The first Registration Operations Association Workshop took place on Thursday, 16 October 2014, at the Los Angeles Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel. I’d like to thank the 64 people that took the time to attend and participate in the discussion, both in-person and remote.

I started the workshop with an introduction to some of the technical challenges being faced by the domain registration industry. Additional challenges were described by Thomas Stocking of Gandi.net, Tobias Sattler of United Domains and Peter Larsen of Larsen Data ApS, and James Gould of Verisign. After discussing the challenges, we had an opportunity to consider proposals for organization presented by John Levine of Standcore LLC, Thomas Rickert of eco, and Adam Newman of IEEE-ISTO. The remainder of the morning was spent discussing those proposals and other options for creating a forum in which all interested members of our community could meet for face-to-face discussions. I’m very happy to report that we reached consensus on an approach.

Recognizing that no single association represents all interested parties, the group discussed options for low-overhead ways of bringing existing communities of interest together. A proposal was made to hold periodic public workshops coincident with regular meetings of organizations like ICANN or the IETF. Multiple attendees voiced support for this proposal.

Some general principles were identified in the ensuing discussion. The workshops would be open to all interested parties and agendas would be determined by community interest. A limited secretariat function would be needed for administrative support. Sponsors could support the secretariat to facilitate the workshops and the work in between them.

We have a number of tasks to complete before the next “Registration Operations Workshop” can be held. Discussion is needed, and we agreed to use an existing mailing list to hold that discussion. The list name is [email protected]. Note that you must be subscribed to the list to post and to view the list archives. Subscription information can be found on the regops mailing list web site, http://nlnetlabs.nl/mailman/listinfo/regops.

Which of the proposed items should we first focus on, and how do we prioritize these and new items?

• What topics should we discuss?
• Where and when should we meet?
• What kind of secretariat support do we need? How much does it cost?
• Are sponsors available to cover the cost of the secretariat and workshop expenses?

Join your colleagues in addressing the community’s operational challenges by subscribing to the regops mailing list. Verisign looks forward to working with the global registration operations community and invites co-sponsors for two possible workshops in 2015.