There seems to be an interesting slew of meetings in Brussels next week. But the one that really caught my eye was: << On Thursday 28 January, the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission will host a meeting of the recently created Public Safety Working Group of the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN. This whole-day meeting will bring together law enforcement and public safety organisations as well as private sector representatives to advance cooperation on the expanding number of matters related to ICANN's policies that have an impact on public safety. Topics include the security of the Domain Name System, accuracy and privacy rules for the WHOIS registry and consumers' safeguards for new Top Level Domain Names in regulated sectors (like .doctor or .bank). Representatives of Europol, the UK National Crime Agency and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation will be among the panellists. >> So a European Commission Directorate General which has “migration” as its first topic is hosting an ICANN-related meeting? But the "so-called Internet 'technical community' will also gather in Brussels” for a RIPE NCC Roundtable with Governments and Regulators. And of course there is also preparatory work for EuroDIG in Brussels in June and a dinner-debate organised by the EIF (European Internet Forum) and a meeting of the High Level Group on Internet Governance. More details can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/blog/internet-governance-week-brussel... Meanwhile EDRi - https://edri.org - is behind the 2016 PrivacyCamp - http://privacycamp.eu/ By the way I hope most folk have seen the latest ruling of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the surveillance by employers of the network activities (Bărbulescu v Romania). Details on the EDRi web-site. And then we have the CPDP 2016 - Computers, Privacy and Data Protection - http://www.cpdpconferences.org Some of these events are of course much more open than others. Or to put it another way we will have to count on those who have actually been invited to those which are closed for any news. Happy 2016 everybody! Gordon