IDN Variant Issues Project
Arabic Case Study Team
Conference Call
Monday 13 June, 2011 – 15:00-16:00 UTC 

Present on the call: 
Arabic case study team: Sarmad Hussein, Raed Al-Fayez, Mohamed El-Bashir, Manal Ismail, Khaled Koubaa, Huba Sarfraz, Fahd Batayneh, Behnam Esfahbod, Iftikhar Shah, Alireza Saleh

ICANN staff/consultants: Dennis Jennings, Andrew Sullivan, Kim Davies, Francisco Arias, Baher Esmat

Dennis Jennings acknowledged the number and quality of people who volunteered to participate in the Arabic case study. He introduced ICANN staff who will be supporting the Arabic team, and announced that ictQatar had been selected as a local host for the Arabic case study. Dennis talked briefly to the project, its scope and deliverables. Dennis asked Andrew Sullivan to elaborate on the technical problem of having multiple TLDs acting the same. 
Andrew said that there are a couple of DNS aliasing technologies but neither of which works at the top level. There is a very little prospect for a solution that allows multiple TLDs to act exactly the same way. It might be possible to invent such a solution but time to develop it and implement it at the scale of the Internet would be really long. 
Dennis talked to the timeline from Singapore until we get the report published in Dec 2011. 
Sarmad Hussain asked about the agenda of the two plenary sessions on Saturday in Singapore. 
Dennis said ICANN project team have been working on two documents: one on definitions or glossary of terms; and the other one on list of initial questions on issues related to variants. If we can reach agreement on those two documents in Singapore that would be great. Dennis said that the two documents should be posted before Singapore meeting. Dennis asked Andrew if he could talk a bit to the document on definitions. 
Andrew said that the objective is to come up with a set of terminology that will be common for all teams. The document uses terminology that is already used by IETF, UNICODE, etc.,  but there are few cases where we have to use new terms. We have to make sure that everyone is using the same terms. 
Dennis confirmed that the agenda of the plenary session will be circulated to the teams beforehand. 
Sarmad said he is going to draft an agenda for the team’s meeting on Saturday and send it to the list. Sarmad asked if anyone has suggestions for topics to discuss during the meeting. 
Mohamed El-Bashir suggested to spend sometime during the meeting on experiences of the Registries (ccTLD) in dealing with variants at the different levels. 
Sarmad suggested that the team should also look into the definition document (glossary of terms) and see if there is something in particular in relation to Arabic the team needs to address. The team should list issues which are known from past work (i.e. ASIWG). The team should also discuss working methods and schedule. 
Dennis noted that one of the key outcomes from Singapore is for each team to have a detailed work plan. 
Sarmad asked Dennis to provide contact information of the focal point at ictQatar who will be coordinating with the team.  

Actions:
Baher to circulate the agenda of the Saurday’s plenary sessions as soon as its finalized. 
Baher to circulate the documents on definitions and questions as soon as they are finalized. 
Baher to provide the contacts of the focal point at ictQatar. 
Sarmad to draft an agenda of the team’s meeting in Singapore. 
Baher to circulate notes.