City Council Testimony

Thomas Lowenhaupt, Founder and Director, Connecting.nyc Inc.

-- connectingnyc.org --

Innovation and Jobs

December 16, 2009

Council Members…

Thank you for providing this opportunity to testify on this important

question.

Gainful employment is a vital part of life. Cities are the primary place where
new jobs are created. New Yorkers need good jobs and innovation is the
path to their creation.

Like most New Yorkers I work in the digital realm, researching, creating
and sharing information. Over the past several years my involvement has
centered on the creation of a new concept, City Top Level Domains or City-
TLDs.

As you are probably aware, DoITT has issued a Request for Proposals
seeking a partner to help develop the .nyc TLD. (To clarify - .nyc is like
.com, .org, .edu, or .gov but just for New York City.)

DoITT’s RFP requires two separate proposals from respondents: one for the
operation of .nyc following the Standard Model – like .com. And a second
proposal following what’s called the Community Model.

The concept of the Community Model was initiated here in New York City
through an Internet Empowerment Resolution, passed by a Queens
community board in 2001. It’s the model we at Connecting.nyc follow.

One of the key benefits of the Community Model is its view of .nyc as
infrastructure for a digital era. If thoughtfully and carefully developed, .nyc
will create an environment from which innovation and jobs will emerge.

Here are a few examples:

 dotNeighborhoods – For the past year we have been working to see
that the city’s neighborhood names are set aside to serve local
residents. Just this past Monday, the Hunter College Urban Affairs
Workshop provided additional details on the allocation and
development of neighborhood names – names such as Harlem.nyc,
ParkSlope.nyc, GreenwichVillage.nyc. If the neighborhood names are
carefully developed they will provide local information and
communication and invigorate civic life. AND they will provide
dozens or perhaps even hundreds or technology, journalism, and
advertising jobs for city residents.

 Streets and Monuments – We have developed a Cyber Land Use Plan

that includes assigning domain names to the city’s streets and
monuments. This will enable the creation of a more tourist friendly
city and create jobs for GIS specialists, advertising sales
professionals, information designers, and programmers who will add
maps and local information to vitalize street domain names.

 Gateways – Names such as Finance.nyc, Fashion.nyc, and

Tourism.nyc can provide the basis for organizing and innovating in
our important industries. For example, Finance.nyc can provide an
organizing center where those in finance can locate one another and
develop new products and ideas. Database designers, social network
designers, sociologists, programmers and entrepreneurs would be part
of enterprises that develop these Gateway names.

 Portal Names – These might be thought of as “yellow page” names,

those 500 names such as bars, restaurants, hardware, florists, etc. that
provided valuable information during an earlier era. If reserved and
thoughtfully developed these names could provide the source of
hundreds of good jobs – programming, information design,
advertising sales jobs.

 Tagging City Resources – Giving every object in the city a

programmer-friendly domain name will facilitate innovation for
decades to come. For example, if we give domain names to every curb
cut, every bus stop, every building and movie theatre in the city,
programmers can readily pull in different name-sets and plot
accessible routes from home to movie theatre for those using
 wheelchairs. Good public policy that leads to assigning a digital
naming structure is an innovation that will create a programmer
friendly city that will pay back over and over again. And incidentally,
such global tagging will also provide enormous financial savings in
city administration.

These are just a few of the many benefits that will arise from good public
policy that fosters the creation of a .nyc TLD based on the Community
Model.

We recommend that three actions be taken to advance technology-based

entrepreneurship and innovation:

1. Establish good public policy and oversight for the development of

the .nyc TLD to assure that the best Community Model is selected.

2. Enable city businesses to acquire .nyc domain names on city

government websites. So that when someone seeks a city license for a
new business, they will be able to get a good .nyc domain name for
that new enterprise.

3. Create an atmosphere that will enable New York City to take the
global lead in developing city TLDs. This should include encouraging
the development of university based interdisciplinary studies
combining social, technology, and public policy programs, with
should have a special focus on privacy and security. As city-TLDs
take hold, and with our global presence as the UN headquarters city,
New York based consultants and developers can guide the world’s
great cities in creating Community Model city TLDs. Princeton
University’s Center for Information Technology Policy offers the best
example that I’ve seen for this type of focused development.

Innovation and jobs are but one of the many advantages that will arrive with
the adoption of the .nyc based on the Community Model. I urge the city
council and the mayor to cooperate in creating public policy and the
necessary investment to develop this basic infrastructure for the digital era
we are entering.

Thank you.