Minds + Machines

I recently wrote a paper to which I gave the super-fun title Community Scoring in ICANN’s Draft Applicant Guidebook: How to Make Sure that New Top-Level Domains Are Meaningful and Useful.

I also submitted it as a comment to ICANN’s IRT (Implementation Recommendation Team).

Warning! This is very long. Worth studying every word, of course…

Summary: The new top-level domains (TLDs) from ICANN have the potential to usher in a much more useable Web, but ICANN needs to define a “community” TLD better so that existing communities of interest can create and manage their own TLDs. As it stands, these communities will be shut out and many new TLDs will become meaningless replications of .COM. We recommend tweaking the scoring in ICANN’s Draft Applicant Guidebook to make it easier to qualify as a community.
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Minds + Machines will be at the INTA 2009 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington from May 16 to 20. Please stop by our booth and visit with us if you’re attending.

Our CEO, Antony Van Couvering was a founder of NetNames and NameEngine, two premier providers of online brand management, and has a tremendous perspective on the subject of domain names and brands. I worked with the Digital Brand Management group at VeriSign (now MelbourneIT) so I also appreciate and understand the complexities and challenges of online brand management.

We carry that experience forward in our approach and objectives with Minds + Machines as a consultancy and registry service provider.

As a result. we’re finding that professionals involved in intellectual property law find our approach to the new TLD process quite friendly, comfortable, and appropriate. One could also use the word refreshing.

We’re glad to discuss our specific solutions and how they can benefit your clients or your company’s brand(s) in person.

To schedule a meeting please let us know the best time and day to meet.

Seattle is a beautiful city with great sights and friendly people. We’re glad to be participating at the INTA Annual Meeting and we hope to see you there.

-Jothan

ICANN has just posted an update on their website that applications for new TLDs will start being accepted in the First Quarter of 2010, with June’s meeting in Sydney being used to discuss and collect final issues for the third version of the Draft Application Guidebook.

The Sydney meeting should be quite interesting and lively as a result.

From the ICANN announcement:

ICANN continues to move forward in the implementation of the new gTLD Program while balancing and addressing community concerns on specific aspects of the program. The public comment period on the second version of the applicant guidebook recently closed and work continues to proceed regarding the discussion of overarching issues.

In order to continue progress and the community discussion, ICANN will:

• Publish an analysis of comments similar to that published after the fist version of the Guidebook
• Conduct consultations and fora at the Sydney meeting and afterward to develop solutions to the overarching issues
• Publish the third version of the Guidebook after the Sydney meeting when solutions to the overarching issues can be included

With that in mind, it is anticipated that applications for new top-level domains will be accepted starting in the first quarter of 2010.

Guidebook Analysis

As with the first version of the Guidebook, ICANN will organize and report a synopsis of all the comment made in the ICANN comment forum as well as at the ICANN meeting in Mexico City. The report will analyse comment by category and balance different proposals made. The goals of the report are to:

• analyse the comment in order to develop amendments to the Guidebook that are consonant with the meaningful input of the community, and
• demonstrate that the comment is taken seriously and carefully considered.

ICANN will not be producing a third version of the Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains before its upcoming June meeting in Sydney, Australia. This is because the discussion of overarching issues will continue through the meeting and beyond (as was expected). Publication of a new Guidebook version without addressing these issues might signal that they are not considered important.

In order to provide specifics and point up discussion, the Comment Analysis will be accompanied by several excerpted redlined sections of the Guidebook so that potential changes can be discussed. These excerpted sections are being developed in response to the recently closed public comment forum and will be published in time for discussion in the Sydney meeting.

After over a decade of effort, we’re pleased to see that momentum is not lost for this very important process.

-Jothan