The GeoTLD Group’s annual meeting was held in Cologne on 11 and 12 September. The meeting was also attended by the.cat, .bzh, .paris, .amsterdam, .nl, .eus, .gal, .wien, .hamburg, .berlin, .denic, .fsl and .alsace domains, to name a few, as well as the main registrars.
The meeting was organised by ECO.de, a German association representing several digital organisations and enterprises, to ensure a sustainable, responsible and safe digital transformation.
Roger Serra and Beatriz Guzmán, from the .cat Foundation, an Enterprise in charge of managing the .barcelona domain, was commissioned with sharing the main initiatives planned for the city’s domain. An opportunity to present the Elmeuclubesportiu.barcelona project to other city domains and invite them to create local-digitalisation projects.
Common strategies were also established during the GeoTLD meetring, on issues such as the NIS2 Directive and co-marketing, allowing us to discover experiences of other city domains which could be used as an inspiration for new initiatives for the .barcelona domain.
Tag: geoTLD group
What are we going to do in 2023?
As you know, the .barcelona domain forms part of the GeoTLD Group, an international non-profit organisation which represents the interests of top-level geographical domains identifying a city, a region, a language or a culture. This helps us work together with other domains with similar needs and characteristics and achieve improvements for our users.
Through the GeoTLD Group we’ll be working in 2023 to include domains such as .barcelona in the domains offered by WordPress, enabling websites created with this platform to use the domain which suits them best, according to their characteristics.
At the same time, Fundació.cat, the organisation which manages the .barcelona domain, forms part of the negotiating team with ICANN to include legal provisions in the contracts between domain registers and the domain registration companies that sell these domain, to be able to adopt measures against DNS abuse and ensure better security for users.
Finally, action is also planned through the GeoTLD Group this year to improve the universal acceptance of domains. At present there are still many e-commerce sites which don’t accept characters outside of the ASCII alphabet (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). This means that some websites still don’t accept non-English characters such as the Ç or the L·L. Similarly, these sites do not recognise domains with more than five letters. This issue directly affects domains such as .barcelona, .madrid, .amsterdam and others. In order to improve universal acceptance for domains, the GeoTLD Group are planning a series of promotional measures in this area and some meetings and technical training days for these websites.
The geoTLD group welcomes .miami and .boston
The geoTLD group came together for a virtual meeting on 10 February, enabling members to get up to date with the latest in the sector and draft the activity and management plan for 2022. The group also used the session to welcome the new domains of .miami and .boston, the two newcomers bringing the number of geoTLD members around the world to 37.The meeting was also a chance for geoTLDs to prepare for the upcoming ICANN 73, an open virtual gathering to be held from 7 to 10 March.
But how relevant are these meetings for internet users? To answer this, we should take a look at the bodies mentioned and how important each one is.
- The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers): a non-profit corporation to benefit the public, with participants from all over the world. This body manages the assignation of domain names and addresses for the IP protocol.
- Domain Name System (DNS): all internet domains operate with the DNS. Users access information online using domain names rather than IP addresses because it is much easier to remember the name of a website than a ten-digit number.
One of the most common issues relating to the security and stability of DNS is abuse. Malicious practice is based on registering domains which make reference to people, companies or recognised brands with the intention of the targeted party paying out money to get their domain back.
- geoTLD (Geographic Top-Level Domain): one initiative by the ICANN was to set up top-level domains. These include geoTLDs, a type of high-level domain to serve and represent geographical areas, languages or cultures. They includes geographical names such as .barcelona; geographical indicators such as .nyc (New York City) and names of geographical origin, such as .cat. GeoTLDs also allow for the use of characters which are unique to each language, such as Arabic or Chinese symbols.
The .barcelona domain joins the international geoTLD group
Thanks to its participation in this association, the .barcelona domain is better represented in the sector and will be able to exchange experiences and generate transnational projects with other geographical domains.
By becoming one of the 37 members of the geoTLD group in the spring this year, the .barcelona domain forms part of a community of a million active top-level geographical domains which promote the digital identity of regions, languages, cultures and nearly 70 member cities on the internet. The most significant member cities are .berlin, .paris, .london, .tokyo and .madrid, which also joined recently.
This international non-governmental and non-profit association works in the interests of geographical domains as a way of promoting local identities, positively disseminating and sharing their values. It includes governments, organisations, businesses and associations from all around the globe. Chaired by Catalonia’s Nacho Amadoz, head of the Fundació.cat, the geoTLP group is also a hub for the exchange of knowledge, communication and marketing materials and research projects.
This working group is also present in the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an organisation working to coordinate domains at a global level.
Visit the specific .barcelona domain page on the geoTLD website.