Public participation site

About the meeting

The Lisbon meeting will be held at the Corinthia Hotel, located in the financial district of Lisbon, from 26th to 30th March 2007.

There are 12 main rooms (all named after gem stones) which will host just over 100 different meetings from all different member of the ICANN community during the week.

There will be a number of hot topics, in particular:

• Registrars' agreement -- its ongoing review likely to spark some debate in light of the Registerfly situation
• IPv6 -- the issue is becoming more important with every meeting as Net numbers start drying up
• DNSSEC -- the secure(r) form of the DNS finally appears to be showing some movement with Sweden adopting it in the real-world
• IDNs -- a successful series of test results are focussing attention on the next step for full domains in languages other than English
• RALOs -- it is expected that not one, not two, but three Regional At Large Organisations will be ready to go for the Lisbon meeting

Please check out the calendar for more precise details about what is going on when.

About ICANN

ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .UK), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols. Computers use these identifiers to reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability.

ICANN has a unique structure where stakeholders across all parts of society, including governments, businesses, the technical community and civil society are all given their own constituency through which they make decisions and/or recommendations to be decided upon by the ICANN Board of Directors. The structure can be seen here.

Lisbon will be ICANN's 28th meeting since its inception in 1999.

About Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. The centre of the city has a population of 564,477, with around 2.8 million total inhabitants, and is considered one of the major financial centers of the Iberian Peninsula, together with Madrid and Barcelona.

The heart of the city is the Baixa, which is organised in a grid system and a network of squares built after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which levelled a big part of the medieval town. The Castle of São Jorge and the Lisbon Cathedral are located on one of the seven hills of Lisbon, to the east of the Baixa. The oldest district of the city is Alfama, close to the Tagus, which has made it relatively unscathed through the various earthquakes.

Other monuments include: The Castle of São Jorge, atop the tallest hill of the central city, Praça do Comércio (Commerce Square) with the beautiful façade of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Velha nearby, Rossio Square and Restauradores Square.

For more information, see Wikipedia.

About this website

This is the online participation website for the meeting. Available here will be: a rundown of each meeting complete with full details, including panellists; topics for discussions; links to resources and presentations; and links to webcasts and audiocasts where available.

At the same time, blogs, chatrooms, polls and forums will help people both at the meeting and dotted around the globe to share information and interact with one another.