I don’t update this blog very frequently, as I find myself quite busy with advisory and mentoring activities, but wanted to give a mega-update.
With the world in the ‘new normal’ of virtual meetings, webinars and zoom galore, a traveler like me has to slow down for a bit. I will be focusing on the continued interest in the MERGE conference (re-formatted to the new 2020 normal of virtual events), and my ICANN accredited registrar, and my new elected role within the ICANN Stakeholder Group executive committee, and co-chairing the Contracted Parties House (CPH – basically an acronym for Registries and Registrars) CPH Techops group with Marc Anderson from Verisign. I continue to do a lot of activity towards Universal Acceptance of TLDs and domain name advocacy.
I no longer hold the role of Executive Director with the Domain Name Association, where I had the privilege of working part time for the group of registries and registrars that shared my passion for elevating the domain name industry, DNS and top-level domain names. I was able to put it on an upward trajectory, but we opted to not renew my contract and instead migrate the association into the Internet Infrastructure Coalition where there are ample resources and a team of bright and well-connected technology thought leaders available to let the association continue in its important work.
I continue to contribute and work on GitHub to help maintain the Public Suffix List project, having helped ICANN’s SSAC with SAC070 and the ICANN OCTO with their documentation for TLD administrators on keeping their records up to date and understanding the benefits and drawbacks of how their listings are configured.
I have also been working with had the opportunity to help Page Howe launch https://thedomainshow.com and have been working with Arif from https://thedomainsocial.com to continue gatherings of like-minded technical enthusiasts that are developing domain names and capitalizing on the
I have produced dozens of popular and well attended domain name conferences over the past 11 years, but most noteworthy to me is that within the past year, I have had the privilege to assemble content and produce the largest Domain Name industry conference, NamesCon – where we broke records with 1200+ attendees for a Domain Name industry conference. Â I also had the chance to bring DOMAINfest out to Eastern Europe and Asia with conferences in Sofia, Bulgaria and Macau.
Another big and important accomplishment was producing a day of DOMAINfest content in Fort Lauderdale at the beginning of THEDomainConference’s inaugural show in September.
Getting the attendance requires a compelling and attractive proposition. Â Good content, good networking, and clear value and opportunity.
NamesCon and DomainFest are the most recent domain name conferences that I have co-founded or produced, and it was an exceptional year.
For 2016, we changed and had a new, energetic, and different team producing the event while I managed content.
As co-founder I can say that the DOMAINfest Asia conference in Hong Kong will be fantastic (September 19-22, Hong Kong http://domainfest.asia) and if I manage the content for the (January 22-25, 2017, Las Vegas http://NamesCon.vegas) “NC17″Â show we will create something even better, now that the production team has put on their first conference and has a little more experience with it.
I hope you will join us and look forward to seeing you there!
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 found a gem at The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation when I was searching for the composition of the participants.
What I found on their website was this very powerful statement on Internet regulation from Senator Hutchinson.
Watch the video (Especially those of you in the majority within the ANA who are not supportive of the crusade against ICANN and new TLDs) Senate on internet regulation.
Hopefully a read of the tea leaves. Who benefits from blocking innovation, competition, and job creation?
More conferences! Â Following on the heels of a very successful F8 conference with Facebook, I am now on to Munich for the newtlds.org conference.
New Top Level Domains are coming into focus and it is the time to be preparing for them. Â I have connected up with a constellation of experts in a company called Sedari, which provides expert consulting and operational excellence for these new domains that are on the horizon. Â It is a great group of people, and we’re really knowledgeable about the process and every facet of them.
ICANN’s new Top Level Domain website is launched and the applicant guidebook published. The communications program is already under way with ICANN gatherings in numerous parts of Europe to announce and provide Q&A about the new Top Level Domain application process.
United Domains have timed a conference perfectly with all of these events, called newdomains.org. Â I am good friends with the conference organizer, and he’s expressed to me that he is immensely pleased not only about the attendance levels, but in particular just how many of those attendees are from brands, and also how many are new or unrecognized names, which illustrates to me that the interest in new top level domains is brewing.
There will be a keynote from Steve Crocker, the Chairman of the Board of directors of ICANN, and the conference is packed with fantastic sessions that will benefit participants of any level of experience, from beginner to advanced.
I am speaking in a session called “ask the experts” along with my friends and respected experts Peter Dengate Thrush, Tina Dam, and Dan Schindler on 9/26 from 16:30 – 17:25 Munich time (10:30 am Eastern / 7:30 am Pacific).
My good friend and the CEO of Sedari, Dr. Liz Williams, will be on a panel just before hand with Richard Wein of nic.at, Sarah Langstone of VeriSign, Jim Rogers of Neustar, Elmar Knipp from Knipp Medien & Kommunikation GmbH (who have an interesting platform called Tango) and Peter Hupfauer of registry.net.
Jothan has been in the domain name industry since 1994, and has helped launch numerous registries, registrars, TLD consultancies and domain conferences, and is currently a consultant in the New Top Level Domain name field, with deep experience and contacts in the domain industry and ICANN arena.
