I hope you understound the joke …
In this post I want to talk a bit about ICANN, the ones who would decide about the top level domains to be assigned!
In order to do that I am just reading a transcription from a meeting at Cairo. You can read it at http://cai.icann.org/files/meetings/cairo2008/public-forum-open-discussion-06nov08.txt
I am amazed that questions in that meeting are similar to ones I made myself. For example, the person representing .nyc is worried because they have to pay a lot of money to submit the candidacy and then they are not sure which are the criteria to be successful! I have the same doubts! Imagine the Barcelona City Council asks for the .bcn and a rich private investor askes also for .bcn. Who has more possibilities to win? Should a City Council have more possibilities that just a private company?
I past here the part where the CEO from dot berlin talks:
” [ Applause ]
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sir.
>>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: My name is Dirk Krischenowski, and I’m founder of the dot Berlin initiative.
We are here for the 11th meeting on — in a row, ICANN meeting. And I’m hopeful every time, since the timeline ICANN publishes before the ICANN meeting looks very promising to us and others. But with us, also the community of Berliners is looking forward to acquire its top-level domain, dot Berlin.
But every time we are going back to our community in Germany, we are disappointed, disappointed about the three- to six-months delay in the new TLD process, which makes up nine months from now before the next round actually opens.
I call this a consecutive pregnancy of ICANN. And what is usually done when a pregnancy will not end naturally is cesarean section is the method of choice for both saving the life of, in our case, I would say, the new TLD applicants, and ICANN.
I’m also speaking on behalf of the city TLD stakeholder alliance, the city TLD initiatives of Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, New York City, and Paris have formed on Tuesday. Our interest group is planning to become part of ICANN’s structure and framework. And we invite others to join our group. And we are happy to do cooperation and collaboration with them.
Besides the timeline, our group is also concerned about the 75,000 annual fees for city TLDs. This amount is unfair in comparison to the ccTLDs and existing gTLDs. It also endangers the business models of the city TLDs seriously.
Therefore, and for these reasons, I would appreciate if the board will not allow ICANN to further postpone the introduction of the new top-level domain names.
Please help to give birth to the new top-level domain names finally.
[ Applause ]”
So a group has been formed between New York, Barcelona, Paris, Hamburg and Berlin. I wonder how many people from these cities know that! I hope to know more!
In http://citytld.com/news.htm I see a photo with Dirk Krischenowski and also Amadeu Abril i Abril from the .cat.
It also says the people who represented the .bcn: Jaume Bordell i Sarro , Joan Batlle i Montserrat , Marta Tellez , Raquel Gisbert i Borras
DOTBCN 