http://Home.nyc

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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..