APTLD85 Communique

The 85^th APTLD Members Meeting and AGM (APTLD85) was held in Candolim, Goa, India, on 20-21 February 2023. Hosted by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) under the patronage of the Ministry of Electronics and IT of India, the Meeting gathered over 190 members and guests, including 104 on-site participants, from 37 economies across Asia Pacific, the Americas, and Europe.

The APTLD85 agenda featured traditional pre-meeting training sessions, which were held on-site and delivered by RNIDS (.RS), LK Domains Registry (.LK), and CleanDNS Inc. Held in 2 parallel tracks, the Training Day was crowned by a reception hosted by CleanDNS as the Headline Sponsor.

The Meeting was also sponsored by ICANN as a Silver Sponsor and Tucows, Inc. as a Bronze sponsor.

APTLD85 welcomed 5 Fellows from Armenia, Bangladesh, Fiji, Mongolia, and Nepal of whom 4 were first-time Fellows.

For the first time in APTLD’s history, the Meeting was held on and streamed live onto the Association’s own platform thereby once again enabling a meaningful remote participation for the Membership.

The Meeting was conducted in the traditional 2-track mode to discuss both non-technical (policy, administrative, and marketing matters) and technical ones, which were delivered by 59 onsite and remote presenters. Out of 14 sessions some were conducted in a panel discussion format, and two sessions included live polls on the audience and working in teams. Also, during the Meeting, the attendees were offered a number of brief online surveys to measure the temperature in the room and a dynamic of perception of matters under discussion.

Two policy sessions proved very particular: at one of them, the community developed a roadmap for the prospective transformation of the .NP ccTLD, while the other focused on an action plan for the recently adopted Internet for All statement.

To further a recently established tradition, the Meeting featured a blitz session with the Fellows to hear their takeaways from APTLD85.

At the beginning of the 2^nd day of the Meeting, the ordinary Membership convened for the 2024 Annual General Meeting to elect new Board Members, endorse the Board Chair’s report, approve the 2023 Accounts and select the auditor for FY 2024.

Also, at the AGM, it was announced that due to the planned retirement of the General Manager, APTLD has launched a GM selection process with a view of completing it by the end of the year.

Following a long-established tradition, NIXI hosted a savory gala dinner for the delegates with some glimpses of the traditional Goan culture; also, the traditional post-Meeting Networking Tour took the APTLD85 participants to a local botanical treasure.

At the closure of the Meeting, in their capacity of the APTLD86 host the VNNIC team invited the community for APTLD86 to be held in the city of Da Nang, Vietnam, on 17-21 September 2024.