Stephane Van Gelder

The ICANN Paris meeting week was a lot of work… but there were also some great opportunities to relax, such as the Gala event held at the majestic Paris town hall.

Well actually, that should read: what a year. Because building up to an ICANN meeting taking place in your home town is an unbelievable amount of work and means months of preparation and planning.

Or at least it has for us. INDOM was heavily involved in the meeting, from being part of the organizing committee at Agifem to setting up the first-ever ICANN meeting shuttle service.

We also worked hand-in-hand with ICANN during the meeting to provide a French translation of the meeting newsletters that come out every day during the actual ICANN meeting week. This was also a first, as the daily newsletters weren't available in French before.

Manning a booth was also an intense task. That was a first for INDOM at an ICANN meeting and proved to be very enriching in terms of the quality of contacts we were able to establish.

In fact, the meeting as a whole was a runaway success and we're proud to have been a part of that. ICANN VP Paul Levins summarized the Paris meeting at its close, just prior to the final Board meeting and its historic vote.

Several proposals for new gTLDs were highlighted in Paris, during the EGENI 2008 meeting just before this week's ICANN meeting. Among the new suffixes that could see the light of day there's a .SPORT, a .QUEBEC, a .MED and even a .NAI for "North American Indigenous", i.e. North America's native Indians.

The next few days are going to be crazy. The "Paris Internet Week" is starting. There's a Domainer event, ISOC France's annual domain name convention "EGENI" (on Friday June 20th) and then the main event: the Paris ICANN meeting from Sunday June 22nd to the following Thursday.

Hectic doesn't quite cover what this coming week is going to be like for us at INDOM. But this is the first time that ICANN has come to Paris for one of its 3-a-year international meetings and we're determined to make it an event to remember. In fact, everyone who's been involved in setting up and organizing this meeting (INDOM's on the board of local organizer AGIFEM) has worked tirelessly to make it a success.

The Internet is an extremely hot topic in France at the moment and I can almost guarantee that seasoned ICANN meeting participants will leave Paris in a week's time impressed. There's a lot going on, including a few new initiatives. One that we're particularly proud of is the "Official Shuttle Service" we've put together with ICANN for Paris. This is a first for an ICANN meeting: minibuses will be parked outside the hotel carrying INDOM and ICANN branding and ready to take meeting attendants to selected must-see places in Paris.

It's been an unbelievable amount of work to set this up and as a first attempt, there's bound to be a few kinks remaining to iron out. But if you're in Paris next week, go on and give it a try. Take an hour off work and let one of the shuttles whisk you away to Saint-Germain or Notre-Dame or a number of other places you've always wanted to visit.

Welcome to Paris.

ICANN has responded to .MOBI and .COOP's request to release single character domains. A letter written to both registries states that no significant issues were found and that they will therefore now be referred to the ICANN Board for approval.

The letter sent to .COOP also confirms that their request to be able to release 2-character domains has now been approved.

Haaretz.com's reports of the sale of israel.com for a whopping $5.88 million, was apparently erroneous. When I reported on this, I argued that the sale was evidence of the continued health of the secondary market. Especially in the light of the failed sale of america.com, which received a highest bid of $1.7 million. As good as that number was, it was still below the domain's reserve price.

The israel.com debacle, with a message being posted below Haaretz.com's report as a comment, supposedly from the VP of EURO RSCG (but is there any way to verify that), saying the domain is in fact still for sale, also shows how hard it is to really know how much domains are sold for.

There's clearly a great deal of interest around "country" domains at the moment. No doubt we'll be hearing about israel.com and america.com again soon.