The first “Middle East DNS Forum” to kick off on Monday, February 3, 2014, in Dubai. (Visit Official Website)The first “Middle East DNS Forum” kicks off on this coming Monday, February 3, 2014, in Dubai. The event is hosted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE and was organized jointly by ICANN and the Internet Society. The event aims to bring together people from across the region to look at opportunities to advance the domain name industry within the region. The two day event has a packed agenda exploring the new gTLDs, registry and registrar growth strategies, the role of ccTLDs and much more.

More information can be found at http://mednsf.org/en/. There is no cost to attend the event if you are able to get to the location in Dubai. In a post on the ICANN blog, ICANN’s Regional Vice President for the Middle East, Baher Esmat, writes that a livestream will be available at https://icann.adobeconnect.com/mednsforum/ and that they will be posting to Twitter with the #mednsf hashtag. He also mentions that a mailing list has been created for anyone interested in discussing issues around the domain name industry in the Middle East.

The event sounds like a great one and while I won’t personally be there, my Internet Society colleagues Sofie Maddens and Kevin Chege will be in attendance along with some others from Internet Society chapters in the region. I am going to try to watch the live stream, although with time in Dubai at UTC+4 many of the events will be a bit early for me here on the east coast of the USA.

We also prepared a web page helping registrars understand the IPv6 and DNSSEC requirements of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) which registrars will need to sign in order to start offering the newgTLDs. This is one of the several information resources being provided to attendees.

If you can get to Dubai or can watch the live stream it should be an educational and informative event and should be a solid foundation to build an ongoing platform for discussion of DNS and domain industry issues and opportunities within the Middle East. I’m looking forward to seeing it happen!