During the regional ICANN meeting in Amsterdam earlier this year there was a “side meeting” held by several companies in the domain name industry. The objective? To work on some form of strategy for marketing and education around the domain name industry and domains in general.
The meeting was organised by Google‘s new TLD team, but there was a broad cross-section of both existing registry operators, new TLD applicants, registrars and others present.
A couple of days ago a very basic website for the nascent organisation was launched using the domain whatdomain.org
The organisation’s aims are pretty clear:
Our intention is to establish an organization that will act as an advocate for the global domain name industry and enhance the domain name business environment.
As an example of our efforts our first priority is to educate Internet users around the world about the new general top level domains that will be released through ICANN’s New gTLD Program. The Internet landscape is changing and research shows that Internet users are unaware of these changes and may be confused by new gTLDs. We are working together to educate and prepare users for these changes to support the success of these new top level domains.
And who should join?
Any organization that is engaged in the business of administering, distributing, selling, launching, or consulting with respect to Internet domain names is encouraged to participate. If you are unsure what level your organization should participate, go ahead and submit your information and we will work with you to help you decide.
More information is on the site
