http://Home.nyc

New York, January 31, 2010 - Last year 1,200 applications were submitted to the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge grant and we were one of 50 finalists. They funded 9 applications, most regrettably, not ours.

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

New York, January 27, 2010 - One of the better public interest websites is in deep trouble Idealist.org. If you’re not familiar with it take a look now.

Idealist has always been a great place for those looking for help with civic and community issues, for jobs, events, and a lot more. We regularly post notices of our meeting there. Idealist receives most of its income from these job notices and got hit hard by the recession. Today I received a note from Ami Dar, its founder, which said:

“Very briefly, here’s what happened. Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget.

Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month.”

If you can help please go to http://www.idealist.org/donate and do so.

Tom Lowenhaupt

New York, January 19, 2010 - [ We had an excellent meeting. A link to the notes will be posted here asap. Here are some photos. ] We’re sponsoring our third dotNeighborhoods meeting on Tuesday, January 26 at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, 232 East 11th Street. The meeting will start at 6:30 and run about two hours. RSVP to info@connectingnyc.org.

First we’ll hear from the Hunter College Urban Affairs Workshop researchers on their “Case Study: Neighborhoods in a Digital Era.” The Executive Summary of the 40+ page report is now available here. We’ll briefly discuss their recommendations and then focus on the dotNeighborhoods governance issue.

Finally, we’ll do some organizing such as forming a content committee and other necessary committees.

Learn more about this initiative from the dotNeighborhoods wiki pages. (Commons image courtesy of sporkwrapper.)

­­­New York, December 29, 2009 - Adam Raff’s recent  New York Times Op-Ed Search, But You May Not Find paralleled an issue we have been concerned about for some time - search transparency. While Adam focused on the damage from corporate shenanigans, our concerns have centered more on the impact the Google search engine’s lack of transparency might have on civic affairs. For example, we’re likely to see Google confronting city zoning regula­tions for a variance to build inspirational office space for its expanding enterprises: How would Google rank the activities of organizations leading the opposition? Would individual opponents be able to locate the opposition? Or would the opposition be custom coded to screen land on page 13? Transparency = trust.

And imagine if Google “winner$” begin running for public office, how are we to trust its opaque search algorithm during the rough and tumble of an election campaign? Then we’d clearly see the relationship between link and ballot voting.

Transparent search - a far easier metric than Raff’s search neutrality - is vital to our city’s having level commercial and civic playing fields. We’re looking for resources that foster the creation and assessment of transparent search engines for the .nyc TLD. Follow developments on this via our Transparent Search wiki page. ­ ­(Commons photo courtesy of http://aiblsuki.blog122.fc2.com/blog-entry-95.html.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

New York, December 13, 2009 - Connecting.nyc Inc. was a sponsor of the OpenNY Summit held at the offices of The Open Planning Project in New York City on December 11-12. One of OpenNY’s tracks focused on making city government’s raw digital information accessible to programmers. The benefits of making standards compliant data accessible became apparent after Washington D.C.’s experiment with mashups resulted in many helpful programs being developed for city residents and visitors.

Standards are a key element enabling the effective release of data and several Summit discussions touched on the issue. The standards discussion inspired Tom Lowenhaupt, Connecting.nyc Inc.’s founder, to present an impromptu talk on the opportunity standards offer for the efficient and effective development of city TLDs. There’s the 2 minute recording of the presentation on AOL Video.

Mr. Lowenhaupt became familiar with city TLD standards through his role as key drafter of the Paris Understanding, a document that would guide global cities in the direction of standards for the development and operation of city-TLDs. ­(Commons photo of Statue of Liberty being assembled in Paris from NYPL collection.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

New York, December 8, 2009 - As President Obama packs his bags for the trip to Copenhagen and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we’re taking the occasion to draw attention to one of the more important names that will arrive with the activation of the .nyc TLD - sustainable.nyc.

Take a look at our wiki page for this name and you’ll see that it, and its name cloud, can have a forceful identity and organizing impact on this vital issue. In a time when climate will gather an ever increasing share of our attention, it seems reasonable to set aside a name-set supportive of a sustainable city, around which we can exchange ideas and organize to improve our climate.

While we’re privileged to have Dr. Frans C. Verhagan on our Resident Advisory Network, providing insight guidance into these issues, the Toward a Sustainable City wiki page, and a mechanism for development and oversight of the sustainable.nyc name-set, have yet to be created. So we invite those who wish they could be in Copenhagen today to join here and contribute their thoughts to ways we might utilize the sustainable.nyc name-set in support of an improved climate. (Logo of Copenhagen host committee.) P.S. See Cap & Trade.

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­­­New York, December 1, 2009 - How we allocate and manage our digital infrastructure is perhaps the central question surrounding the development of the .nyc TLD. What is an effective, efficient, and equitable domain name distribution policy and how do we govern its implementation and oversight?

Our Governance Ecology page provides a number of thoughts on this and today we add two others - common pool resource and common pool regimes.   

Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist and winner of the 2009 Noble Prize for economics, identifies eight “design principles” of stable local ­common pool resource (CPR) management. Typical common-pool resources include irrigation systems, fishing grounds, pastures, forests, water, and the atmosphere. A first reading of her work indicates many similarities between these resources and a TLD. What can we learn from these, her 8 principles?

• Clea­rly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);
• ­Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions;
• Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
• Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
• There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
• Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
• The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities;
• In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.­

­See our ­common pool resources wiki page for more on this “experience of the ages” addition to our governance considerations. (­Commons photo courtesy Sheila.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

Sydney, November 23, 2009 - I have been admiring your project and I am looking forward to seeing it grow to Sydney (my hometown). It is great that you have involved so many different parties and individuals from across your city.

­However, I am concerned by the lack of regard for privacy in this project. My understanding is that if one is to open a domain with .nyc, that they will sacrifice their private details to an accessible database (whois). This includes details such as home address, phone number, and private internet activity.

Although I value having a good quality domain name and connections with local residents, my privacy is much more important. ­How can I use .nyc but still protect my private information? What regulations have been set in place regarding privacy? - Julia Burns (Photo of a “twitter performance” by Ms. Burns .) (See our wiki page on privacy and security.)

New York, November 20, 2009 -The Regional Plan Association and The Open Planning Project sponsored a Participatory Planning Tech Workshop at the offices of TOPP on Friday, November 13. The event was described as follows:

Everyday social computing, mobile technology, and the adoption of web 2.0 approaches by governments have laid the groundwork for far wider citizen involvement in civic life.  Citizens can now be involved earlier on, more frequently, and in more meaningful ways than was ever possible before.  How can these opportunities be leveraged for use in the city planning space?  What are the technologies that will make this possible?  What are the bureaucratic, logistical, or social issues that need to be addressed in considering these ideas?  What tools could we build — today — that would be the most impactful?

Seventy technologists and urban planners attended. Additional information about this first of many meetings on the subject is available from here.

Connecting.nyc made a presentation on the impact the .nyc TLD could have in tagging city resources and creating a programmer-friendly city. That presentation is available for download here. (Photo courtesy Library of Congress.)

New York, November 16, 2009 - The key accomplishment of the ICANN’s Seoul meeting was the approval of the Internationalized Domain Names ccTLD Fast Track application system that will, for the first time, enable non-English speakers across the globe to see Internet addresses completely in their own language - both before and after the dot. Access to the IDN ccTLD Fast Track online application system and all associated materials are now available here.

In the photo at right, Peter Dengate Thrush (left), ICANN Chair, and Connecting.nyc Inc.’s Thomas Lowenhaupt are shown holding a calligraphic presentation of potential Hangul (Korean) IDNs at the ICANN’s 36th Meeting Gala Event held at the National Museum of Korea on October 27, 2009. The top option says New York, the bottom says New York City. In addition to Korean, New York City can one day present itself in local markets around the world in Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other scripts.

New York, November 1, 2009 - We recently received notice from the Committee for Open Fashion NYC, organizer of Fashion Camp 2009, requesting that the fashion.nyc domain name be reserved for use by New York City’s fashion industry. The Committee recommended that fashion.nyc:

• Should present a complete and unbiased directory of the city’s fashion industry.
• Care should be taken to assure that suitable control is exercised over those listed in the directory to assure that they are indeed city businesses.
• That FASHION.NYC serve as a means to locate fashion resources beneficial to the city’s fashion industry – suppliers, manufacturers, designers, fashion houses, and students.
• That a simple fill-in form providing a webpage for new entrants into the fashion industry, e.g., www.fashion.nyc/newcompany, be made available.

The Committee for Open Fashion NYC is exploring FASHION.NYC’s content, business model, and governance structure. We have offered to assist the Committee with its explorations as part of our quest for models for other important city portals.

Learn more about fashion.nyc at Open Fashion’s .nyc’s website or see our fashion.nyc wiki page.

­New York, October 31, 2009 - On Wednesday I had breakfast on the 18th floor outdoor patio of the Eastgate Hotel, a bit cool, but it provided a great view of the city. However, the breakfast options lacked any Korean dishes and was not worth writing about.

I took a 7:30 PM Air Korea flight back to New York City on Wednesday and left for the airport at 3. The day’s session I was most interested in was “Role of GAC & Institutional evolution of ICANN in light of the AoC” but it was a closed meeting. Traditionally some GAC meetings have been closed to public purview, with the general presumption that those closed talks were about how to gain some leverage with the ICANN. But now, with their newly empower role under the AoC, such actions are totally unacceptable.

The saving grace news for the ICANN was the announcement of the availability of IDNs beginning in November. This achievement was recapped nicely in today’s New York Times. 

But from the perspective of those seeking new TLDs, this was just another meeting from which to bring home the ‘DELAYED AGAIN’ message.

When the 2rd draft of the Applicants Guidebook was issued in April, the promise was that applications would be accepted later this year. Now there will apparently be a 4th (and perhaps a 5th) draft before the process is finalized. There’s not even an estimated date for the issuance of the 4th Draft Guidebook. Those selling new TLD services were traumatized by the news as they’ve been burning through cash in anticipation of big paydays when ICANN begins accepting applications. Some won’t be at ICANN’s March meeting in Nairobi.

We took solace in the belief that a new track for city and cultural TLDs will now be established. But even in that case, ICANN will not be accepting our application anytime soon. However, there’s lots of work to be done preparing city residents and organizations for .nyc’s ultimate arrival, and we’ll be encouraging DoITT to follow through with the RFP (now with a December 7 due date).

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­Seoul, October 27­, 2009 - I awoke with the birdies today and took a run along the Cheonggyecheon, a stream that flows between the Eastgate and the Lotte. It was a delight. Yesterday I was reading in the Korean Times that the mayor of Seoul indicated he was going to run for another term and had promised to stay in office for the full 5 years. He said he wanted to do for the Han, the city’s main river,  what the previous mayor did for the Cheonggyecheon. The writer noted that the previous mayor had ridden that accomplishment to the nation’s presidency.

Seoul is just an amazing physical city. And the people are about 2/3 the width of Americans, i.e., I haven’t seen an obese person yet. My only negative observation is about the quality of the air, nothing you can smell, perhaps it’s smog, but it’s difficult to see the nearby mountains.­

As to ICANN meeting…  It was more doom and gloom for the timely issuance of TLDs. The first post AoC meeting of the GAC and the ALAC brought to mind one of the early ICANN meeting I’d attended remotely in the late 1990’s, in that every possible problem that might arise with the issuance of of additional TLDs was raised, largely by the ALAC. Some constructive thoughts were added by GAC participants but overall those looking for rapid issuance of a gTLD would have come away saddened. But there was much talk of specific categories of TLDs that might warrant rapid processing, city and cultural. However, even there some of the old, seemingly resolved issues, such as user confusion and TLD failure, were raised anew.

Perhaps an aside, but then again maybe the central point, yesterday the Committee for Open Fashion NYC issued a statement that the fashion.nyc domain name “should present a complete and unbiased directory of the city’s fashion industry.” More on this soon.  

And then there was the Gala Event - the food, the museum, and the entertainment were fantastic. One of my favorite remembrances was a calligraphic rendering of “New York” and “NYC” in Korean. You’ll be amused. It will be the subject of a separate post. And making the Gala more gala, we learned that DoITT had extended the deadline for filing the .nyc RFP to December 7.

My view of Seoul as a perfect society was tainted somewhat when I entered the Metro last night to return from the Lotte to the Eastgate: dozens of homeless were setting up their boxes for a good night’s sleep. It was quite open and obviously “overlooked” by the Metro operators. Then again, this might be a more humane way of handling the homeless problem than the way we do it back in New York City. [Post 7:14 AM on the 28th - Seoul.]

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­Seoul, October 26, 2009 - While I’m a bit tired now, at 7:11 PM, I suspect it’s due to the busy day I had rather than to the 13 hour time shift. I awoke at 8 this morning after a decent night’s sleep, so I guess I’m “adjusted.” First thing I needed to do was change hotels. The new one, Eastgate Tower, is closer to the conference hotel - about 1.5 miles - and spanking new. It’s a bit odd though, and I suspect that it’s a hybrid hotel /condo of some sort. 

The walk to the Lotte from Eastgate was quite interesting as it passed through a light industrial / shopping area. Small shops lined the street with different classes of products - several lighting shops, then hardware stores, a slew of tape stores (the sticky kind), then it was the wall paper district… Many of the stores were also making the products they sold, or at least modifying them. Saws and hammers were seek regularly. This contrasted with New York City where little is manufactured and what is is rarely within view of the public.But I didn’t notice any foul odors or obvious signs of pollution.

I arrived at the ICANN conference at 11:30 and started talking to the trickle that was exiting the New TLD Program Overview session: sad faces all around - more delays - not even proposed submission dates - disbelief - too many loose ends… It seems the Draft Application Guide 3 is hardly worth reading.

But there was hope for .nyc being processed by ICANN within a reasonable time period. This was embodied in the “Airport Scenario,” proposed by Bertrand de La Chapelle, the French GAC representative, ans “Step by Step,” as the folks from CORE are calling the concept of facilitating a path for less controversial TLDs to proceed sooner. The cultural entities and cities are within this “easier to process” group. 

I also sat in on the debate on Registrar-Registry separation. Seemed like a no-brainer: keep the roles separate.

This evening I’m having dinner with representatives from Bangkok who are interested in the BKK TLD (an airport code). More later..

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­Seoul, October 25, 2009 - I woke at 2:11 AM with my body thinking it was morning. First thing I did was to go out to round up some tea bags. A simple Tetley or the like was not available from several stores in the neighborhood. I’ve had a Sulloc Brown Rice Green Tea and am now brewing a Korean One Ginsing Granule Tea. Both had their charm. But change of habit is tough.

Today I’m focusing on the city’s RFP requirement that two proposals, one Open one Closed be submitted.

“The City is considering the options of having .nyc as either an Open TLD or a community-based (“Closed”) TLD. Therefore, we are asking proposers to submit two separate proposals: one (1) proposal for an Open TLD and one (1) proposal for a Closed TLD. An Open TLD permits individuals and entities to obtain a second-level domain (“SLD”) without showing a nexus to the City. A Closed TLD will require individuals and entities to prove a nexus to the City to be eligible to obtain an SLD.”

This poses a conundrum for us as Connecting.nyc Inc.’s basic reason to exist is to advance to concept of a community TLD, and when the RFP states “NOTE: Proposers must submit separate Proposed Approach sections for their Open TLD and Closed TLD proposals” I’m left perplexed. Making it especially difficult for us is the Basis for Contract Award which states “If a contract is awarded, it will be awarded to the responsible technically viable proposer in the competitive range offering the highest amount of revenue to the City.” (We’ve asked the city for clarification on this.)

So early this morning I’m thinking through the options available to us and trying to figure out how I can address them over the next few days here in Seoul. As I see it we have four options:

• Submit only a Community (Closed) proposal?
• Submit two identical community proposals labeling one Open and the other Community (Closed)?
• Submit a Community (Closed) plan that presents those features that will serve the needs of city residents and a modified Open version that incorporates some subset of the community features?
  
• Or do we look for a different position from which to accomplish our mission, for example, commenting on the quality of Community plans submitted by the various bidders?
  

If this is like a typical ICANN meeting, there will be 800 or so clever Internet bureaucrats, engineers, entrepreneurs, government officials, lawyers, and public interest advocates of different shades with which I can discuss these options. [Post 5:57 AM - Seoul.]

That RealTime heading should probably be removed on this post as It’s 27 hours later, but I thought I’d report on the big news from Sunday’s ICANN meetings. I attended two: ALAC and joint GAC/GNSO. (See ICANN Glossary.) ALAC was refreshing as they seem to have been far better organized than in previous years. At the GAC / GNSO meeting there was much talk of problems with the New TLD program by the GAC members. With the GAC’s role having risen with the recent AoC with the U.S. Government, observers came away thinking more of the usual - delay. But several GAC members spoke positively of the Airport Scenario presented by the French: As planes become ready let them take off, no need to wait for everyone (every detail) before the first starts down the runway. With several GAC members chiming in that this seemed an appropriate measure for the less controversial applicants - cities and cultural groups - there was a tad of positive news for .nyc.