The sun has got its hat on and Madrid is all set to welcome the GDD fraternity in the next week. Unlike ICANN’s policy forums, the GDD Summit majorly focuses on addressing and seeking solutions for issues relevant to our businesses, as well as networking with and learning from real-life experiences of other players in our industry.
We’ve seen a lot of movement in the industry since the last ICANN meeting – be it ICANN’s decision of enabling registries and registrars to easily opt-out of WHOIS-related contractual provisions when they clash with local laws, or ICANN trying to provide failover paths to dot-brand TLDs by testing emergency back-end registry operator systems. Most importantly, the GDD Summit provides the perfect mix of time, place and people for engaging in one-on-one discussions with the ICANN staff and getting more clarity on the “how”, “why” and “what next” aspects of things.
As far as the New gTLD namespace is concerned, a recent ICANN-commissioned report highlighted that the lack of support for New gTLDs and IDNs is leading to the world economy facing a loss of almost $10 billion of annual revenue. Despite the fact that New gTLDs have been around for more than a decade now, the lack of awareness and a low adoption rate for New gTLDs still continues to prevent them from flourishing.
This is an interesting time for players in the Domain Name industry to predict and strategize their business moves; and what could be a better conference than the ICANN GDD Summit to indulge in stimulating conversations like these! Eeshaan Satwalekar and Priyanka Frias will be attending the summit. If you’re planning to attend, click here to schedule a meeting with us.
See you in Madrid!
