For this year‘s geoTLD offsite meeting the Galician top-level domain operator Asociación PuntoGal generously invited the geoTLD.group to Santiago de Compostela at the north-western tip of Spain. A detailed summary of the meeting that was held from 11 Sep to 13 Sep 2019 at the Abanca Social Center is also availaible in Galician language at the PuntoGal website (here).
Our two and a half-day meeting which was attended by 19 geoTLD managers from around the globe including .nyc, .sydney, .paris as well as the Catalan .ca and the Basque .eus and many other European TLDs.
After finishing the morning session which was attended by Digital Society Director Rosa Méndez Calvo from AMTEGA (Technology Modernization Agency, Galician Government) with topics like finance, communication and strategy we were asked by Xosé Sánchez Bugallo, the Mayor of Santiago de Compostela, to visit his office. In his welcome speech he said:
“In a globalized world, the particular characteristics of the different territories are becoming more important. Through the .gal domain we increase the presence on the internet of our language, of our culture, of our customs and traditions. Certain unique elements gain more value and the small one can become the big one.”
For marketing, the most important topic of this meeting we then had the whole afternoon and early evening. The .berlin registry started with a statistical overview of the global domain name market and the development of the cityTLDs and regionTLD in particular. This was followed by a longer marketing brainstorming session lead by .wien and a further formation of a marketing subgroup with the geoTLD group. Other topics were recent publication, events, working with ccTLDs and governments and premium names of course.
Mixed with the sessions we had interesting presentations which made the afternoon a real entertainment too:
- .swiss presented its latest developments for a country-wide adoption of the swissness domain.
- .eus showed the effects of a price promotion and a media campaign.
- .bzh gave an overview of five years in the market and how it will motivate 20k+ people to sign a petition for an official Brittany emoticon.
- The newly formed Denic Services informed about its escrow services, its global DNS service and ID4me, a new and promising digital identity standard.
Denic Services gratefully sponsored also the evening with a wonderful dinner at a Galician restaurant with authentic local food choices.
The Friday was dedicated to ICANN related topics and started with a domain name industry outlook by .berlin which revealed opportunities for geoTLDs but also threats to our industry in general.
Further agenda points were ePDP 1st and 2nd Phase, Unified Data Access Model, domain-abuse, DAAR, next round (WT 1-4), geonames (WT5), Consumer Protection Regulation (CPC), Registry Audits, Letter of Credit, RDAP, CZDS and the preparation for the next ICANN meeting in Montreal.