At today’s 3rd day of the 33rd public ICANN meeting in Cairo, Dirk Krischenowski, Founder and CEO of dotBERLIN, announced the founding of a coalition of applicants for city Top-Level Domains. The group which consists of the initiatives from Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, New York City and Paris, is going to represent the common interests of its members within ICANN and work towards the development of best practices with regard to the governance of the new name spaces. As of yet, the future status of the group in the ICANN structure has not been defined. As a first step, the group will submit comments to the Draft Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs. In particular, the proposed schedule, the fees and the evaluation system are being critized by the cityTLDs group.
