It should be interesting to compare periodic pictures of this type and see how our emphasis changes.
September 25, 2008, New York - City TLDs are a “potentially” explosive media development. With the ICANN having approved a New gTLD policy this past June, global cities will soon be sporting sexy Internet names - .paris, .berlin, .ven, and my favorite .nyc. And new ideas about the role of the Internet “might” soon show themselves.
But note the troubling “potentially” and “might” earlier in the preceding paragraph. We run the risk of this new medium being ineffective or appropriated and consolidated by the old, unless we can get lucky - good luck with that - or get organized to support the concept of a community controlled medium. This post is a beginning thought about why little attention is given to city-TLDs as a medium:
- A Medium? - Most probably don’t imagine it as a medium. While it clearly meets the classic definition of a communications medium - store and transmit information - in its dominant .com form it has been perceived as merely part of a name.
- Fighting The Last War - Too many of the really smart media critics have become dedicated, life-long, big media busters and are busy fighting the Industrial Media War, re-imagining and re-building its Maginot line.
- TLDs are Old Hat - SEO-types think TLDs are old hat. SEO comes from Search Engine Optimization, a huge new business that will probably suck up a lot of the discarded brains from Wall Street. They try to figure out how to sell on the net focusing on the role of Google and its dwindling competitors. The SEO types say - “Who cares about TLDs, just use mini-urls.”
- Doomed To Failure - At ICANN meetings you’ll find many who want to to see the Verisign Empire crushed, and feel any TLD that won’t dislodge the .com TLD from its dominant position is useless and a failure.
You agree? (Commons photo courtesy of Erica Marshall.)
Learn and contribute to The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.
August 8, 2008, New York - I attended a conference on social networks here in New York City yesterday. Social networks are the latest “can’t miss” technology flooding the Internet world with services such as Facebook, Flicker, MySpace, and Twitter the recent headliners. There are more than a hundred of these companies seeking ways to connect like-mined people. According to Wikipedia:
A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
So where does this fit with our mission? Here’s a summary of my presentation during a conference session entitled City-TLDs: Ripe for Social Networking? (Note: The meeting was held at the offices of Sun Microsystems, the “we power the internet” people. No Internet access was available ( ! ) so I had to ditch my planned presentation and wing it.)
By way of background I explained that city-TLDs will arrive in 2010 with their focus on the local. In our case, New York City has 1/10th of 1% of the world’s population living on 400 square miles of the good old earth. And while additional domain names, identity (”made in New York”), and the tourist portals are the obvious features the TLD will offer, the real advantages we hope to achieve will arrive with improved local communication. I backgounded on Connecting.nyc Inc.’s origin at a community board, revealed the sorry state of civic communication, and concluded my intro with, “What would fill the existing local communications gap is what people at this conference call social networks.”
I provided one simple example of a “social network” we here at Connecting.nyc Inc. (CnI) have been considering, the Voter Project. It begins by setting aside domain names for registered voters, e.g., using a name-set such as www.your-name.voter.nyc, and providing residents who choose to participate with tools to better locate one another so as to address opportunities and problems before the community.
At the conclusion I challenged participants to uncover the networking opportunities city-TLD’s will make available using neighborhood names (Astoria.nyc, Bensonhurst.nyc, SoHo.nyc) and issues (e.g., save-the-trees.nyc, help-us-reduce-traffic.nyc) as examples.
As my goal was to get people thinking about city-TLDs as mashable parts for creating social networks, I’d judge by the participants questions and enthusiasm that my presentation should be chalked up as a success. If you’re one of those who sat in on the session, do you agree? (Commons photo courtesy of greenem.)
See more on our social network efforts here. Learn more about The Campaign on our wiki pages.
June 5, 2008 - Great little story and link to the YouTube video from the May 21 presentation we made to the Internet Society. It’s entitled The Manhattan Grid of the Internet. GG’s focus is city news and policy.
June 2, 2008 - June promises to be a busy month. We have long planned our participation in the ICANN’s Paris meeting, June 21-26. These are complex meetings with multiple concurrent sessions. CnI’s director, Tom Lowenhaupt, will be presenting the cause for city TLDs and .nyc at the event. See the agenda here.
Also long planned is our participation in the EGENI conference. On Friday, June 20, we’re to participate in the conference’s New TLD Catwalk. We’re not quite sure what this will entail. But the EGENI conference itself is packed with Internet and governance luminaries. See conference info.
And just recently we were invited to participate in the Global Internet Governance Workshop on Monday, June 23 at the Sorbonne. It’s going to be a busy week in Paris.
Prior to Paris we’re going to be participating in New York City’s Internet Week. We’re still finalizing our plans, but are hoping to get noticed. We could use some help covering some of the events. (Commons photo courtest of Spinstah.)
June 1, 2008 - We were delighted to have the opportunity to present the case for city TLDs and .nyc to the New York chapter of the Internet Society on Wednesday, May 21. The presentation was made at the historic Jefferson Market Library branch of the New York Public Library. Mr. Lowenhaupt was introduced by David Solomanoff, president of the New York chapter.
The slide presentation laster about 35 minutes with several attendees questions answered afterward. A video of the event lasting a little over an hour was prepared by Joly MacFie. See it here. The 125 slides used in the presentation are also available on that page.
Thanks once again to the Internet Society, the New York Public Library, David Solomanoff for arranging the event, and to Joly MacFie for shooting the video.
Here’s the basic presentation we provide to community groups these days, courtesy of a great slideshare.net service. VIEW it here!
Note: The presentation will soon show in this window. And we’re looking to add audio and video. If you can help out with either, email toml@communisphere.com.
On Friday, November 30, 2007 Connecting.nyc Inc.’s founder Thomas Lowenhaupt returned to his alma mater, NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, to present the case for the .nyc TLD.
He first reviewed the basics of city governance and top level domains (TLDs) then detailed the negative impacts that have resulted from cities having been omitted from the Internet’s domain name system (DNS).
After reviewing the “easy” ways a .nyc TLD could favorably impact the city - good names, a directory, and a more intuitive city - he discussed the economic and quality of life improvements that can be achieved using community networking tools. He invited the audience to imagine a more connected city, where local opportunities and concerns are identified, solutions considered, decisions made, and solutions implemented using networking features offered within a .nyc TLD.
He urged everyone to explore these opportunities in the project wiki’s Development and Identity sections, and invited volunteers or interns to join and support the Campaign for .nyc.