<div id="doctitle">
<p class="title"><a href="http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20apr11-en.htm">http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20apr11-en.htm</a></p><p class="title">Call for Community Volunteers for IDN Variant TLD Case Study Teams</p>
<p class="docdate">20 April 2011</p>
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<p>The delegation and management of variant TLDs remains an important
issue. The ICANN community seeks to develop solutions to enable the
delegation of Variant TLDs for the benefit of users around the world.</p>
<p>After consultation with the community, today ICANN outlines its approach to move forward by publishing the <a href="http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/idn-variant-tlds-delegation-20apr11-en.pdf">Final Proposal for the IDN Variant TLDs Issues Project</a> [PDF, 195 KB] and the <a href="http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/idn-variant-tlds-call-for-volunteers-case-study-teams-20apr11-en.pdf">Call for Volunteers</a> [PDF, 112 KB].</p>
<p>The Project will undertake work to identify issues associated with
the beneficial and safe delegation of IDN variant TLDs through six case
studies include the following scripts: Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and
Simplified), Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, and Latin.</p>
<p>Each team will be comprised of the following: team coordinator,
community representatives, linguistic experts, DNS and IDNA experts,
security & scalability experts, policy experts, and
registry/registrar operations experts. The call for volunteer document
describes the details of expertise needed, as well as the volunteer
selection process.</p>
<p>Successful completion of the project depends on having team members
with the right skills in each of the six case studies to perform the
substantive work. Therefore ICANN, through its supporting organizations
and advisory committees, and through its contacts with the international
Internet community, is soliciting the participation of community
volunteers in each of the six case study teams.</p>
<p>Interested experts are invited to submit their résumé and an
expression of interest statement demonstrating how they meet the
qualifications for one or other of the expertise areas in a specific
case study. Applications should be sent to <a href="mailto:idnvarianttlds@icann.org">idnvarianttlds@icann.org</a> no later than 19 May 2011.</p>
<p>Additionally, ICANN would welcome proposals from organizations
interested in volunteering to provide local host facilities to each of
the six IDN Variant Issues Project case study teams. Local host
organizations are expected to provide meeting and other facilities to
support the case studies work. However, it should be emphasized that it
is not necessary to have a local host organization for a case study to
proceed. Interested organizations should send an expression of interest
to <a href="mailto:idnvarianttlds@icann.org">idnvarianttlds@icann.org</a> no later than 19 May 2011.</p>