SAA plays the blame game.

South African Airways (SAA) is blaming service providers for letting its domain name expire, causing a web site outtage. When the domain name expired, Network Solutions followed its standard practice of changing the DNS and sending visitors to a landing page.

In a note from SAA acting CEO Chris Smyth on the company’s web site, Smyth writes:

…This outage was not as a result of any oversight by SAA or its personnel, nor was this due to cyber attacks.

The problem was a direct result of service providers not meeting their obligations and SAA will be taking further action in this regard. Unfortunately SAA did not receive any pre-warning of the pending suspension but within hours of the problem being identified, the SAA IT personnel were able to address the problem ensuring minimal disruptions to our customers.

Smyth could be correct, if indeed the job of renewing its domain name was outsourced to, say, an IT firm, or if it had some sort of autorenewal contract with Network Solutions. That appears it may be the case. The contact email on FlySAA.com’s whois record was for ISP In The Net Technologies. It’s possible that ITNT dropped the ball. But it also makes domain name registrar Network Solutions look bad. So FlySAA should probably come out and say who made the mistake, rather than a general reference to a service provider.

Five questions to be answered this week in L.A.

Last week I posed 5 questions in advance of the TRAFFIC conference, and answered them yesterday. Today I’m off to Los Angeles for DOMAINfest, so here are five questions that will be answered during this conference:

1. Will DOMAINfest attendance hit a record? I think so, but we’ll have to wait to see.

2. Which party will be better, The Getty or Playboy Mansion? If this were the first year of both parties I wouldn’t bother answering the question. But given that many people already attended the Playboy party last year, and there will be many women attending the event, it will be interesting to see which night gets the highest approval rating.

3. Will the SnapNames bidding scandal have any affect on the conference? Most big SnapNames customers settled with the company a while ago. Still, it will be interesting to see if any questions pop up, and how they are handled.

4. Will the Fairmont be able to handle the crowd? Given that attendees have already filled up the Fairmont and one overflow hotel, I worry that the Fairmont’s facilities might not be accommodating to so many conference goers. But with the entire hotel limited to DOMAINfest, that should ease some problems.

5. Will the Moniker auction take advantage of a large audience? Or will many of the attendees skip the auction, like last year? It will be interesting to use this auction as a gauge for the domain market.

Calls to discuss security and logistics.

ICANN is doing something different in advance of its next meeting, to be held in Nairobi: advance security and logistics teleconferences.

The organization will host identical calls this Thursday and Friday to inform and educate attendees about security measures and how to come prepared.

There was talk that ICANN would move the conference after recent demonstrations around Nairobi, Kenya. Apparently this was prompted because one of the key constituency groups notified ICANN it would not be sending delegates due to security concerns. But ICANN decided to keep the meeting in Nairobi.

I think ICANN did the right thing. This may sound strange coming from someone who thought holding a meeting in Mexico City was a bad idea. My rationale is that the recent demonstrations in Kenya shouldn’t affect tourists. So if Nairobi was safe enough for an ICANN meeting before the demonstrations, it should be safe enough now. The threats in Kenya are somewhat different than Mexico, but I’m not sure that one location is more “dangerous” than the other.

DOMAINfest could see record attendance.

[Update: Indeed, attendance has broken a record] I’m going to make a prediction for this week’s DOMAINfest conference in Santa Monica: it will break the paid attendance record for DOMAINfest.

I’m hearing whispers that 650 plus people have already registered, and that is bound to grow today and tomorrow. The original hotel sold out very quickly, and even the overflow hotel has sold out. That means guests are now being asked to make reservations at a second overflow hotel. Even people who made hotel reservations at the first overflow hotel last week were limited to smoking rooms only.

The speaker list is part of the reason for the big draw. It includes Frank Schilling, Kurt Pritz (ICANN), and Danny Sullivan. The event will include two investment pitch sessions (PITCHfest), and the parties are certainly a draw, too. The opening night party will be sponsored by .co, which made a splash at last week’s TRAFFIC conference. Wednesday’s party will be at The Getty and the conference returns to the Playboy Mansion for a second year on Thursday.

Combine these factors together with a very long sponsor list, and I’m willing to make this prediction.

ICA to be replaced with new organization.

This past weekend I caught word that Internet Commerce Association, the non-profit representing domainers’ interests, was effectively shutting down the overarching organization.

I caught up with board member Jeremiah Johnston Saturday afternoon, and he explained what was happening. ICA members should receive an email from him later today.

Essentially, the organization has experienced another funding shortfall, in particular from individual domainers. One of the biggest costs of the organization is managing its grassroots members and promoting itself to the domain community. ICA will effectively close down, and a few of the larger supporters of ICA will form a new organization under a different model.

It’s unfortunate that ICA is shutting down, but I’m thankful that the core group will be advocating for domainers. Part of the problem was apathy amongst domainers; another was wrongly placed distrust within the community. Without ICA, I truly think the domain industry would be looking at a different landscape right now. And it would be for the worse.

If you are interesting in learning more or being part of the new organization, please contact Jeremiah Johnston at jeremiah (at) internetcommerce.org.