The Applicant Auction team is heading to ICANN 48 in Buenos Aires this month, and as we start to pack our bags, we thought it was time to share some updates with the community.

Last week, ICANN held a webinar to present Auction Rules for its forthcoming Last Resort Auctions. As expected, the rules are almost identical to the ones we have been using for the Applicant Auction. This was no surprise, since the Applicant Auction used the auction format described in the Applicant Guidebook as its basis.

The big surprise from ICANN’s webinar, of course, was that auctions will likely not start until late February or early March 2014 and will certainly extend into 2015. Some applicants even expect that it will take until 2016 for all contention sets to be resolved.

For applicants who are hoping to resolve contention a bit sooner than that—and frankly, who isn’t?—the Applicant Auction offers a faster way to resolution, with the same guarantees of fairness, efficiency and transparency provided by the Last Resort Auction. Plus, with our design, no one walks away empty handed; the funds paid by winners in the Applicant Auction are used to compensate other participants for withdrawing their applications.

The next Applicant Auction will be held on December 11th and 12th. We’ll be discussing the exact format of the Applicant Auction, and answering any questions about it (and its differences from the Last Resort Auction) at two workshops that will be held concurrently with the ICANN 48 meeting.

Our Auction workshops will be held at Dora Restaurant, one block from the conference site, on Monday at noon and Wednesday at 1:30pm. The Monday workshop immediately follows the ICANN gTLD update. We will be providing lunch for participants at both workshops. Sign up to participate in the workshops by registering here.

Additionally, you can set up a 1:1 appointment with a member of the Applicant Auction team here.

We look forward to seeing everyone in Buenos Aires!