Knowledge Wave speakers become NZ cyber citizens

Speakers in New Zealand for the Knowledge Wave conference will return home with some virtual New Zealand real estate in tow - and a possible identity crisis!

Wellington based global domain name registration company www.Pdom.com is gifting all speakers at the knowledge wave conference in Auckland this week their own piece of NZ cyberspace - a.co.nz domain name based on their name eg www.PaulKeating.co.nz.

Pdom CEO Robert Wiles who is attending the conference, said gifting domain names is a very personal way of presenting New Zealand as a country of innovators and entrepreneurs keen to compete in the global market place.

“Global growth in personal domain name registration means people that can’t find their preferred name as a dot com and are turning to other country extensions to secure the name they want,” said Mr Wiles.

“For example there are over 40,000 Mary Smiths in the world so www.MarySmith.com is long gone, but MarySmith.co.nz is still available. People will look to New Zealand to register their preferred personal domain names as virtually all the world’s common first names and surnames are already registered as .coms, .nets and .orgs.”

Pdom’s research revealed that all but one of the speakers’ names were available as .co.nz extensions.

“Given their availability, and in honour of the Knowledge Wave conference we wanted to gift the speakers their own names so they could take home their very own piece of New Zealand cyberspace.”

Mr Wiles says although companies prefer a domain name from their own country - individuals do not necessarily show the same loyalty.

“The internet has no physical boundaries. A person can live in Boston, have a net identity based in New Zealand and a personal website hosted in the United Kingdom.

“Whether this means the Former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating will claim allegiance to the All Blacks because he has been gifted NZ cyber citizenship remains to be seen.”

Wiles said New Zealand is a more attractive option than many of the other county extensions, which remain unattractive as they are either too big, too expensive or restrict their domain space solely to companies and organisations.

Currently there are around 100,000 domain names have been registered in New Zealand.

“Compare this to 29 million domain names registered worldwide as .coms, .nets and .orgs and the .nz space is ripe for growth as people realise they can still register their ideal net name as a .co.nz. “

“New Zealand is a gold mine with millions of untapped names,” Wiles said.

- Ends -

Pdom: Launched 5 June 2001, www.Pdom.com is a Wellington based global domain name registration and trading company focussing on the new trend towards people securing and establishing their own personal identity on the Internet.

Contact:

Robert Wiles

CEO Pdom: +64 4 470 7835

Home: +64 4 973 7332

Mobile: +64 21 769 789

Jo Coughlan

VP Public Relations Pdom: +64 4 499 4809

Mobile: +64 21 522 142

Home: +64 4 972 4437

Speakers to be gifted.co.nz domain names include the following:

- Rt Hon Helen Clark

Prime Minister of New Zealand

- Hon Paul J Keating

Former PM of Australia. Visiting Professor of Public Policy, University of NSW

- Dr Edward De Bono

Creator of Lateral Thinking

- Brigadier General George Yong-Boon Yeo

Minister of Trade and Industry, Singapore

- Dae Whan Chang

President and Publisher of Maeil Business Newspaper and TV

- Sean Dorgan

CEO Industrial Dev Agency, Ireland

- Professor Michael E Porter

Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, Harvard Business School

- Dr Robin Batterham

Chief Scientist of Australia

- Professor Nitin Desai

Under-Secretary-General of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations

- Dr Jilly Evans

Director of Pharmacology, Merck Research Laboratories, USA

- Dr Donald Brash

Governor, Reserve Bank of New Zealand

- Dr Horace "Woody" Brock

Founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions

- Judge Mick Brown

Former Principal Youth Court Judge of New Zealand and Adjunct Professor of Law at Waikato University

- John Seely Brown

Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp.

- Rick Christie

Chairman, Science and Innovation Advisory Council

- Dr Richard Foster

Author, Senior Partner and Director of McKinsey & Company, New York

- Professor Nehemia Levtzion

Chair of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Israeli Council for Higher Education

- Gurion Meltzer

Senior Figure in the Israeli Business and Academic Communities

- Dr Yuan T. Lee

President, Academic Sinica, Taiwan

- Professor Jorma Routti

Chairman of Creative Industries Management Fund, holds a Chair at Helsinki Technological University

- Sally Shelton-Colby

Deputy Secretary General, OECD

- Professor Shih Choon Fong

Vice-Chancellor, National University of Singapore

- Professor David J Teece

Director, Institute of Management, Innovation and Organisation, University of California, Berkeley and Mitsubishi Bank Professor

- Robert Wade

Professor of Political Economy and Development at the London School of Economics

- Norbert Walter

Chief Economist, Deutsche Bank Group

- Professor Lord Robert Winston

Chair of House of Lords Science and Education Committee, Professor of Fertility Studies and Chief of Service for Reproductive Medicine, Hammersmith

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