NamesCon 2016 is already at 350+ attendees, and Jodi Chamberlain, Richard Lau and I are already working on NamesCon’s third year schedule and events.
The agenda is filling up, and we’re accepting speaker and session submissions at speakers2016 _at_ namescon.vegas – so submit your ideas, pitches, and session concepts.
Register today for NamesCon 2016 to view the agenda as it fills up!
I had the privilege to speak at the CENTR General Assembly in Pisa, to discuss the marketplace and how new TLDs can be assimilated into the marketplace via the registrar channel.
https://www.centr.org/main/lib/g1/4622-CTR.html
It may prove to be like taking a small sip from a fireplug with the number of applications coming, so potential applicants would benefit from taking a look at the presentation.
DotME, the collaboration between Afilias, GoDaddy, and DoMen seems to have launched with some success, and I am the proud registrant of jothan.me. Congratulations to all those that registered and participated.
The former Yugoslovia ccTLD has been designated for a 3 year sunset process, transitioning to .RS (Serbia) and .ME (Montenegro).  Following in the footsteps of the ccTLDs that have some generic appeal beyond simply that of the country (.TV, .MD, .FM/.AM, .CD, etc), there was some competition for the registry services with this recently introduced ccTLD.
According to the NIC, A bid was tendered, with three primary parties vying for this opportunity.Â
According to a Dutch Telecom Paper (googled – non/pw version), Afilias and GoDaddy have partnered with Montenegro’s MeNet and are the top candidate for managing the registry of .me (Montenegro’s ccTLD). They had been competing with Neustar and a consortium of companiesand VeriSign’s Registry Services. The government will now negotiate the final terms of the contract with the lead candidate.
All strong candidates with very capable registry services. It must have been a true challenge for the parties having to determine the most favorable bidder.
Just saw a post about blacknight.ie offering .EU domain names at 5 euros per. Unless I am mistaken, that is at cost.
 This is noteworthy, as we certainly watch pricing trategy like this suceed in the US, so it will be good to see how such a pricing model will drive organic growth and adoption of the .EU namespace.
