 October, 13:00 UTC

- Working Group Chairs Reports 

 On Monday 4 November, 13:00 UTC


Written Briefings

Applicable individual briefings for each of the scheduled GAC sessions at ICANN81 may be accessed via links provided below on this page in the “Materials” section of each session link.

Briefings are typically circulated to the GAC Membership about two weeks prior to the start of the public meeting.

ICANN81 Public Meeting:

• Applicable individual Briefings for each of the scheduled GAC plenary sessions can be accessed via links provided on this page in the “Materials” section of each session link.
• All written briefings for each of the scheduled sessions may also be downloaded directly from this page. Watch this space for links to be posted approximately two weeks prior to the start of the public meeting: UPDATE 6 NOV 2024
• All ICANN81 briefings in a .zip folder
• Individual ICANN81 briefings in a single .pdf document

As developments warrant, GAC Support staff will provide updated materials to various session links on this web page right up until the start of the ICANN81 Annual General Meeting.

Other Resource Briefing Documents:

In addition to the resources on this web page, GAC Support staff is compiling preparation materials to help attendees fully utilize the remote connection services and resources that are being provided by ICANN org for the ICANN81 Annual General Meeting. That documentation is developed for every GAC meeting in the form of a “one-stop” reference manual that consolidates various notices and reminders about meeting planning and logistics. A web link to the ICANN org document will be posted on this page after an email notice is made to GAC Members and Observers. 

As they become available, this web page section will also provide links to preview and briefing documents prepared by the GNSO Support staff and the ICANN org Policy Development Support team. 

For each ICANN Public Meeting, the ICANN organization (“ICANN org”) also publishes a general meeting guide for meeting attendees. You may find more details at the following link:

• GAC ICANN81 Annual General Meeting Logistics Details

• ICANN Meetings Participation Details 

• ICANN81 Policy Outlook Report

• Policy Research and Stakeholder Programs (PRSP) Pre-ICANN81 Briefing

Please contact GAC Support Staff at gac-staff@icann.org if you have questions about accessing any of these briefing documents.

Individual GAC ICANN81 Agenda Sessions:

All GAC plenary session entries below reflect the time of the session in the “UTC” time zone.

Where appropriate, and as they become available, each GAC session link below is accompanied by links to a preparatory session briefing and other materials that are associated with the session. After the ICANN81 Meeting concludes, links to meeting session recordings will also be added to each session page link.

Please contact GAC Support Staff at gac-staff@icann.org if you have questions regarding any of these session preparations or arrangements.