I’ve been sitting on this “news” for a while, as I waiting on the registry to announce it ..
Fergal O’ Byrne, who was the Irish Internet Association CEO and is currently CEO of startup Sonru, has been appointed to the IEDR’s board as a non-executive director. According to filings with the Irish companies’ office O’Byrne’s appointment is effective from the end of May 2010, though it was only announced to the public today.
What is interesting, from a domain industry perspective, is that O’Byrne’s appointment could signal one of two things. Either the IEDR are trying to change and actually want board members with industry experience or they are seeking to pay “lip service” to industry.
O’Byrne’s appointment may be a good thing, but his role as a non-exec means that he won’t be able to have as much impact as some of us in industry would like to see.
Of course it’s been a busy few weeks over at IEDR central. They also announced last week that the 2nd quarter of 2010 was the “best performing quarter for .ie domain registrations in Ireland since records began”.
While the figures for the quarter in terms of new registrations may have been up, the total zone size hasn’t increased that dramatically and still hovers below the 150k mark.
You may also notice that the IEDR communications are now referring to “registrars” instead of “resellers”. This change is due to the introduction of signed agreements between registrars and the registry operator in the last few months. More on that anon.
