Jothan Frakes is co-founder of NamesCon and the DomainFest conference event series and is a Senior Executive with over 20 years of experience in leadership roles within the domain name industry and over 25 years working with technology companies. Prior to being one of the founders of NamesCon, Jothan recently provided subject matter resourcing to KPMG for the technical / financial evaluation process of new TLDs. He is a member of the San Francisco Internet Society, and is a trusted, respected, and tenured participant within the ICANN Community, and has participated in many ICANN working groups within such areas a High Security TLDs, Security and Stability (SSAC) review of Public Suffixes, Morality and Public Interest, and the Vertical Integration between registry and registrar. Jothan is a consultant and subject matter resource on the domain name industry, and is a contributing volunteer with the Mozilla Foundation, working with TLD registry operators to keep the Public Suffix List and IDN Whitelists up to date. Prior to leaving the company in March of 2010, Jothan was the Chief Operating Officer for Minds + Machines, where he played a strategic role in shaping a successful and leading brand in the new TLD process. Formerly Jothan was a Registry Liason for the ICANN accredited registrar Moniker, and helped to launch and create the wildly successful DomainFest conference series for Domain Sponsor and Oversee.net. Jothan has also served as a senior manager at Verisign Naming and Directory Services, as Vice President at Name Intelligence, operators of http://whois.sc and Domain Tools. Jothan founded and produced the 2005 and 2006 Domain Roundtable Conferences in Seattle. Jothan is a member of the ISOC, a frequent contributor to CircleID and ICANNWatch, is inventor on some interesting domain technology use. Jothan has presented at a number of conferences and events, and frequently performs trainings for companies on the domain name system. He has been a speaker at NamesCon, NewDomains.org, DomainFest, as well as at CENTR meetings, ICANNStudienKreis, DENIC technical meetings, and a number of other domain name conferences. and moderates domain industry panels at ICANN meetings, and Targeted TRAFFIC conferences. He is also a respected contributor to The DNJournal State of the industry, Domain Name News, Domain Name Wire, and CircleID articles. Jothan is listed as co-inventor on a number of domain name related technologies for Verisign and Oracle that are listed at the US Patent and Trademark Office. He resides in Seattle, Washington and donates time to social works there locally when not with his family. Jothan's thoughts and insights shared with CircleID are his thoughts and Opinions and not necessarily those of his employer, clients, or customers.