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A message from ICANN's Communications Department:

On 20 June, 2011, ICANN's Board of Directors approved a plan to dramatically increase the number of generic top-level domains (new gTLDs). The Board had previously specified that if the plan were approved, there must be a "minimum of four months" spent in raising global awareness of the new opportunity, before applications for new gTLDs could be accepted. Aware that some global communities are difficult to reach in August (for example, many Europeans vacation then, and Ramadan also occurs then), when the Board approved the New gTLD plan on 20 June, the Board also extended the communications period to roughly six months.

The ideal is that when applications are accepted (a period which runs from 12 January to 12 April 2012), no organization comes forward and says "We would have liked to apply for a new gTLD, but we didn't know we could." However, budget limitations make achieving the ideal quite challenging.

This document [PDF, 486 KB] is a working draft of the plan that the ICANN Communications Department intends to follow in seeking to raise global awareness of new gTLDs during the rest of 2011. Of critical importance, the plan does not seek to promote new gTLDs, but seeks to promote awareness of new gTLDs. This important distinction means that ICANN is not telling the world that every organization needs its own TLD. ICANN is simply the steward of the process. We intend to tell the world that all organizations should consider and pay attention to new gTLDs; for, even organizations who do not want a TLD would be wise to watch, as the activities of others might affect them.

The plan lists key messages about new gTLDs, the tone and vision of communications, and which audiences we will target. It also lists core components of the plan and describes phases, timing, and evaluation metrics for determining whether the plan was successful or not.

We seek the public's suggestions on these strategies, and any constructive input that will help us leverage our limited budget, and the strengths of ICANN's volunteer community.

The comment period runs for 21 days. Please comment by 15 July.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-24jun11-en.htm