http://Home.nyc

New York, February 21, 2010 - We had our fourth meeting on dotNeighborhoods, gathering at the Neighborhood Preservation Center on January 26. The meeting report and some photos of the attendees are now available.

The meeting began with a project overview from Connecting.nyc Inc.’s (CnI) executive director, followed by a report from the Hunter College Urban Affairs Workshop on their “Case Study: Neighborhoods in a Digital Era.” Their research focused on three areas: Identity, Content, and Governance. Read Hunter’s Executive Summary and download the full document details from here.

Discussion followed with many suggestions and opinions expressed. As the meeting neared its conclusion, it was noted that while city hall has seen the wisdom of reserving the neighborhood domain names, it was not clear, should the current direction prevail, what it will take to have them released and developed in the public interest.

At the previous meeting it was suggested that an independent Ad Hoc group be formed to facilitate the dotNeighborhood’s development. Thomas Lowenhaupt, CnI executive director, reported that he’d had discussions about the formation of an independent organization and that legal assistance was available. He suggested that a statement of principles regarding the role and responsibilities of the dotNeighborhoods be drafted, refined, and endorsed by supporters via an Ad Hoc dotNeighborhood Trust. And that this statement of principles be refined and passed on to the City Council and Mayor. All agreed.

Following the meeting a draft “dotNeighborhoods Proclamation” was published on CnI’s wiki. With this post we invite public comment on that draft document. After wide circulation, comments, and refinement it is expected that an Ad Hoc dotNeighborhood Trust will endorse and present the Proclamation to our elected representatives for their thoughts, consideration, and assistance with developing the dotNeighborhoods.

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

Learn more about our overall effort from our Wiki Home Page.

­­­­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.

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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..

­New York, June 30, 2009 - ­Th­e New York City Council is considering a legislative proposal, Intro. 991, that would improve public access to “raw data” held in city databases. Yesterday, in testimony before its Technology in Government Committee, headed by Council Member Gale Brewer, Connecting.nyc Inc. urged the use of the .nyc TLD in facilitating access and management of city databases.

In essence, we urged that the city think of a database as a thing, similar to a bench, a tree, a light post, or fire hydrant. And that a .nyc domain name be assigned to each database. The great thing about giving a domain name to each database (or other “thing”) is that you can then have a conversation about that database.

For example, think about the police department’s crimes database, and let’s take Mayor Bloomberg’s lead and call it “­crimes.data.nyc.” By giving it an intuitive name - http:/ /www.crimes.data.nyc - ­you facilitate the work of ­programmers, but you also create a market place for that database. So at the crimes.data.nyc­­ URL you would find: ­

• a detailed description of the data,
• a link to download the raw data,
• an ongoing conversation of how it “might” be used if only this or that was changed or added,
• comments and possibly a discussion by people who object to it containing too much information,
• a suggestion that a particular field should require privacy access­,

• notations and links to the different apps where the data has been used, and

• ­a civic advocate / entrepreneur match program for locating people with similar interests and a desire to jointly develop apps based on the crimes.data.nyc ­data set.

Learn more about this and see our council testimony.  (Commons Photo courtesy of equinoxefr.)­

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

­­­As a “nation of immigrants” the story about the ancestor who came to this country and changed his name is a familiar one. It wasn’t that people lost pride in their personal histories, cultures, or languages. Or that something magical happened as they passed through an American port. Many didn’t have a choice, as Anglicization was the standard practice at Ellis Island.­

These days we have become spoiled as it sometimes seems the entire world speaks English - at least on the Internet. Our tongues never get the exercise a foreign language provides. Complicated sound combinations stick in our throats. Those with difficult names have the choice to either anglicize or have their names butchered. ­To some there’s even a prestige in being like actors and authors who commonly change their names. The idea is to fit it and not be judged. I’ve never met anyone who changed his or her name and was bitter.

In the world of the Internet, names are an issue but for different reasons. A good .com is very prestigious but nowadays expensive. And names are getting longer and longer with many .com URLs the length of a sentence. Sometimes they may be easy to remember, but typing them is difficult and error prone. Those selling the sometimes shorter .org URLs want everyone to think of them as creating a better, warmer place - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLg4o5no1pM.­

But get ready New York for short, descriptive, and memorable .nyc domain names that say “Hey, I’m from New York City!” The current estimate is that they’ll arrive in late 2010 or early 2011.

­(Commons photo of  sign with long town name courtesy of diluvienne.) 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

New York City, May 1, 2009 - When I explain the benefits of the .nyc TLD, people sometimes say “domain names are old hat,” or “Google does names,” that “cell phones don’t need them,”  and “everyone’s already got one,” or even “why complicate the world with a new TLD?”

One of the images I’ve used with these recalcitrants is the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 and the impact it had by creating the Manhattan street grid. Our logo - part grid part web - evolved from this image. Sometimes I get a convert.

After scheduling an early May meeting on Neighborhood Names - e.g. Astoria.nyc - I had a gut feeling that within the promise for improved local communication that these 300+ names offered, there was the spark for a better explanation of .nyc’s potential. So I called my old friend Alex and asked him to help me detect that spark, perhaps via an analogy. Luck was on my side as Alex, who had worked for 30 years developing logistics policy for the Pentagon, drew my attention to the efficiencies the barcode brought to the supply chain and the retail world saying, “Imagine running a supermarket without the barcode.”

So why do we need .nyc? Think of the historically dreadful state of neighborhood communication - no local papers, radio, TV (albeit with a few minor exceptions). Over the past decade oodles of websites have popped up to try to fill this gap. But few provide a broad neighborhood view and the coordination tools to address grievances and opportunities, and none have an “official” identity that enables them to become local “media centers.”

With a carefully planned introduction, what .nyc provides is an avalanche or big bang effect, bringing reorganization and efficiencies like those barcodes brought to the retail world, to neighborhoods. And if we extend from this name niche to the entire .nyc name space, one might begin to see the impact of an organized digital grid.

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

­­­New York, January 24, 2009 - How will the arrival of the .nyc TLD change civic communication and the governance structure in New York City? Since 1975 our official “divisioning” has been steady: 1 city, 5 boroughs, 51 council districts, and 59 community districts. To date, the Net has not had an impact. Will it? If so, how and when?

With Connecting.nyc Inc.’s .nyc initiative having evolved from Queens Community Board 3’s 2001 Internet Empowerment Resolution, thinking about the TLD’s role and impact on civic affairs has been a constant. Over the past few months, as the probability of the TLDs arrival has grown larger, we’ve begun to focus on the .nyc TLD’s impact on this now 35 year old structure.

Neighborhood domain names have always been seen as valuable civic resources, enabling those amorphous entities to better provide local identify, communication, and broker the effective sharing of local responsibilities and opportunities. We recently created a Traditional Neighborhood Names page to discuss the possibilities and ways we might allocate names such as astoria.nyc, bushwick.nyc, and greenwich-village.nyc, and how we might assure their operation in the interest of local residents.

In early November we submitted an application to the Knight Foundation outlining an entirely new civic structure, something we called Issue-Communities. Using mapping software and social networking tools, Issue-Communities will empower city residents to create narrow communities of interest - “Issue-Communities” - reflecting their concerns. These Issue-Communities can address longstanding local communications deficits and serve as organizing force to focus local concerns.

Recently we began seeing overlaps and parallels in the Traditional Neighborhoods and Issue-Communities projects, and today created a wiki page for thinking through the development of such New Civic Governance Layers. Join us.

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

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­New York City, December 22, 2008 - The first time I heard­ Abbot and Costello do their “Who’s on first?” routine about baseball player names I was 7 years old and delighted at the comedy duo’s banter. Here’s a sampling:

­­­Costello: Look Abbott, if you’re the coach, you must know all the players.

Abbott: I certainly do. 

Costello: Well you know I’ve never met the guys. So you’ll have to tell me their names, and then I’ll know who’s playing on the team.

­Abbott: Oh, I’ll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names.

Costello: You mean funny names? 

Abbot: Dizzy Dean… 

Costello: His brother Daffy.

Abbott: Daffy Dean 

Costello: And their French cousin.

Abbott: French?

Costello: Goofè.

Abbott: Goofè Dean. Well, let’s see, on the bags we have Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Dont Know is on third…

Costello: That’s what I want to find out.

Abbott: I say Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Dont Know is on third…

And on and on they went. Sans the above diagram, this classic comedy of confusion demonstrates the importance of appropriate naming.

Some are saying that last week saw another classic as the NTIA & DOJ KO’d ICANN’s gTLD RFP( see the NTIA document here) with many now holding their breath, hoping the Obama Administration intervenes, saving the extant RFP. I don’t think TLDs will be a 100 day priority and that only after there’s a sign of stability in the economy will the new administration’s focus turn to TLDs. (The FDIC also opined caution.)

So after reading the comments filed about the draft RFP, and finding the preponderance of objections directed at business (ab)uses by new TLDs, I began to wonder if perhaps there’s an interim path to issuing TLDs. Can we advance the ICANN’s mission, take advantage of the work the GNSO and others have undertaken, and test the new TLD apparatus without tripping over some possibly meritorious business community objections? To help think through the options, I created the below table differentiating three categories of TLDs and several issues associated with their allocation and introduction.

TLD  Category	Consumer & Brand Protection	Morality & Public Order	ICANN Processing Strain	Excess Auction Revenue	Negation Points
dot-Cities	Minor	Minor	Minor	None	3
dot-Corporate	Moderate	Minor	Major	Minor ­­	7
dot-Generic	Major	Major	Major	Major	12

­­­Negation Points: None = 0, Minor = 1, Moderate = 2, Major = 3

As we enter the new year, perhaps we might consider separating city TLDs (and perhaps cultural groups) from the crowd so that cities may begin using the Net’s DNS to help address their multitude of needs. Perhaps we can encourage Obama’s Office of Urban Affairs to take notice and extricate city-TLDs from the NTIA  & DOJ tar pit. (Updated 12/23/08.) (Commons photo courtesy of Naccarato.)

­

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

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­­December 20, 2008, New York City - Connecting.nyc Inc. submitted comments to ICANN on the draft RFP (Request for Proposals) for new TLDs on December 15th. While we compliment ICANN for the many positive steps it has taken toward enabling cities to have TLDs, we took issue with several points in the 100+ page draft RFP. Our most significant concern is with the financial requirements suggested in the draft RFP:

• One-time Application Fee - $185,000
• Annual Registry Operator Fee - $75,000
• Financial Stability Assurance - $40,000 surety bond per year (est.)
  
• Per-name Fee - $.25
  

The first three of these will alter the nature of our operation and the type of financing we seek. (And they will have a huge negative impact on small registries, for example, should the Iroquois nation seek a TLD.)

But for New York City the per-name fee is the most troubling. Our comments present several scenarios where per-name fees will crush DNS innovation. Here are a few examples from those comments: 

By way of example consider the way per-name fees will inhibit our experimenting with the DNS’s role in advancing city life. For example, some are suggesting that civic discourse might be enhanced by issuing a second level name to each registered voter. Will we be able to consider such a project with the proposed fees? With 3,944,000 registered voters, and a $.25 fee per name, we’d need an additional $1,000,000 in ICANN fees to explore this possibility.

There are several ways to remedy this, one being that fees for names identifying things, locations, and foundation civic needs - education and health - ­ be excluded from the per-name charges. We will be discussing this alternative with ICANN.

We had several other concerns and suggestions with our full comments available here. (Commons photo courtesy of sam.)

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

October 21, 2008, New York - ­The Internet’s first decade­ in New York City was marred by a diaspora of its digital resources. With cities barred from the Internet’s Domain Name System, residents needing a name for a business, civic cause, or creative project had to settle for a .com, .net, .org, .tv or one of 200 other Top Level Domains (TLDs). As a consequence, New York City’s intellectual property was scattered by a  globalizing Internet, with the city’s traditional role as meeting place for sharing ideas and goods diminished.

But the long work of the NYonist community (rhymes with zionist) - those advocating for a homeland for their city’s digital resources - will  bare fruit in 2010 when the ICANN, the entity authorized by the U.S. Department of Commerce to issue new TLDs, is expected to authorize .nyc for use by city residents and organizations.

The latest step toward creating our city’s digital homeland happened last Friday (October 17) when the City Council’s Technology in Government Committee, chaired by Council Member Gale Brewer, held a hearing on Resolution #1495, calling for the acquisition and development of the .nyc TLD. All council members attending the hearing indicated support for the Resolution, with details on its final passage being worked out.

NYonism traces its birth to April 19, 2001 when Queens Community Board 3 passed its Internet Empowerment Resolution calling for the .nyc TLD’s acquisition and development. It took the ICANN 7 years to adopt a policy enabling cities to have TLDs, with that policy step finalized on June 25th. And with the city council’s impending approval of Resolution #1495, 2010 will mark .nyc’s arrival. 

While we’d like to sit back and headline “Rejoice, our city’s digital resources will have a homeland in 2010!“, much remains to be done. Like everything else, there’s a right way and a wrong way to develop .nyc. Our wiki’s role is to provide a place for New Yorkers to imagine and plan our TLDs role in these increasingly digital times. Get involved. Wiki your thoughts.

Learn about and contribute to The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

­September 27, 2008, New York - In June, as part of our Civics Project, we reached out to city employees requesting that they suggest domain names that might be set aside to help city government better perform its multitude of tasks.

This fall we are setting aside an important layer of names to aide the city’s vital civic sector. Variously identified as community, civic, block, resident, neighborhood, youth, and senior associations, groups, or organizations, they connect residents with one another to address local needs, and they connect to government when necessary.

Over the past weeks we’ve communicated with the city’s 59 community boards and the borough presidents asking for their help identifying this civic sector and the names of neighborhoods, parks, monuments, principle streets, squares, historic sites or other geographic areas, parades, and events with the intention of setting aside matching .nyc domain names. Our Civic Names page links to these civic resources by community district.

Many of the civic sector organizations already have domain names, some of them good ones - i.e, short, descriptive, and memorable, and we do not expect them to switch to .nyc names. What we want to accomplish most immediately is to set aside appropriate domain names so that, should a civic organization or resource need a reflective .nyc name,  it will be available to them. 

Beyond these name set-asides, our Civics Project seeks to help those without an existing web presence establish  appropriate spaces within the .nyc Top Level Domain. In 2009 we will facilitate mentoring and other relationships to assist the civic sector in these areas. Updated October 5, 2008. (Commons photo courtesy of Jebb.)

Learn about and contribute to The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.

August 9, 2008, New York - Several days ago in our “Update” post, I portrayed us as 95% of the way toward creating a landscape that will allow us to apply for the .nyc TLD. Last night I received an email from ICANN entitled “Updates to New gTLD Program Implementation” that leads me to think that last 5% might not be as easy to achieve as I’d expected.

The email linked to a paper prepared by ICANN and its “auction design consultant” and discusses the options for selecting TLD developers in situations where there’s more than one interested party. The paper, Economic Case for Auctions in New gTLDs, written by PowerAuctions LLC, an auction manager, purports to make the economic case for auctions as the preferred tie-breaking mechanism for resolving contention among identical or confusingly similar applications for new TLDs. I use the word “purports” because of the seeming self-interest of an auction company providing an “authoritative” paper on the efficacy of its core business. I’ve contacted ICANN to determine the status of the paper, whether there will be others reviewing such alternatives as comparative analysis and the lottery methodologies. See my Point of Information message to ICANN.

Whatever the status of this “Auctions” paper, this is an enormously important issue to us for two reasons: The first is the impact it might have on our ability to acquire the .nyc TLD. The paper begins with the premise that names should go to those who can generate the most income from their operation - more is better. And when there is a name dispute between Apple Computer, Apple Records, and the Apple Pie Bakers Association for the .apple TLD, perhaps more is better.

But with the basis for cities acquiring TLDs being their capacity to help deal with far deeper needs - including the social, economic and cultural life of the cities and their people - it becomes apparent that the Economic Case for Auctions’ fundamental premise does not apply in all instances. But we’ll withhold judgment until we hear from ICANN on our Point of Information request .

The second reason the issues discussed in the paper are important to us is that we too need to develop conflict solutions. In our case it’s about second level names: Who gets potentially important names such as astoria, finance, news, and sports .nyc?

We’ve placed resources for examining this issue on our Domain Name Allocation Plan page and look forward to hearing from New Yorkers on the issue. This Fall, as part of our Names for a Livable City project, we’ll be visiting the city’s community boards to gain a greater public perspective on this question. You’ll see a post on this here soon. (Commons photo courtesy of vernhart.)

Learn more about The Campaign on our wiki pages.

June 5, 2008, New York - On Monday morning we’re going to reach out to the public, particularly to city employees, to suggest intuitive .nyc domain names we should reserve to help create a more livable city: names such as mayor.nyc and, dare we say, towed-vehicles.nyc. See the official notice about this and the many other Internet Week events.

Our supporters will be at major city office facilities inviting city employees to send good domain names our way. Everyone’s suggestions are welcomed.

When: June 09, 08:00 AM — 10:00 AM

Where: City Hall … Municipal Building … 250 Broadway

We need volunteers to help man these and possibly other sites - depending upon how many volunteers are available. Email tom@connectingnyc.org if you have a few minutes to spare and want to greet city worker with a smiling face saying, “Got ideas for good city domain names? Check it out. ” and hand them a small piece of paper. Volunteers will receive a free .nyc T-Shirt. (See the event organizing page here.)

On Monday, March 3, 2008 I presented comments before the New York City Broadband Advisory Committee. Created in 2006 at the behest of Council Member Gale Brewer, the Committee “shall review the ways and methods of using municipal resources to accelerate the build-out of current, emerging and any newly developed broadband technologies and other advanced telecommunications and information services…within the city of New York..”

The comments painted a dark future for our city if we don’t create a telecommunications system competitive with those operating in other major cities. In making these comments I outlined the complimentary role the .nyc TLD can play in providing domain names, identity, and networking for city’s residents and organizations.

Tom Lowenhaupt