Disintermedia

Jackson Hts., New York, May 10, 2013 - With the time fast approaching when the .nyc TLD will begin shaping our city, the Bloomberg Administration’s .NYC Advisory Board held it’s initial meeting in City Hall’s Brooklyn Room at 10 AM on May 2.

The Advisory Board’s members come from various sectors including technology, education, small business, non-profit, and community organizations. Connecting.nyc Inc.’s director, Thomas Lowenhaupt, is a member of the board and is assembling a wiki page with a meeting report and follow up materials. See that meeting report here.

Later that day Connecting.nyc Inc. hosted its weekly Open Board Meeting, Tea & City-TLDs, during which our director reported on the city hall meeting and heard opinions from civic activists and an industry expert on how a TLD can help or handicap our city. See a recording here.

  Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., New York, March 17, 2013 - The city of New York took an historic step last year when it approved of an Open Data Law that will make the preponderance city government data available as a commons. The arrival of the city’s TLD provides an opportunity to further develop city digital resources and extend the data commons.

The range of possibilities is long with the low handing fruit the DNS Data Query Log, a database of inquiries made of the .nyc registry of domain names. Properly anonymized, the Data Query Log provides the potential for a ‘twitter-lite’ data resource providing a pulse of the city.

And perhaps most expansively, if we can educate New Yorkers about the cumulative value of our individual knowledge, train residents to curate and present this knowledge using linked open data and .nyc URIs, there’s an opportunity to thoughtfully organize the sum of city knowledge into a globally trusted TLD. Secondary values can arise from this such as a locally controlled search.nyc. And economic development advantage would follow via local jobs and keeping ad revenue in our city. 

The .NYC Advisory Board, a new entity created by the city administration to provide strategic guidance on the operation of the .nyc TLD, provides a channel for expressing the public will on this issue. Let us know what you think about the above and your ideas about using .nyc data and we’ll pass it through the city’s decision making process. NOTE: Our founding director is a member of the Advisory Board. (Commons graphic courtesy of Wikipedia.)

 Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., New York, March 16, 2013 - With the .nyc TLD on course to be activated in the next year, we are exploring ways to judge if it’s a success. The standard metric for TLDs is quite simple: number sold. Thus the more .com or .org names sold, the more revenue to the registry, and success. But with a city-TLD we need another metric.

We might adopt qualitative indicators such as “it improves access to city resources.” But if were to set goals, assess progress, and assure accountability some quantitative measures are required.

In our role as an At Large Structure we’ll soon begin working to identify these metrics as a member of an ICANN Consumer Metrics GNSO Working Group, now in formation. The Working Group is committed to creating metrics to address what some consider to be deficiencies in the initial GNSO new TLDs guidelines. While the Working Group will focus on a broad range of gTLDs, we’ll look to identify metrics that pertain especially to city-TLDs.  

The results of this ICANN effort will be of interest to the .NYC Advisory Board, a new entity created by the city administration to provide strategic guidance on the operation of the .nyc TLD. (Note: Our founding director is a member of the Board - stay tuned for details.) The exploration and outcome should also be of interest to the other 38 cities developing their TLDs. See the City-TLD Checklist wiki page for more. (Commons graphic courtesy of GrapeCity.)

 Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., New York, January 16, 2013 - We today submitted an objection to ICANN concerning the city’s application for the .nyc TLD.

We’ve named the submission Hoboken.nyc as that domain name reflects a key fault that would result from the paucity of public engagement and planning that has gone into the city’s .nyc TLD application.

The comment concludes with:

The application for the .nyc TLD by the city of New York should be held in abeyance until the City of New York holds informed region-wide public hearings (if for .nyc) enabling the community to fully understand the consequence of the endeavor. This is a Critical Internet Resource that may well determine the effectiveness of the city’s digital infrastructure for decades to come. Residents and businesses should have a say in deciding its use

The ICANN’s New TLD Review Group will consider the objection following a process and timeline indicated on this document. See our submission and follow its review at ICANN from this wiki page.

Jackson Hts., New York, November 16, 2012 - On April 19, 2001 Queens Community Board 3, a local planning agency of the City of New York, passed an Internet Empowerment Resolution calling for the acquisition and development of the .nyc TLD as a public interest resource (it’s like .com, .org, .edu and .gov but just for New York City).

Toronto, Canada, October 22, 2012 - The recently concluded ICANN meeting in Toronto provided several opportunities to advance the development of the .nyc TLD. Connecting.nyc Inc.’s Tom Lowenhaupt attended the meeting and reports that three CnI initiatives might have a positive impact on the New York and other city TLDs.

• A project is afoot to engage with Internet Society chapters in 17 cities that have applied for TLDs - Aub Dhabi, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Doha, Helsinki, London, Madrid, Melbourne, New York City, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Taipei, and Tokyo - with two goals in mind. The first is to provide public engagement assistance and policy guidance to the applicant cities. The second is to provide a platform for the 17 cities to share best practices. Additionally, it is hoped that Internet Society chapter membership might expand.  

• On Sunday, October 14, 2012, ICANN’s new president, Fadi Chehade, addressed the At-Large Advisory Committee and stated that its efforts to engage individual internet users in the ICANN governance process is enabled ICANN to be more than a trade association. On Tuesday, October 16, we presented to the At-Large Outreach Subcommittee a path to engage individual internet users from the TLD applicant cities in the ICANN’s governance processes. Our proposal focused on the 39 cities (17 with ISOC chapters, 21 without) that have applied for city TLDs. With a combined population of about 175,000,000, we advocated fora campaign to engage individual internet users in these cities through the development of the “AtLarge.city” domains, for example, AtLarge.AbuDhabi, AtLarge.paris, AtLarge.nyc, … These domains provide an opportunity to create common channels for engagement in the ICANN processes. Our proposal was well received and we have begun working with the Outreach Subcommittee. Note: there may be some cross pollination with this and the previously mentioned Internet Society endeavor. 

• Finally, Connecting.nyc Inc. applied to be a formal part of the ICANN’s At-Large Structure. Our expectation is that with its approval, we will formalize the role we’ve played with ICANN for the past 6 years, providing a channel to facilitate New Yorkers’ engagement with the ICANN’s processes. See At-Large for developments.
  

Beyond our initiatives, it was a typical ICANN extravaganza: more than 100 meetings spread out over 10 days (see schedule here). The meeting was “officially” summarized in this 15 minute video with ICANN Chair Steve Crocker and President Fadi Chehade. One of the more interesting developments was the MyICANN.org site with a well designed filter. ICANN’s next meeting is in April in Beijing.

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., NY, October 3, 2012 - We’ve scheduled a first discussion about an effective governance model for the .nyc TLD for Thursday, from 10 to 11 AM. While the city’s signing a contractor agreement to operate and market the TLD has limited the city’s oversight options, there are a number of open issues, e.g., the name set-asides for civic and government domain names. As well, over the life of the TLD, changing circumstances will best be addressed with broad public input.

Following up on earlier statements about engaging the public in developing plans for the .nyc TLD, the city announced some initial steps for public engagement steps in its Digital Roadmap,

“…the City of New York will establish a community advisory board and convene public listening sessions to encourage meaningful input into the development of the .nyc strategy.” 

Our initial thoughts on the proper structure for the community advisory board (CAB) were presented in a recent wiki post, which said about CAB membership:

Some have suggested that the Multistakeholder model is flawed, placing it outside the scope of democracy’s evolution. The following is adopted from writings of Parminder Jeet Singh of ITforChange, and describes the stages of that evolution.

• Version 1.0 was when elected officials assumed full authority to legislate and execute, once they were elected, without any reliance on any auxiliary democratic processes of public consultations. Ministries were steeped in deep secrecy and considerable aloofness from the public.
• Version 2.0 begun when elected officials started to employ some processes of democracy beyond elections, like undertaking public consultation on various legislative proposals, stakeholder consultations with those directly affected by any governmental measure, forming ad hoc or standing committees with civil society and outside expert participation, instituting right to information legislation  etc….. However, at this stage, public participation was still largely ad hoc, mostly on the terms of the government, and largely not institutionalized.
• Version 3.0 of democracy … is about strong institutionalization of means and processes of participation (outside of elections) in an ongoing manner, whereby the agenda of such participation can be set with a greatly curtailed influence of the government, if any, the processes are largely out of control of governments… It is independently institutionalized, funded, legitimized, etc. However, there is never a doubt that actual policy making authority remains with representative democratic bodies… There has always to be sufficiently clear difference between institutions of participation, while they have to made as strong and inclusive as possible,  and those of legislation and execution.
  

Thursday’s discussion will begin a search for an appropriate model for New York’s TLD. [Sorry if you missed the discussion. See this wiki post to see the follow up.] (Commons graphic courtesy of avistadecerdo.)

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., NY, October 1, 2012 - This past June the city of New York applied to ICANN for the right to develop the .nyc Top Level Domain. Its application requested the right to issue millions of .nyc domain names that will guide residents, visitors, and businesses to our city’s resources. With 38 other cities having applied for their TLDs, how well New York weaves its domain names into its digital infrastructure might will determine our city’s fate in the upcoming competition between global cities.

But the city’s application for the .nyc TLD was submitted without drawing upon our city’s innovative digital culture: its entrepreneurs, universities, technologists, and financial sector. Not did the city assess how these domain names will affect digital activists, or its civic, community, and cultural life prior to its submission.

With a professed goal of being a state-of-the-art digital city and global hub of digital development, it’s vital that the city carefully plan for .nyc’s arrival. Policy decisions on who gets what name, under what conditions, for how long, and for how much will determine the effectiveness of the New York City’s digital infrastructure. Ideally it would initiate planning processes that are inclusive, participatory, with lateral sharing in online and face-to-face venues.

We’ve created a Community Advisory Board wiki page to follow this important development. Comments are most welcomed. (Commons photo courtesy of avistadecerdo.)

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

Jackson Hts., New York, September 14, 2012 - With the 2013 election for mayor and city council 14 months away, civic watchdogs have started identifying issues that will help voters decide those candidate names worth a click (e.g.).

To date the .nyc TLD has been viewed as arcane, complex, and difficult to grasp, with benefits that could be achieved by other means. But with 38 other cities having submitted TLD application this past June, and the probability that all global cities will acquire their TLDs in the coming years, it’s becoming increasingly clear that New York no longer competes with Jersey City and Stanford; and that in a global marketplace, and in a digital age, how we use our TLD could be a defining factor in our city’s future. 

So here we offer 10 reasons the .nyc Top Level Domain’s development should be a factor in making those 2013 election clicks. The first several contrast effective and weak uses of city TLDs, making clear .nyc’s importance in enabling New York to remain a leading global city. So…

• imagine .Paris optimizes its premier domain names, for example, creating a fashion.paris that guides visitors to that city’s fashion sector. And that New York City sells fashion.nyc to the highest bidder, say Macy’s. Which city has the Fashion advantage? Or,
  
• imagine visiting .Istanbul and entering english.Istambul and finding a curated guide to everything you need. And that turkish.nyc takes you to a hookah in Astoria. Which is a more visitor friendly city? Next,
  
• imagine .Paris issues domain names for city street to entities that are required to provide several layers of information. So for example, when someone enters Champs-Elysees into a search engine, or directly type in Champs-Elysees.paris, a page with a map linked to retail and other establishments on that boulevard is presented. And that in New York GreenwichAvenue.nyc remains undeveloped with a message saying “Want to buy this page?” And,
  
• imagine .Milano institutes a thorough Internet of Things protocol, giving a domain name to every place and object in the city (in addition to people, ideas, and organizations). And that the resulting digital infrastructure provide operational efficiencies for city government; and they enable programmers to use these digital shortcuts for new media ventures. So imagine a developer dragging all the parking.milano domain names into an app that facilitates shopping. But that New York has sold off its library of “directory names” without civic content and accessibility responsibilities. Then,
  
• imagine search.barcelona as a curated collaborative resource that provides residents and visitors with accurate and timely information about that city. And that search.nyc is owned by Microsoft and subject to the competitive forces of the search market. Finally,
  
• imagine that 20 years down the road we’ve run out of good .nyc domain names - those that are short, descriptive, and memorable. That pricing policy dictating minimal annual renewal fees encourages the inefficient use of these limited resources. But that .Amsterdam has high renewal fees dedicated to Net education; that these higher fees encourage resource optimization, with a turnover in names that empowers future generations, and thereby creating a sustainable .Amsterdam TLD. Woe be to us.
  

And beyond these global considerations, a thoughtfully planned and equitably developed TLD will impact residents’ quality of life.

• Imagine that neighborhood domain names are allocated under terms that require that they be used to serve the residents of their respective neighborhoods. Assuring that the Corona.nyc address serves the civic, resident, and business needs of that neighborhood’s 55,000 residents, rather than those of the global beer conglomerate.
• Imagine Voter.nyc as as place where money doesn’t matter. Where candidates for public office present their case for office, robust discussion takes place, and our city’s Netizens vote candidate ideas up or down.
• Imagine a regional city unencumbered by today’s plethora of governance structures - 800 within the 90 mile radius of the Empire State Building - simplifying and reducing institutional barriers to business and the cost of government.
  
• Finally,  when dog owners are issued their fido.dog.nyc domain name along with their dog license, New York City will have disproved the adage “no one knows you’re a dog on the Internet,” optimized the .nyc TLD, and secured our transition into a digital era. 

So if we’re talking about our city’s competitive position amongst global cities, and a digital infrastructure capable of providing an increasingly livable city, how we develop our TLD is an important issue for the 2013 election. And candidates for office should declare  their vision for the .nyc TLD in name allocation, pricing, governance, and access. (Creative Commons image courtesy of dimland.blogspot.com.)