Just as the 44th ICANN meeting in Prague ended yesterday, ICANN has opened  registration for the 45th ICANN meeting in Toronto, to be held Oct 14-19th 2012. Even though the site says “Prague is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world“, I’m pretty sure it’s still in Toronto with CIRA, the .CA registry being the host.

[Hat tip to Frank Lemire for noticing the copied text on the site.]

According to an email by David A. Olive, Vice President, Policy Development Support at ICANN, sent to the GNSO mailinglist , ICANN will move it’s 41st public meeting from Amman, Jordan due to security concerns. The meeting will be held from June 19th to 24th, 2011. A formal announcement from ICANN is to follow. Rumors cite Singapore as the new location.

[Update: Here's the official announcement on the ICANN Blog]

Zak Muscovitch at DomainConvergence 2008

Guest contributor Zak Muscovitch is a domain name lawyer, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been practicing domain name law for over ten years and is now running for the election for a seat on the CIRA Board of Directors. Go to http://www.DNattorney.com and http://zak-for-cira.ca/ for more information. Voting is open to CIRA members until noon ET September 29th, 2010.

Two days ago, on September 21, 2010, CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority) held its Annual General Meeting and Symposium in Toronto, called, “Canadians Connected”, and it was a world class event.

Integrated into the usual corporate housekeeping involved in annual meetings, the Symposium brought together .CA domain name owners from all over the country and a CIRA attendance record was set. Nearly 500 people  participated in person, and hundreds more online.

Orchestrated by CIRA CEO Byron Holland with the support of a small army of capable and dedicated staff, Canadians Connected presented what can only be considered a visionary, and arguably somewhat miraculous, approach to  reinvigorating the Canadian Internet community.

Continue reading after the jump.

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According to Kieren McCarthy ICANN’s general counsel read a statement at the start of the public forum at the current ICANN meeting in Brussel, stating that the Board had accepted the results of the independent review panel and thus would approve the .xxx TLD tomorrow. The board had delayed the decision until the 38th ICANN meeting in order to gather additional comments from the public.

The board would then enter the contract negotiations with application ICM Registry and then refer the contract to the Governmental Advisory Committee since they had raised concerns in the past.

This decision would ignore the lobbying of the adult industry against the new extension, however the registry might have some challenges selling domains under the new TLD.

According to a report issued by ICANN yesterday, the upcoming ICANN meeting in Nairobi in March has received a message regarding a direct threat against the conference venue, the Kenyan International Conference Center (KICC). ICANN had canceled a planned meeting in Nairobi last year due to security concerns, but had recently confirmed their commitment to holding holding the 37th ICANN meeting in Kenya.

The ICANN board decided in their meeting on February 4th to move the decision on whether to go ahead with the Expressions of Interest (EOI) concept for new TLDs to the Nairobi meeting.

According to insider sources some companies, such as the Australian registry, LogicBoxes, GoDaddy and Neuleve/Neustar have announced that they will not be sending staff to the event.

Kieren McCarthy thinks these challenges may be a blessing in disguise helping to increase the ability for remote participation. In a letter addressed to the Chairman and the President & CEO of ICANN, GoDaddy proposed holding a connected parallel event should ICANN decide to go ahead with the meeting in Nairobi.

The ICANN board voted in a special meeting held today to keep the 37th ICANN meeting in Nairobi, Kenya from March 7-12, 2010. After some security concerns the board had considered canceling the meeting, but will now work together with the local governments in order to provide for the security of the attendees. An editorial by a local writer had criticized ICANN for asking the local government to pay for additional security measures.

ICANN | Preliminary Report of Special Board Meeting | 22 January 2010.

There are still a few seats left for the 8th Toronto Domainer Dinner which takes place at Spice Route on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009. The event provides a networking environment for domainers. Tickets are $90 + fees and include food and two drinks – to attend visit the registration page.

Disclaimer: Frank Michlick is affiliated with DNN and the organizer of the event.