Posts filed under 'People'
by Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org
As you can see from information about the wiki, ICANNWiki.org is based in the city of Portland, in the state of Oregon.
Oregon is one of the world leaders for the Open Source community. In fact, it is not uncommon for companies from around the globe to open up a research and development arm here in Oregon to take advantage of Oregon’s Open Source community.
Portland, Oregon’s largest city, is home to many people who actively work with and develop for the Open Source community. As such there are many ideas and conversations regarding community. From my perspective, with my position at ICANNWiki, I can not think of a better city in which to be located to have active, ongoing conversations with other members of the Open Source community.
With that said I was at an informal after-hours event a couple of days ago where I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman whose business profession is that of copy writing. I have always viewed copy writers of any country as the unofficial keepers of their respective language. A good copy writer ensures what we read not only conveys the message properly, they ensure that what is conveyed is grammatically correct.
After learning about ICANNWiki.org and how it is a neutral resource for the various communities that make up the overall ICANN community, those being ICANN academics, registries, registrars and domainers, he could not help but refer to this community as “Your Community”. He was not referring to “Your Community” in a bad way, just his way of referencing the whole ICANN community in our conversation.
The reason I thought this conversation was interesting enough for a separate post is every language, in some way or another is adaptable over time. English is one of the more flexible, or adaptable languages out there. He noted that as time has progressed the English language has evolved very rapidly in the last decade. True, the advent of computers have brought English terms to English and other languages, such as “PC”, “hard disk” and “mouse”, to name a few. Also, through “Your Community” new words have emerged, such as “Google”, “Twitter” and “Yelp”, also to name a few. However this gentleman felt that “Your Community”, or the overall ICANN community, has done more for bringing change to, or “influencing” the English language than any other such “influencer”. What he was referring to was how the Internet has brought people together, locally as well as globally and how communication can take place NOW as opposed to later. People can text, call, IM (instant message), e-mail, play games, connect with other networks, etc… FAR more easily than they could a little over a decade ago. Think back to your communication habits or capabilities back in 1995.
ICANN has created the standards and stability for the Internet. Companies and domainers, through development, provide the content and applications people use while registries and registrars provide the naming conventions people use to access applications. So, in a nut shell, “Your Community” has done a lot to advance the evolution of the English language.
With that said I could not help but wonder if a person, whose profession is copy writer in the English language, has already seen a quicker evolution of English, what will other copy writers experience of their respective languages once IDNs have been implemented for 5 years?
So while he kept referring to “Your Community” in our conversation, I couldn’t help but think about “Our Community” and how often can you be part of something where “Your Community” can have such an influence on the evolution of languages and how people communicate. So, hat’s off to “Our Community”!
August 18th, 2008
By Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org
Last August I blogged about “.asia, A Social Networking Goldmine”. While the gist of the post centered around the new .asia TLD (its value with the advent of IDNs and how it can foster community) the underlying theme has been, and continues to be for me the value of what such regionally focused TLDs can bring to the “community”.
In previous posts also I discussed the value IDNs bring not only from the perspective of DotAsia, but from the perspective of India. To be specific, “What IDNs Mean to DotAsia: A Conversation with Edmon Chung of DotAsia” and “IDNs and India: A Conversation with Rajesh Aggarwal of NIXI”.
Again, the underlying theme being that of “Community”.
Recently we were able to witness the power of what such a regionally-based TLD, such as the DotAsia organization can accomplish when trying to support the community.
May 3, 2008 a cyclone hit Myanmar. At the time of this writing 78,000 are dead with 56,000 still missing.
May 12, 2008, an earthquake hit China’s Sichuan province. At the time of this writing 40,000 are dead with 32,000 still missing.
Shortly after the cyclone hit Myanmar and before the quake hit in China, Edmon Chung and his organization, DotAsia lead the charge of forming “Relief.Asia”. The Relief.Asia website, “… was deployed as a tool and platform to drive awareness and community contribution towards the rebuilding of nature-savaged regions such as Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Sichuan, through the application of Information Technology. Other organizations that jumped in to form a working, cohesive partnership include Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK), The Professional Commons, Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG), intERLab of Asian Institute of Technology, Myanmar Egress, APNIC, and Museum of World Religions, amongst others.”
Through the relationships developed among the various partners, Relief.Asia was able to secure one of the first planes into Myanmar with relief supplies.
As we have seen with Myanmar, politically speaking Myanmar and the US do not have the best of relationships, thus making it difficult for the US to provide relief supplies to Myanmar. Where governments fail in this regard it helps when organizations have relationships within governments, but are not part of a government agency themselves. With that said, DotAsia is not a governmental, or political organization. However, with the establishment of the .asia TLD they have relationships with members of a country’s respective government. I can’t say such relationships helped with Myanmar or Sichuan, but I do know progress towards relief efforts were made due to the relationships established with the various partners of Relief.Asia.
With the development and deployment of regionally-based TLDs on the horizon, I can only wonder if the world has a new avenue for marshalling resources through partnerships to aid in geographically-based relief efforts.
May 21st, 2008
By Chuck Kisselburg
NIXI (National Internet eXchange of India), is the registry for “.inâ€. With offices throughout India NIXI is the meeting point for all ISPs in India. NIXI facilitates the exchange of Internet traffic between peering ISP members. What better way to understand the impact IDNs will have on India than through a conversation with a member of NIXI?
Having just spent a week in New Delhi for the ICANN conference, I was fortunate to spend time in the community. My hotel, NOT one of the recommended hotels, seemed to cater less to those who spoke English and more to those from around India and Southeast Asia. In other words, I heard very little English. Most of those who worked at the hotel spoke very little, to no English. As such I could not help but see how useless today’’s Internet is to a group of people. Now, expand my little microcosm to the world and the number of people who can’t really use today’s Internet is, well, HUGE!
As Director of ICANNWiki.org, I am VERY pleased to have had this conversation with Rajesh Aggarwal, the Additional CEO for NIXI. Rajesh provides insight regarding the impact IDNs will have on one of earth’s most populated countries, India. With 22 “official†languages, and countless local languages and dialects, India stands to benefit greatly from the use of IDNs.
What does having IDNs mean to you?
More than a billion Indians do not understand English. We are going for Indic language operating systems, applications and web content. Having URLs also in the Indian language will be a good step to include for all of these people.
Will IDNs have an impact in your area?
It will generate positive vibes, or feelings, in the sense that Internet administrators are concerned about non-English speaking people.
How might IDNs hinder your geographic region?
There are still issues in typing Indian characters in browsers- this however will be covered by plug-ins. We have to be careful about phishing, etc. as many Indian characters and conjuncts can be confusingly similar. There are multiple ways of writing the same word.
How might IDNs help businesses in your geographic region?
Many small businesses, especially catering to rural areas, may register IDNs and create websites in Indian languages.
Which group will benefit most from IDNs in your area and why?
Registrars will have a new area opening up. Bloggers, Indian language Newspapers, and small businesses will be the first ones to go for these addresses.
Do you foresee any challenges with which applications will be able to support IDNs?
Yes. Operating System and browser issues are still there. In many cases characters are still not represented the way they should be.
How do you hope IDNs are NOT used?
I hope they are not used for purposes of phishing and cyber squatting. We have to be very careful about this.
What is your biggest hope for IDNs to accomplish?
My biggest hope for IDNs is that they generate interest in Indian languages, resulting in the creation of many more websites and blogs in local languages; more than are available today.
Thank you, Rajesh!
March 3rd, 2008
By Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org
Last week I attended T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East, held just north of Miami. The brainchild of Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu the conference was very well attended by domainers, parking firms, registrars and other companies from around the globe. While this is T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s ninth conference, the success of this conference continues to underline the need for organized conferences for this segment of the Internet industry. New to the family is John Epp, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s new Executive Director.
As with my blog after the Domain Roundtable, this conference was made up of a solid group of entrepreneurs.
The format of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to be seminars with industry experts along with healthy amounts of time set aside for networking and developing relationships/partnerships. The conference ended with an auction of domains.
In attending the sessions and talking with people during each of the networking events, I heard a couple of themes:
1). Transparency
2). Development
3). Code of ethics
4). Representation
1). Transparency: There appears to be a growing need within the domainer community for there to be greater transparency with the parking companies. The reason behind this is as Google and Yahoo have driven down the costs associated with advertising clicks, owners of parked domains are, on an average, seeing decreasing revenues on their investments. The only thing this points to are the parking companies and how much money might be staying with these companies. As such parking companies are seeing the need for becoming more transparent regarding costs associated with managing parked domains.
2). Development: Almost every domainer at the conference wishes to develop, where possible, their domains. Realistically it will be difficult for a domainer to develop all of their domains as it takes time and resources to develop even one domain. Think of development as creating and executing a business plan. Also note that while some may think of a domainer as owning huge amounts of domain names, in truth there are domainers present who own a small number. However, everyone sees the value of developing their domains. True, it does increase the value of their domain, but people really want to utilize their domains where they are actually providing value to the end user.
I had the pleasure of talking with quite a few people at this conference and found those in attendance spanned the gamut of domaining and development. On one extreme I talked with one person who is all about domain tasting. He “tastes†anywhere from 35,000 to 40,000 domains a day. On the other extreme a former CEO, who has a small portfolio of domains, wishes to create a full blown business with each domain. With the exception of the one domain taster in attendance, everyone wanted to develop their domains as much as possible. I also heard LOUD AND CLEAR that people are really against the concept and practice of domain tasting.
3). Code of ethics: As this community continues to evolve, domainers, and the organizations that support them, feel they have been tainted by the activity of a minority, and that deals with “tastingâ€, “kiting†and “cybersquattingâ€. There is a strong current to help further define this community through the establishment of standards as well as a code of ethics. This means that not only should there be a code of ethics for domainers, there should also be a code of ethics for registrars and parking companies, with the goal being to set the standard as well as weed out those who don’t “pass the gradeâ€.
4). Representation: There is a strong undercurrent that those of this community are not listened to by ICANN. When ever I ask a simple question about this I can usually get blasted with a cadre of examples. You can tell the frustration level is quite high. There is work to be done, but I strongly feel that with open communication ICANN and the domainer community can work together. Aside from ICANNWiki being able to provide a platform for communication among those who fall within the overall ICANN community, the Internet Commerce Association, or the ICA, has gained heavy support from the various groups attending T.R.A.F.F.I.C. to be the official association to work with ICANN to ensure the domainer community is represented and heard. Personally speaking, I see the need for ICANN to have representation at each of these domainer conferences as this can only help continue the conversations and mutual education.
For those reading this blog who don’t live within the domainer’s world, here are a couple of blogs to view:
Frager Factor
Conceptualist.com
Seven Mile
Ron Jackson’s Blog
Whizzbangsblog.com
Rick’s blog
Jay Westerdal’s blog
The keynote speaker to the conference was Steve Forbes. Steve’s speech centered around the entrepreneurial spirit and how such spirit created turbulence over the centuries, however, each time such entrepreneurs help define the industry. The domainer community is in such a space where they are working in a world that is still very young, helping to create and shape the industry.
One of the “Ah-Ha†moments for me was hearing where one organization, who has a sizeable domain portfolio, found it best to “park†their domains due to the “traditional†way the financial world views the domainer world. In other words, investors don’t look at the “value†of what developed domains can bring. Instead investors look at the historical data of what domains have sold for as well as what money the domains are bringing in today. Thus, when working with the financial world, it appears best to park domains instead of develop the domain.
As mentioned earlier, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to grow, thus showing the need for such events. It was mentioned today that Fabulous.com will be the first organization to be a licensee of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and is now slated to hold a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Australia in November of 2008.
October 17th, 2007
By Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org
While at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle last month I was listening to someone from Canada talk about ccTLDs and how the .ca extension has grown in adoption over the years. While ccTLDs have been most heavily adopted in the UK and Germany, this gentleman was pleased to see how .ca was being adopted within his country. The main reason for such adoption is due to the amount of marketing that went into .ca awareness.
What does that really mean? Community? Why is it important and why we (the collective “weâ€) have responsibility for our communities.
Last week I was in Whistler for a week. Being an American, when I use the net I rarely see .us used anywhere. Instead I am personally used to using .com, .net, .org, .gov and .fm. So, while on this trip to the north I thought this would be a good opportunity to “notice†and be “aware†of .ca.
The social networking enthusiast that I am, I am not one who is shy when talking with people. Yes, Whistler caters to a world-wide clientele of all economic strata. In order to get a feel for .ca awareness I talked with only those who were local to the village. I talked with six people, all of which were from various backgrounds and ages. Three were in the 20-30 year age range while the other three where in the 40-60 age range.
What I found were those in the older age range pretty much relied on .com for all of their needs, except for one individual whose visits to the Internet were primarily sports related. If sports related, it was all .ca for this person. Else, everyone within the older age group felt that if they landed on a .ca site it was because the .com for that domain name had been taken by some other organization.
As for the younger age group, the message was consistent. If they were looking for something they knew was a Canadian company they would always start with .ca, even if they were searching for the URL. If an organization they were looking for were more global in nature, they knew to look for .com. All voiced that similar opinion very matter-of-factly, as if, “Why would it be anything else?â€.
When looking around I found the following:
When watching a baseball game between Baltimore and Toronto, hosted in Toronto, I saw advertisements for Expeidia.ca and Toyota.ca. Yet on one of the signs in Toronto’s Rogers Centre ballpark was www.bluejays.com. When going to that site the URL actually resolves to http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=tor. Just as I thought, the “Blue Jays†team is a franchise of the Major League Baseball; an American organization.
Other sites I noticed were:
www.vancouver-2010.com (saw printed on material, but while still under construction, www.vancouver-2010.ca works well.)
www.whistler.com (for visitors)
www.whistler.ca (for locals)
www.vancouver.com (for visitors)
www.vancouver.ca (for locals)
www.Translink.bc.ca (local Vancouver transit network)
www.BCFerries.com (local BC ferry system, however when using my trusty browser I see they also have www.BCFerries.ca.)
www.shaw.ca (Canadian cable provider. I found it interesting they use ONLY the .ca extension.)
I would also see “.ca†this and “.com†that on various delivery trucks. From my perspective, as a casual viewer, there was no rhyme or reason. As this world continues to shrink, think of what people face as they trot the globe!
My favorite coffee house in the village is, what I thought was a Canadian enterprise only. True, they are headquartered in Canada, but they also have franchises in the UAE, China and Japan. Perfect for localization of sites, right? Nope. .com all the way.
Being in Whistler I thought I would head to Panasonic’s site as they are one of the sponsors for the 2010 Olympics that are to be held in Vancouver and Whistler. Here you have this huge, global company, but sure enough I found site localization for MANY countries. My favorites inclue:
Panasonic-Canada (http://panasonic.ca/)
Panasonic-Middle East (http://panasonic.ae/PMM/english/home.aspx)
Panasonic-China (http://panasonic.cn/)
Panasonic-Australia (http://panasonic.com.au/)
In talking with a person from the UK who’s job used to include localizing various sites for his organization’s international audience, commented that some people who were savvy about the site localization would understand that such localized sites would sell products based on their target country’s currency system. What this meant is they were finding some people would go to the localized site that offered the best exchange rate when purchasing their goods, such as computer systems. Talk about savvy bargain hunting! Companies, however, are becoming savvy to this practice and are focusing the purchase price based on the currency to either where the product is being shipped or the billing location of your credit card.
What I thought was nice, however, is when I would open up my browser, my Google home page allowed for searching in Canada only, if I so desired. When going to Google directly, it was no longer “Google†but “Google Canadaâ€. Personally I thought that was a nice touch. I felt that it catered to me, giving me options I did not have previously. Somehow I felt like part of the Canadian “cliqueâ€. Eh?
Thinking back to my conversation with the person from Canada at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle, saying that .ca has grown due to a rather large advertising effort, I couldn’t help but wonder who such advertisement was targeted towards, locals or organizations?
So, what does all of this mean? To me localization is, and will continue to be a mixed bag for locals and visitors alike. However, such localization helps foster community. Within every community you will find people who, on one side think of “What’s in it for me†while those on the other side will make decisions based on what’s right for the community; hence community responsibility.
When talking with the Whistler locals, especially those in the younger age group who were very familiar with .ca, you could tell there was a sense of pride in how they talked. From my perspective I would look at this as an opportunity to gain a better sense of the country I was visiting. I also found I had a greater appreciation for organizations that take that extra step to do what they didn’t have to do and that was to spend the time and money for site localization for the countries they serve.
Community responsibility. How do you foster community responsibility? Developing and growing communities is never easy. However, making a sustained effort is necessary. DotAsia will soon be launching the .asia TLD. Through their Pioneer Domains Program, they are working to have organizations come together with their proposals for how they will develop domain names under the .asia TLD, thus helping to form the .asia community. We should all carefully watch how the .asia community unfolds as we may find ourselves watching the creation of the mold for launching new communities in the future.
September 21st, 2007
In Paris this week Vinton Cerf, Father of the Internet, said Sunday that he feared the network’s addressing system would break down if “political gambits” by international groups or national agencies interfere with plans to expand the languages used in domain names. Welcome to the highly complex politics centered around the United Nations.At the first session ever of the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum, (IGF), Cerf said national interests had surfaced in recent weeks that would change the process for “internationalizing” Internet addresses.
Cerf noted that ICANN has moved forward on using non- Latin characters in domain names, but several large movers and shakers prefer to take another direction.
“My concern is the potential for suddenly choosing another path after ICANN has already put in six years of work on this,” said Cerf,. “Either they will fail, or they will break the Internet,†or at least Cerf vision of the Internet.
At the heart of the latest split is the issue of allowing non-Western characters to be used in Internet addresses. At present, only 37 characters can be used; ICANN is gradually implementing a plan that would expand that set to tens of thousands of characters from all of the world’s languages.
Already, several Asian character sets have been approved, but ICANN has not signed off on a system for using international symbols for the part of the Internet address that represents the top-level domain, such as .com or .net or .jp.
Cerf and other ICANN officials say that what they see as a careful and considered approach is being construed by others as stalling (wonder where they got that idea) or an attempt to undermine the use of foreign, non-English characters.
Specific-language interest groups may be “willing to accept a system that works in Country X and aren’t worried that it won’t work in Country Y,” he said. The current policies of China, or a North Korea, would be the best example.
When that happens, the uniformity of the Internet addressing system - the mechanism that allows one computer to reliably find another anywhere on the network - breaks down and fractures into separate networks that can no longer universally communicate, said Cerf.
For more information about what’s going on here and in the ICANN community, go to http://www.ICANNwiki.com and participate.
October 31st, 2006
Danton (Dan) Mendell of ICANNwiki and Neutral Space, Inc.
Well, my good friend Ray King of AboutUs and past member of the SnapNames team has been pulling my chain for quite a while to come over full time and work on ICANNWiki. He wanted to spend more time with AboutUs while dancing around the Wiki and ICANN community. Neutral Space is the entity that will House ICANNWiki and a couple other projects I have in mind. Its mission is to more thoroughly explore Web 2.0 collaborative activities and of course promote the wiki space and it’s benefits. I’d like to tell you more, but that could someday be the subject of another story all its own.
Well, after a lot of meetings and quite a bit of refreshments, fighting off Ray’s 2 yappy dogs from nipping at my legs, I’ve decided to take the plunge and run with it. So I just left my day job as CEO of a technology marketing support company, and as such, I guess I’m committed now to the ICANNwiki space. I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the business of all things ICANN and meeting all those caricature faced people in Brazil this December.
I’m going to need a lot of your support getting up to speed with what ICANNWiki in order to figure out what really needs to be done, in what order, and where we need to take ICANNWiki so it can keep functioning successfully as a center of with the ICANN community. I would really appreciate it if any of you out there have any ideas or opinions, please contact me through the wiki or use:
dan AT NeutralSpace DOT com.
For more information about the ICANN community, go to http://www.ICANNwiki.com
October 1st, 2006