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Kiwi Geeks Seek Domain
Codeine writes "A group of professional Internet engineers and technicians from New Zealand are following the published procedure to obtain the delegation of GEEK.NZ from the NZ Domain Name Commissioner (DNC). If successful, GEEK.NZ would be New Zealand's twelfth second-level domain."
Like the world gives a crap about 1/2 of the US centric stories posted here.
How hard would it have been for you to just ignore the story? It's not like they can satisfy 100% of readers 100% of the time. I personally found it to be interesting. Also, you don't really speak for all of Slashdot.
slashdot!=valid HTML
"One of the press releases on the linked page answers 'why?'."
You know, some people bang their heads on the wall when they see bad code. Others get really frustrated when they see bad design, or bad grammar, or any number of things.
I get frustrated when I see a project whose founders obviously think is "cool," but which completely fails to answer the question "Why should I care?"
Obviously, you found that answer, and you certainly did better than I did.
I read the Slashdot summary, which completely failed to answer the question "Why should I care?" Then I clicked on the link, which also completely failed to answer that question. It's really frustrating to see the pertinent information on the site buried in a freakin' press release that very few people will ever read. (I mean, I'm guessing you clicked on the press release as sort of a last resort, and it's certainly not the place where most people would go to find out why this project is cool.)
The lesson I would like other geeks to learn from this article is damn, people, if you're doing something cool, put it in bold type on your front page! Say "We are here because we want to kick some ass. We're going to kick the ass of the domain name commissioner because we want to try out the latest cool geek technologies and this is the best way for us to do it! Hey, JOIN US! Help us out!"
The first rule of sales is that you have to convince the prospect that your product matters. This holds true whether you're selling encyclopedias door-to-door or whether you're trying to convince your boss to fund the purchase of new server equipment! Unfortunately, geeks have this tendency to throw out facts and just hope that people make the connection between those facts and their product being awesome. It really comes to light in a situation like this, where 95% of the audience doesn't know anything about New Zealand's domain structure or why a new second-level domain is a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, AWESOME achievement! That's why almost all of the posts here have been either "Huh?" or "Why should I care?"
As much as you may hate sales; as much as you want to believe that the facts will speak for themselves... take this article and the responses to it as a reason why they won't. Next time you're trying to convince someone that they absolutely should go with Linux, or that they absolutely, without a doubt, should use this piece of awesome software for their projects, answer the question that they will always think of first: "Why should I care?" If you can answer that, you've won half the battle.
If you can't answer that, and you try to just throw out facts and hope that they speak for themselves, you'll get the same response that these guys got...
"Huh?"
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Recently .bank.nz was put through the aproval process for the 2nd time, and failed to reach the 70% support required. Basically I see it being totally pointless to have a .bank.nz tld as there are only about 10 different banks in NZ. (and they all have the relevant .co.nz TLD)
:)
But, finally a tld comes out that is worth supporting, and fits me perfectly. And reading through all the latest postings on the InternetNZ mailing list, I think it has a good chance of getting put through. I am definately voting for it, though I am a bit biased as I just want a.geek.nz for an IRC host
Some useful links, which may or may not be redundant:
Outline of the process
More info
NZ Registry Services
All in all its a pretty good time for domain names in NZ, with our new Shared Registry System (SRS) just coming online last Saturday. Finally some competition in NZ for domain registrations.
well, it's worth noting in the grandparent poster's defense that to the average yankee geek, the procurement of a second level domain is a matter of filling out an online form and paying a small(ish) annual fee. Even many country codes such as .tv and .cx offer quite a bit of freedom in registering second level domains. I think (and this is my interpretation of the preceding posts) his gripe was that there should have been some mention that obtaining a second second level domain under .nz is like getting one under .uk or .ca or, in other words, quite like getting a new top level domain instated.
Guys. This was a response to some clown saying how trivial NZ news is. It's a relevant post now divorced from the parent by the fact it was modded as a troll.
Looks bad out of context.