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Notes from 11 March 2025 APAC Space Session

Notes from 11 March 2025 APAC Space Session

Owned by Celine Lioe (Deactivated)
Last updated: Mar 24, 2025 by Yien Chyn Tan

The first 2025 APAC Space session was held in Seattle during ICANN82. This hybrid session brought together 52 attendees onsite and 33 online. Andrew Molivurae, the Senior Internet Governance Officer at TRBR Vanuatu, served as the community facilitator.

Samiran Gupta (VP, Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director - APAC, ICANN) kicked off the session by giving the welcome remarks, in which he explained why APAC Space was formed and what it is about. Then four speakers covered the key updates in four aspects: ICANN Board, SSAC, NomCom 2025, and the APAC DNS Forum 2025.

In the following community discussion, Next Round of New gTLD and DNS abuse were two hot topics that were well discussed. Participants in the room expressed strong willingness to continue the conversation.

Highlights are as follows:

Sajid Rahman (ICANN Board member) – Board priorities

  • Next Round: The Next Round of the new gTLD program is on track as initially planned.

  • Finance: Reengineering and restructuring after the deficit last year and now all numbers look good. Surplus is expected for this fiscal year.

  • New CEO: ICANN Board is setting the CEO’s work objectives and targets.  

  • Five-year Strategic Plan: Almost done and moving to the execution of the plan.

 

Ram Mohan (SSAC Chair) – updates on the SSAC

  • He highlighted the significant SSAC publications in DNS Security, DNS management, Registration Data, IDNs, and Routing Security.

  • Active work includes DNS Blocking Revisited, Open Source Software used in DNS Infrastructure, and Responsible Integration into the DNS.

 

Ching Chiao (APAC NomCom Delegate) – updates on the 2025 NomCom 

The folowing NomCom positions are open:

  • Three Board positions

  • Three ALAC positions (Africa, APAC, LAC)

  • One ccNSO position

  • Two GNSO positions (one for the CP House and one for Non-CP House)

  • One PTI Board position

 

Yien Chyn (Director, Stakeholder Engagement, APAC, ICANN) – updates on APAC DNS Forum 2025

  • She encouraged attendees to register for the Forum and gave an overview of the key sessions and the main ideas of each session.  

 

Community Discussion  

  • Discussion on the Next Round

    • Mabda Sidiq (ICANN Fellow from Indonesia) asked whether there is any regional plan to facilitate more applications for the ASP.

      • Samiran and Bob O’chieng (Sr. Director, New gTLD Subsequent Procedures, ICANN) shared the APAC team and ICANN Org’s engagement efforts respectively.

      • Edmon Chung (CEO, DotAsia Organisation) added that DotAsia had applied for becoming the Pro Bono service provider. They are happy to share .kids TLD’s success experiences. 

 

  • Discussion on DNS Abuse

    • Divya Bakshi from India asked about the regional framework for DNS abuse mitigation.  

      • Kenny Huang (Board Chair, TWNIC) responded that TWNIC cooperated with DotAsia and CSC to establish the “Trusted Notifier” framework aiming to address DNS abuse, and they welcome other interested entities to join.

      • Ram added that SSAC is working with ALAC to start a campaign called Safer Cyber. The first module is about phishing, which focuses on protecting from phishing but further extended to what to do once you have been phished. APRALO/APAC community may want to use that module by making more language versions available for this region.  

 

  • DNS Blocking

    • Echoing Ram’s earlier mention of the DNS blocking discussion in SSAC, Edmon deemed this topic important because many such activities are happening in this region. He is planning to explain how DNS blocking works in the future capacity building programs.