About dotDK

On June 26th the National IT and Telecom Agency of Denmark appointed dotDK to be the next administrator of the Danish top level domain. This happened after dotDK had submitted a proposal on April 1st 2008 in response to the National IT and Telecom Agency of Denmark’s tender for administrators for the .dk domain, as specified under the Domain Act. Next step will be to formally establish dotDK as an official association and seek feedback and support from the Danish internet community. The National IT and Telecom Agency of Denmark is currently reviewing the letters of support from the Danish Internet community submitted supporting a move to dotDK. Upon confirming evidence of this support, the IT and Telecom Agency will issue a license to dotDK and the migration plan for the registry will be put in place. The original timetable released from the IT and Telecom Agency estimates that the registry transition is expected to occur by February 2009.

dotDK will significantly enhance support for the .dk domain by providing: world-class technology; increased security; 100% DNS uptime; more efficient processes; increased involvement mechanisms for the Danish Internet community, and increased presence by Denmark in the global Internet community. Further, dotDK's bid has already been the indirect cause for the elimination of the DKK500 “nameserver activation” fee that was charged by the current provider, and thus has already proven savings to the Danish Internet community. Combined, we believe these elements will provide the most advanced registration system available for a country as technically sophisticated as Denmark.

dotDK mission
dotDK will be established to accomplish one key mission: empowering the Danish Internet community to operate the .dk country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) as a critical public resource in an open, responsible, stable and secure manner. dotDK may engage in other activities that benefit the Danish Internet community consistent with the following principles: stewardship, integrity, social responsibility, community involvement, transparency, standards compliance and development, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Founders
Kim Viborg Andersen – Professor and Head of Informatik Ph.D. School at CBS
Dr. Kim Viborg Andersen has since 2003 been Professor and Head of Informatic Ph.D. School at Copenhagen Business School’s Center of Applied ICT. His research is focus on Digital government and he was previously study director for the e-commerce master program at the Copenhagen IT University
Kim Viborg Andersen has written/edited a large number of books and publications, including “Den brugerdrevne forvaltning” from 2007 and ”Public Sector Process Rebuilding ” from 2006.

In his earlier working life, he has been a censor at the DTU and been employed at a variety of national and international universities. He is a member of the research based network sundITnet and a number of committees and boards within his area of research.

Kim has a Ph.D. from University of Copenhagen.

Nikolaj Nyholm – CEO of Polar Rose
Nikolaj Nyholm is the CEO of Polar Rose, a visual search engine. Nikolaj is an experienced internet entrepreneur an open source advocate, who in the last decade has been promoting and supporting projects within internet infrastructure through commercial and community activities.

Niklolaj Nyholm has been involved in the start-up of a number of companies in the IT and Technolgy industry, including Speednames also known as Ascio, the first provider of of global domain name search and registration. He has sponsored the start-up of several open source projects counting PowerDNS, one of the most popular DNS name servers in the world.
Nikolaj Nyholm is also a co-organizer of reboot (http://reboot.dk), a conference that every June attracts a broad audience from Europa and the States to Copenhagen to put focus on innovative issues and visions regarding technology and the culture around the internet.

Tor Bloch – previously Director with Merck and Co
Tor Bloch was previously Director with Merck and Co (in Brussels). Prior to that, he was employed at UNI-C as Scientific Director, Responsible for supercomputing services and for the Danish Research Network.

Tor has extensive international experience with supercomputing, starting his career at CERN in Geneva. After that he created and directed the first French supercomputer center at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Tor has also be co-founder and manager of a start-up in France (ACRI) that developed a supercomputer.
Tor Bloch has been member of various advisory committees and boards including at NATO and the EU Commission. He was the Danish representative in the board for NORDUnet, collaboration between the Nordic national networks for research and education.

Tor holds a M.Sc. in Mathematics (Algebraic Topology) from University of Copenhagen

Mads Thimmer – CEO of Innovation Lab in Aarhus
Mads Thimmer is the co-founder and CEO of Innovation Lab in Aarhus that works to translate new technology, its applications and implications, to primarily international companies and organisations.

Mads Thimmer started working life as a games developer for Games Workshop and a translater of Virginia Woolf. Following , he had a career in Public Relations with Danish Telco TDC and Corporate Strategy at Lithuanian mobile carrier Bité.

Mads Thimmer returned to Århus in 2001 to found Innovation Lab with fellow founder Preben Mejer. Mads Thimmer holds a number of think tank positions, is a contributor to Berkshire Publishing’s Encyclopaedia of the Future.

Mads Thimmer is educated at Århus Universitet and University of Cambridge, MA in Comparative Literature.

Afilias Limited
Afilias Limited is a leading provider of advanced domain name registry services, and currently supports over 13,000,000 registrations and 50,000,000 registry records in 14 domains including the .ORG and .INFO global Top Level Domains (gTLDs), three sponsored Top Level Domains (sTLDs), and nine country code TLDs (ccTLDs). Afilias was founded in 2000 by a group of top Internet domain name registrars with the mission of improving registry services. Afilias supported the successful launch of .info, which today has over five million domains, and has helped “relaunch” several country code domains (notably .IN for the country of India). Afilias also designed and supported the first ever large-scale migration of a domain (.org) from a legacy “thin” registry provider to the current standard “thick” registry model – with no disruption of service for end users.

Afilias provides global registry services that leverage proven, standards-based technology to deliver fast, reliable and secure service. In addition to supporting domain name registries, Afilias also provides services in the RFID market with its Afilias Discovery Service, which enables real-time lookup of event histories across RFID networks. Afilias maintains international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, sales offices in London, England, sales and operational facilities in Toronto, administrative offices in the U.S. near Philadelphia, PA, and operational offices in New Delhi, India.