In response to several comments along the thread: "What's wrong with
www.isp.net.au/~organisation in the mean-time or getting a .asn.au?"

Perhaps nothing, or perhaps a great deal. The point is, an ISP or domain
registrar is not expected to have any idea of the importance of this tool to
specific industries, because marketing and financial forecasting are not
recognised consultancy functions of the IT industry.

Most NFP (Not For profit) entities exist on Government or community-based
funding, usually provided on the basis of a short-term grant. Grant funds
must be spent within a predetermined period (commonly 6 months), and funds
not expended are rarely approved for carry-over to the next funding period.
In short, if not spent, funds are lost.

Start-up NFP entities, like most businesses, may factor advertising and
marketing as highly as 50% or more of their total budget. Business cards,
flyers, television and radio advertising, promotional material and displays
etc., and of course, most nowadays will wish to establish an organisational
Internet and E-Mail presence.

Failure to provide a domain-name within a realistic time period, or even
worse, failure to advise the organisation of their ability to market under a
given name, has an obvious negative impact. Business cards cannot be
printed. Advertisements cannot be constructed. Mechanisms cannot be
established that provide clients with the means of contacting the
organisation. There are only two possible scenarios:

Use a temporary address in full knowledge that all advertising and
promotional material will have to be redone (even though there are no funds
or budget available for this). As an example of the costs involved, one
local NFP recently spent $150,000.00 on a relatively short television
commercial. Should this have to be redone to simply change a contact
address, the costs are huge and significant. The second option is to accept
that a domain name will not be provided in a timely fashion, and to simply
do without. If through necessity the later option is adopted, then what the
heck is the value of a .au domain? It's becomes worthless to these
organisations.

I tend to feel (and I know these thoughts are shared by many in industry),
that frequently domain registrars and ISP's are seen to place themselves in
the position of defacto marketing/business consultants, rather than focusing
on what should be their core strengths - To establish supportive IT systems
in a timely manner. No business, NFP or otherwise, wants to be told: "Just
use this as a marketing tool, it is all you need", in full knowledge that
this is just an excuse for a failure to provide proper service - or to be
told: "Sorry, we can't give you what you want (and are probably entitled
to), because we don't have the resources to manage our backlog". Business
expects people working in the IT industry to properly resource themselves
and to (at least) have an understanding of the need to meet business
deadlines and objectives.

If domain registrars cannot work within business time constraints, then the
services on offer have no value - which I think may explain why so many
Aussie organisations have adopted .com as the standard. It may not be the
best marketing platform, but at least they are obtainable within the
realities and constraints of real business needs.

Sorry for rambling on about this one, but it's the changing face of our
industry. My position is that of an IS Manager, yet I spent last night wine'
ing and dine'ing the (totally non-technical) management team of our largest
corporate customer - you should hear what they have to say about all of
this! - To a company who deals in billions of dollars per annum and employs
thousands of people, it's totally absurd that a simple IT marketing tool
should take so long to acquire. IT has to become customer-focused, and
perhaps no more so than in the area of Internet service delivery. We are no
longer the "nurds" managing a mostly "nurd-based" forum - like it or not,
the Internet is a business tool.  If we don't manage it properly, business
will simply go elsewhere, and our .au domain will be as good as dead and
buried - and funnily enough a lot of us don't want to see this happen.

(off the soap-box)

Don