On 15 September, CENTR held its 39th Administrative workshop, kindly hosted by ARNES (.si). Bringing together over 30 participants from 21 different registries in Europe, the event was an opportunity to discuss registry operational issues on several key topics.
Participants to the "Admin39" workshop gathered on the shores of beautiful Lake Bled in Slovenia to exchange on several important topics, such as relations with registrars, processes for releasing quarantined or expired domains, collection and sharing of relevant statistics to registrars and the wider community, experiences on managing Chinese registrations, dealing with abuse, introduction of special and short characters in domains, RDAP implementation and much more.
On registrar relations, the group discussed several aspects of dealing with sales channels. The Admin Working Group has come up with a Registrar Satisfaction Survey draft template, which could be used as a basis by all European registries. Many challenges were identified, however, so a stand-alone Task Force will be put together to evaluate the potential next steps, in collaboration with the Marketing Working Group. This draft survey will also be presented and discussed at the CENTR Registrar Day in Belgrade on 5 October.
Another important topic covered was the brand new CENTR Registrar Portal, which was launched last August. The first version of the portal is now live and publicly accessible: it displays aggregated information from ccTLD registries all across Europe. During an interactive session in Bled, participants discussed many potential upgrades and will continue the discussion in Belgrade together with participating registrars.
During a lightning talk session, registries exchanged on how they organise registrar days, events, trainings and meetings. This was an interesting opportunity to hear about how ccTLD managers are exploring broader avenues to improve interactions with registrars and the wider local (and international) Internet community.
All in all, the full-day meeting covered several topics and generated plenty of fruitful discussions among participants, clearly highlighting the lively dynamics among the CENTR membership and a strong will to adapt to an evolving market and DNS reality.
