Welcome to the first edition of our new-style Nominet News newsletter which we hope will be an interesting and useful source of information for all Nominet members, registrars and other stakeholders.

We are holding an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) at the Hilton London Olympia on 24 February 2010 to enable members to vote on a number of measures that we believe will strengthen .uk and the domain name industry.

Nominet welcomes the end of the Joint Project Agreement between the US Department of Commerce and ICANN. The private-sector led, bottom up model, gives a strong mandate to ICANN to operate as an organisation for public purpose and ensures that ICANN's accountability to the wider community remains prominent and constant.

We want to ensure that our systems continuously improve to meet the needs of our customers and stakeholders. To help us achieve this goal we run a monthly release cycle so that we are regularly improving what we offer.

A key feature of developments over the past year has been in the area of safety and security. We have looked at what we can do to improve the experience of people and businesses using .uk.

The latest UK IGF meeting was recently held at the BIS conference centre on 3 February 2010 where MPs and other key stakeholders shared the messages they took from the recent IGF meeting in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and the Nominet Internet Awards 2010 were launched.