In an article published on CircleID this afternoon, Tony Kirsch, Head of Global Consulting at ARI Registry Services, announced the TLD Operator Webinar. According to the webinar website, the purpose of the webinar is to “provide all new TLD applicants with an opportunity to share their experiences, learn from each other and focus on the commercial realities of operating a TLD – away from the confines of ICANN, policy or technical discussions.”
I think this is a great concept. All of the companies that operate new gTLD domain names need to ensure that the general public knows about the new domain names. Many of the companies have learnings that could help other companies, and they could work in coopetition for the most part. The exception would be companies operating very similar strings, but for the most part, a company selling .pizza domain names isn’t really competing with a company selling .christmas domain names.
Announced speakers/presenters include the following:
- Jeff Davidoff (CMO – Donuts LLC)
- John Berard (CEO – .sucks TLD)
- Andrew Norman (Manager, Digital Customer Experience – Monash University)
- Jeff Sass (CMO – .club TLD)
- Katrin Ohlmer (MD – .berlin TLD)
- George Pongas (GM – .sydney TLD)
The webinar will be held on June 30th, and additional details about the event can be found within the CircleID article and on the webinar website, TLDOperator.help. There is no cost to attend the event, but it is apparently only open to people who work for a TLD operator or TLD applicant, or an advisor working on behalf of a company in that space. I would have liked to listen in to hear what was discussed, but that doesn’t seem possible. Advance registration is required to attend the event.