Tuesday, March 6, 2018

New gTLDs offer more alternatives (and innovation)

I went skiing and saw the ad below, it is an ad for a Land Rover offered at a car dealer whose name is Donnay with several garages around Barcelona Spain. The ski resort I went to is an important with many Land Rovers exposed in the mountain so I checked if there was a ".donnay" new gTLD but found none. Anyway.


I love .LANROVER
Prints are often where we add a domain name to offer potential clients to visit a website but on this one, I find the URL used a little "old fashioned" compared to what could have been done with a domain name ending in ".barcelona" or even better: ".landrover". I checked the ".landrover" new gTLD application and read:
"The .landrover gTLD will provide an authoritative internet space for Land Rover, its affiliates and partners that are associated with the Land Rover brand. Second and third level domains can then be utilised for specific pages for Land Rover’s car models and dealerships, as well as for communication and marketing purposes, with internet users assured of brand authenticity".
Unless I am wrong, or completely stupid, isn't it precisely what the ".landrover" new gTLD was created and paid for: "to provide an authoritative internet space for Land Rover, its affiliates and partners that are associated with the Land Rover brand"?

Such great names could have been used: www.donnay.barcelona or www.donnay.landrover.


We're still far away
The .LANROVER new gTLD was delegated in October 2015, almost 3 years ago, but is it still not used appropriately. It is also possible that the people in charge of communication with affiliates and partners don't know about the existence of such tool.

I personally find that such an opportunity to demonstrate innovation in branding is a missed one in such a crowded place like a ski resort. This also clearly demonstrates that we are still far away from having communication specialists to innovate using their .BRAND new gTLD. This also happens with many other .BRAND Top-Level Domains at the moment.

For the note, three were 6,134 ".barcelona" domain names registered in February 2018 and 18 ending in ".landrover" in January 2018, down to 4 in February.

Land Rover: wake up ;-)

New gTLDs: overarching issues

These are recent slides extracted from today's meeting. These topics will be discussed in the next ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico:

Something written about the next new gTLD applicant guidebook's format (the famous AGB):
Exciting, isn't it?
:-)

For action:
  1. Add to the slides for Council planning for PDP WG time at ICANN62 in Panama City.
  2. Take the list of topics in the Initial Report structure and send it to the WG in case we missed any topics.

Notes:
  1. SOI Updates:  No updates.
  2. Work Track updates:
    1. Work Track 1:
      1. Going through all of the topics and trying to make sure we reflected feedback from the calls and the CC2 responses.
      2. Getting that text into the Initial Report.
      3. Call scheduled for 06 March is TBD.
    2. Work Track 3:
      1. Finished meetings and going through topics.
      2. Making sure we've captured all of the input.
      3. Putting the language into the Initial Report.
    3. Work Track 4:
      1. Looked at preparing text for the Initial Report.
      2. Discussed Registry Testing System.
      3. Preparing topics for Puerto Rico.
      4. Name Collisions also will be a topic.
      5. ICANN Board resolution on a longer term study.  See: Draft Project Plan for Name Collision Analysis: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/ncap-project-plan-2018-03-02-en
    4. Work Track 5:
      1. Going through the different categories of Geographic names in the Applicant Guidebook.  Identifying pros and cons.
      2. Looking at how we may want to consider doing the same thing in future or changing the AGB.  Addressing variations between the initial policy work and the final AGB content.
      3. Look at categories that were not in the AGB.
      4. Working Session dedicated to WT5 in San Juan on 14 March 0830.
  3. Review of suggested Initial Report structure/planning for ICANN61
    1. Slide 2: Initial Report
    2. Slide 3:
      1. Complete the Final Report by the end of 2018.
      2. For the Initial Report we are not doing consensus calls. We are putting options out for public comment.  Not the time to take a consensus call on one or more of the recommendations.
      3. Goal is to get out the Draft Initial Report out by the end of March and then have the WG review it in April.
      4. Thinking of changing the meeting schedule to meet every week to help with the review of the Initial Report, starting Monday, 26 March.
      5. In the planning for Panama we need to understand if the PDP WG will need a good chunk of the time at ICANN62.
    3. Slide 4: Work Track 1-4 and overarching issues.
    4. Slide 5:
      1. Overarching Issues and Work Track Topics.
      2. Options and open questions have not gone through a consensus call.
    5. Slide 6:
      1. Status Update Overview.
      2. Overarching Issues.
      3. Recommendations on 4 topics.
      4. Options/questions on 3 topics.
      5. Community Engagement: a lot of overlap with predictability or where we have tried to get feedback on this PDP.
    6. Slide 7:
      1. Status Update Drill-Down.
      2. Overarching Issues.
    7. Slide 8:
      1. Status Update Overview.
      2. Work Track 1.
  4. AOB: ICANN FY19 Budget:
    1. Only a short mention of the Subsequent Procedures PDP, but statement that there are no funds allocated for implementing any GNSO policy on subsequent procedures.
    2. FY19 goes from 01 July 2018 to 30 June 2019.
    3. If the Board waits until FY20 to allocate funds some think this could delay the launch of the next round.
    4. No time for this WG to file formal comments.
    5. PDP WG Co-Chairs may file individual comments.

Structure of the Initial Report (chronological order):
  • Overarching issues
  • Foundational issues
  • Pre-launch activities
  • Application submission
  • Application processing
  • Application evaluation/criteria
  • Dispute proceedings
  • String contention resolution
  • Pre-delegation
  • Contracting
  • Post-delegation

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !