MR. GALLAGHER: Welcome back everybody. I appreciate your returning for this second panel which is to explore content development within the kids.domain. We had a great demonstration in that from the NeuStar folks this morning. It’s that content that is really driving much of our discussion about the promise of kids.us in our first panel.

But before we do that I just want to introduce John Kneuer. John is our Deputy Assistant designate at NTIA, the guy who really gets things done. In every way the Chief Operating Officer has worked tirelessly on key projects like the reports that we just released a couple of weeks ago. And as someone who’s having an impact today on behalf of our country, he’s a guy that you develop a special relationship with as you go through and serve together and meet common challenges. It’s a pleasure to have John running this panel. And we’ll look forward to the good dialog, John. And we’ll bring that to a close after you’re concluded. Thanks a lot for doing this and thanks a lot for being here.

MR. KNEUER: Thanks. This is our second panel. It’s going to focus on the process on developing a site for kids.us domain. We’ve got NeuStar here as the manager of it. Keith Drazek is the Director of Relations; Sara DeWitt, PBS, the Director of PBS Kids and Parents Interactive Network on PBS, Mike Skagerlind, we’re very happy to have here from Nickelodeon. Hopefully he’ll tell us an awful lot about the process they went through to get NICKjr and kids.us put online today. And Terry Schroeder is here from the President Program, the Director of I-Safe America. If you all want to take a moment or two and give a quick introduction and description of what your role is in this and then we can get on with the questions.

MS. DEWITT: Good morning, I’m Sara DeWitt. I’m from PBS Kids and Parents Interactive. We work on the PBS Kids Parents website. We’re very excited to be -- obviously, we have a shared goal of creating safe educational content for kids online. And kids.org is one of the first sites kids can go to by themselves and with their parents. So we feel like that we definitely play a role in teaching them on how to be safe surfers of content online.

We’ve had our sites since 1997. All the content is produced by the same producers that do the content that you know on PBS Kids TV, Sesame Street Workshop, WPH to Boston Scholastic Entertainment. We see our traffic continue to rise through all of this time. Our goal is to create really deep and engaging games with solid educational goals, and making sure that the content is really age-appropriate for the audience that comes online.

We feel like that it’s also part of our mission that we make sure we teach kids how to be safe surfers on the internet. We have an activity that says -- that teaches kids how to get their web licence. They get it through a series of questions to learn how to watch for cookies, how to be safe when they’re talking to other people online, things like that. So we're excited about something like kids.us that then continues to give kids a safe space to go to. We’ve been on this service now since February of this year, and are going to continue to watch it to see what kinds of content we add.

MR. DRAZEK: Thank you. For those of you who were here this morning, my name is Keith Drazek. I’m a registered Relations Manager at NeuStar Registry Operator for kids.us domain and kids.web Start Extrodinare. Just a quick comment for anyone who has questions, ideas, anything to follow-up the discussions we had this morning or the discussions that we’re going to have this afternoon. I’m available to talk to you or to people that you think might be interested in kids. domain. It’s really important that content providers understand that there is somebody that they can talk to, to explain the process, because the process is not necessarily intuitive as it relates to churning up other websites and domains. So it –- please just -- there’s a stack of my cards on the table out front. Take one, send me an email. I want to be available, I am available to anyone who needs more information.

MR. SKAGERLIND: Good morning, everybody. My name is Mike Skagerlind, I’m Senior Vice President and General Manager of Nickelodeon Online which is the online site for Nickelodeon National. You may know that Nickelodeon is a cable television network and is the most watched cable television network in the country. And my group is responsible for the creation of a number of webs, obviously the two most recent ones that Keith took us through this morning, very well I might say. We’re delighted about it, we’re very excited to be a part of that. They are complementary websites to the other .com websites, they’ve been around for some time. We are in the business of entertaining kids, and we want to do it in a safe way, in a fun way, in a way that keeps them coming back for more. In a nutshell, that's really what we do. It’s a complement to what goes on in the channel but also it’s a little bit more than that, as I’m sure we’ll get into. As kids come to websites, set goals in life and they want to do certain things, we’re there to try to help them in a safe and private way.

MS. TERI SCHROEDER: I’m Teri Schroeder, and I’m the President and Program Director for I-Safe America. We have internet safety education for grades K-12 for the younger kids K-3 grade, and 4 grade, we have I- Buddy, that actually is the icon for the kids. For the upper division kids, we do web Cast. So the students actually are filmed in the web Cast they participate. So it’s peer-to-peer.

We have an outreach department, we have an education department, we have law enforcement department as well.

Our whole focus with youth is really to find out what they’re thinking, what really triggers them in terms of the types of activities that they engage online. They’re cyber citizens. They will be for the rest of their lives.

We also have a parent component with our I-Parent Program. We do pre-imposed assessments and other type assessments. So we really look at data relative to what the kids are learning, what they know, and what they've retained.

MR. KNEUER: Thanks. Let's start with you, Keith. Thanks very much for reiterating your commitment personally, NeuStar's commitment to work with people who are here, people who may be webcasting are interested in this, the process they go through, whether its an existing company, existing site that wants to mirror onto the .kids site, or whether it’s individuals or educational institutions. But why don’t you give us just a very quick top-level description of what the content review process is like, technical support that NeuStar provides, at least a starting off point.

MR. DRAZEK: Yeah John, thanks. The process for registering and turning up the kids.us website, there’s a number of different levels. The first is, obviously, to register a domain name. And that process is not unlike registering a domain of other kinds. You go to a domain name registrar, of which there are many. They’re basically the retail point-of-purchase or they’re resellers of the domain name service, in this case with kids.us. And the price point varies from registrar to registrar. The business models vary, and they offer different services along with what domain names they’re offering. Just in a nutshell, that’s the first step.

Once a domain name is registered at one of these registrars, they will provide you with what we call an off code or an authorization code which is the number that you will need to basically submit your kids.us domain name for content review with NeuStar, with us.

So once you've received that from the registrar, you would come to NeuStar kids.us website, click on the content and then submit the domain name along with the off code which would create an account for you.

And then CMS, which is the management systems -- Content Management System, at that point NeuStar's starts the process of reviewing the content for that new website. And then you can register a domain, and wait six months before developing your content to the point where you are ready to submit it. And that’s, in fact, what is going on today. There are many more domains registered in kids.us then there are active websites. Many of those we know because we’ve spoken to them in the process that we’re developing or intend to develop in the future.

But once you’re ready with your content you come to the kids.us site and submit your content, and that triggers the mechanism within NeuStar to basically review the content. And that process today, as Mike will tell you, takes about two or three days.

We do a visual review of the site, as well as an automated review. Spyware technology, that basically looks for characters, words, pictures, hyper-links, anything that's not allowed in the kids.us web space. If content violation occurs we basically reject it, we turn down the content at that point and then work with the content provider to clean it up. In a sense, to make sure it does, in fact, follow the regulations established by the law. And once that’s done, once those violations are identified and removed, then we can turn up the website. So that’s basically the process. Maybe not too high of a level, but that's the process for activating content in the kids.us space.

MR. KNEUER: Talking, you mentioned there are many, many more domain names that have been registered, and the latest stuff I’ve got here is about 1700, we’ve only got 16 active websites. I guess it's moving up at some point. At PBS you're one of the anchor tenants that came in early, how did your experience track along with what Keith is describing from the time you made the decision, and said, okay we’re going to get in this domain, we’re going to register the name, and then making -- what choices did you make? What would be appropriate to put on there and the challenges that you faced?

MS. DEWITT: You’re right. We bought the domain names, I believe, when they immediately became available in September and started working with NeuStar in October to begin getting the content together.

And I think with every new website there are always going to be some stops and starts. And as Keith knows, we had some problems with the authorization code. Because most companies are structured in such a way that it’s a different department that actually buys the domain names than the ones that are actually building the domain. We had a hard time figuring out who had an authorization code, when it went to domain register they forgot to give us one at first. So lots of back and forth.

But NeuStar was able to walk us through it and get us there. As we started, the biggest question for us was resources, obviously. We already have a website, PBSKIDS.ORG, and a dedicated staff to that site. And as we looked at kids.us, we needed to figure out how we can create new content for this space. It was important that we be there in a way that wasn’t going to strain too many of the resources for what we were already doing online.

So we looked at what we were already doing online. So we looked at were we were able to replicate some content, we looked at where we were to build some new pieces of content and try to launch with as much as we could that wasn’t going to require a lot of maintenance in the long-term. We wanted to make sure we had very deep engagingly re-playable games in the space because we knew it was going to be a while before we could come back and build something a little deeper.

The thing that we looked at the most is kids, submissions, the ability to interact with other kids with the characters they know from television, as was mentioned in the previous panel. We decided that was something that was going to be difficult for us to do in kids.us.

We don’t do any live chat, so it wasn’t from that perspective, it’s just the ongoing maintenance. We already have a site with 340 million a month. We need to be constantly updating how much time we can really put on kids.us right away, to be trying to manage submissions, watching what kids are saying to each other. That requires a lot of oversight. We needed to make sure we could keep what we were putting on kids.us fresh and exciting.

MR. KNEUER: Teri, that reaches a layer of issues from a technical standpoint. PBS has a large web presence in the regular domain. Nickelodeon has got a huge presence. Is there a technical ability, or do you foresee a technical ability, that you could almost have software that would automatically mirror an existing site into the kids.us site that would strip out the hyper-links and do the sorts of things that you could devote your resources to maintaining your existing website? Or at least the resources that you devote to your existing website are leveraged in the kids.us space so that they don’t have to duplicate these efforts? Is that anything that you’ve looked into that you see on the horizon?

MS. SCHROEDER: Well, you can mirror a site, that's not a problem. And we do that now with our own, in terms of when we're down. I think some of the errors that you overcome is the fact that having to go in and actually maintain let’s just say, hyper-links or things that are not allowed, in the domain that you can mirror. You still do have some kind of maintenance relative to that.

MR. KNEUER: Kneuer: That's sort of a question – functionality that is impermissible on .kids that is essentially flagged in a way that when you mirror the side it’s automatically stripped out?

MR. DRAZEK: John, I think I can address that a little bit, at least one aspect of the question. We had mentioned that is there is a tool or a way a content provider can take their existing website and run it through a tool that would basically strip out the unacceptable content for kids.us thereby making it a less labor-intensive process.

MR. KNEUER: The content may be more of a challenge, at least the functionality I think would be more --

MR. DRAZEK: Even the content, we’ve had some conversation -- you still have the subcontracting entity that’s called, KidNet, that’s basically down in Jacksonville, Florida, that does the automated technology that runs technology for the contact review process. Now we have had some just preliminary discussions about is this something that would be possible? Could we develop a tool that could make it easier for content providers to just basically use their existing content whether it’s functionality or the actual content. But maybe it would produce a report that says, these are the 15 violations that we identified, or actually strips out the hyper-links.

For example, they’ve indicated to me, just in preliminary conversation, that that’s something that they could do. So this is obviously a young domain space. There’s a lot of potential opportunities for growth, for innovation. To follow on some of the conversations from earlier where we may be able to bring new things to the table that makes it easier to get sites up. But again those are very early conversations. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. But I think it addresses the question that you asked. I think it's possible.

MR. KNEUER: Mike, that must be something that you've looked at, really focused on. I mean Nickelodeon is the most watched cable channel in America. The media business is clearly moving into the internet kind of from a cable based push technology to a pull model, where consumers can basically select whatever content they want, when they want, and that’s the attractiveness of the internet, to the extent that you have limits on the ability to do that in the kids space. But what is your analysis? How did you guys approached this? Was it really your objective and ideal, at some point, to have the kids domain be essentially the functional equipment with the appropriate limitations in the Nick.com?

MR. SKAGERLIND: I think that’s really a good question. We have a couple of sites, and as far as mirroring and creating a seamless straight forward process for approaching the site which conforms to the constraints which the .kids domain has is not the easiest thing right now. I'm not personally aware of an official solution to that.

That said, companies like ours have to build their own content management system. So we have one online which is actually just itself. And we’re always trying to upgrade our technology, obviously.

And one of the things that we’ve been trying to do internally is to be able to publish content in a much easier fashion. To hear a slight, small insight into that. About a year ago we wanted to upgrade a new page or what we called, a new existing site, that would be really quite a task for web designers, producers, and technical people who are actually writing to do the things that we would want to do. With the contact management system affecting your templating, you’re approaching the publishing websites as if it was more like certain content goes into space and it can be updated once you got that system automated much, much more quickly -- literally, you can change a page in less than two minutes.

So to answer your question, what would we be doing going forward as to bring the .kids content into that same content management system so that we’ll be able to literally check the box and say, there’s a link on this page, click check box, and suddenly that link disappears, or it’s no longer viewable. So I think speaking for Nicheklodeon, which is really all I can do obviously, it’s very certainly a strategically and commercially sensible thing to approach this in content generation, really at its source, and be able to publish a wide range of sites including that.

MR. KNEUER: To follow up on that a little bit, you talked about the commercial analysis. Mr. Shimkus, when he was here this morning, he talked about when we want a playground we want to have the playground grow and get bigger and bigger and get as expansive as possible. I was down the hall earlier and was looking up an old concept that I had once known and had to look it up on the internet and I remembered it, Metcalf’s Law. Every time we add somebody else, another site to kids.us, the value of the network doesn’t grow arithmetically, it grows geometrically. And that with Nickelodeon now being on, being the most popular children’s content, so it’s like PBS, Department of Commerce, NOAA, did you do any analysis? Did you have any sort of vision that this does grow into a large commercially sustainable -- sort of, a vibrant network? What was the analysis on doing this?

MR. SKAGERLIND: I think it’s fair to say -- first of all I want to say that wherever kids are, and we do take kids safety very seriously, so this is a place logically that made sense for us. We care about the audience. If we care about the audience they’ll care about us. So we view this as a great place to play from a grand point of view.

To be honest with you, right now I’m responsible for P & L. I don’t have a P & L line that has these words on it right now and I don’t think necessarily that we are ever looking to do that. But I do think that we can create engaging content in this space and we certainly want to continue to do that.

One of the questions I have in my mind, actually I think we talked about it very briefly yesterday, was the notion of the restrictions which quite properly passed the domain, which is no linking obviously, and now communication which makes complete sense. But I’m also very interested in looking at ways of developing this domain to actually include server-to-user communication in a more personalized way.

And I should probably explain myself, because recognizing an individual on the internet does not necessarily mean you that know them. It simply means that you recognize them as an individual. You know what they’ve done on the site so that you can talk to them as if you recognize who they are.

That is not saying that that’s a breech of privacy or security in any way. You can recognize individuals as anonymous individuals and provide them with high scores for their game which they see every time they come back. And that is the kind of experience that I think kids are looking for increasingly on the web. Not exclusively, obviously, but having in a broader sense as a transaction history which is recognized as something that I think is a market focus approach to developing an audience wherever you are. And that is what we're interested in doing. We’re interested in creating content.

As I said at the outset kids come back to you because they have a relationship, a personalized relationship, which is an anonymous relationship which they can rely on. They can grow that experience and comeback.

MR. KNEUER: Teri, you may have some insight on this. Exactly how things that Mike’s talking about -- how do we keep the domain vibrant as the broader internet develops? You talked about not doing any internet chat. The Supreme Court opinion that just came out, COPA, came out and said there may be a less restrictive means for managing content and there was adult verification, but is there any conceivable thing, such as a minor identification? How do you verify that somebody is a minor? Is the solution that Mike was talking about, rather than saying peer-to-peer simply can’t happen, that we have to have server-to-peer registered companies that are with the site, they’re verified and interactivity is limited to that level or do you see the domain keeping up with the broader development of the internet?

MR. DRAZEK: Let me start with that. I know Teri will have something to add because this is something Teri and I have been talking about over the last weeks and months, about trying to work together to identify a way to bring the kids.us name to the kids, to the schools, to parent teacher organizations, and keep the content rich.

And I think just to answer the high level questions that today there is no peer-to-peer or basically interaction, I guess experience other than the games themselves permitting the kids.us space.

However the legislation, as I understand it, does not prohibit that type of interaction. It's just absolutely critical, and basically required by law that any such interaction, whether it was peer-to-peer, or instant messaging type of service or whether, as Mike was describing, a posting of the high scores where there is some recognition of the individual that NeuStar, as the registered operator, has to be able to certify that any of that type of activity meets the content standards of the kids.us space and the law.

And that's basically the next step in expanding the kids.us space whether it’s domain name registrations or live websites or the number of the amount of traffic that’s generated to the websites. So really the question that you’ve asked is how do we keep content rich? How do we continue to basically keep up with other websites that don’t have these restrictions in terms of the rich content that can be available?

I think there are options there. There are opportunities for us to do that, but it’s not necessarily going to be an easy quick fix because we have to be able to certify that any of that kind of activity meets the content standard and space.

So to follow on that, Teri and I have been talking about I-Safe which has an outlet, you talk about it more specifically, but specific technology that is coming down the program pike that we been talking about. There’s some really interesting opportunities in terms of working with schools as kind of a structure of rolling out some -- maybe each school has a kids.us website and allows the kids to be able to be the webmasters and things like that.

So there’s really some interesting things that we’re working on. And some of that may develop into an attractive relationship but there’s got to be that certifying authority that basically flows all the way up the train so we can then certify back to Department of Commerce that, yes, everything going on in this space is safe for kids. Teri?

MS. SCHROEDER: One of the things that we talked about was the fact that, if you’re wanting to build a community for the students it has to be something that's engaging for them. They have to have ownership within this community. And what we have found out some of the kids and students throughout the United States, and we’re in all 50 States and we're in Early Youth Empowerment, so the students are the ones carrying the message, they own it. They own it because of the -- in terms of the internet safety.

You hear internet safety, it’s one after another after another where does it stick. So what we really looked at was what is it that you do? They like to do communication. End of conversation. That’s their thing. They go out there and they’re there to socialize, to meet, to play games. If you look at X Boxes, you’re not playing them by yourself, you’re playing them with somebody else in another town. And we can’t get away from that. We have to look at the fact we can’t change the way that they think. The internet is set up for two way communication.

So what Keith and I were talking about was the fact that how can we participate to be able to bring the safety component to them but also to be able to put in the issue of safety relative to protecting the anonymity of that student and also making sure that you don't have any violation of rights?

What we did was we’ve partnered with Verizon, but we lucked out last year. What is out there that would work? There’s digital credentials, you’re buying cars online, you’re buying homes online, and doing it at various levels, while you can have security up to a retno scan or just an email.

So we came up with a program, and we’re launching now, which we called the I-Stick. We’re giving kids the first digital credential to roll down into our program. And what this digital credential does is it allows the student to actually receive their digital credential at school. The anonymity of that student, and all that you see out there is that it’s male-female, and their age range, it’s locked in for the IHPs. So the students, now they choose where they want to go to. If you have a younger child and you’re a parent, and you say, I only want my child engaging and playing games with somebody who’s six to eight, and AOA has a room for six to eight in this particular area of this domain here.

MR. KNEUER: How do you verify the I-Stick being used by the child has not been corrupted by a relative or somebody with bad intent?

MS. SCHROEDER: Now again the process takes place at the schools, so the school -- the kids actually show up the first day of school with their parents when they actually sign up. They actually say, my child can go in the internet, they say yes, my child can have the I-Stick. The child shows up, they have everything on the child, they know everything on that child, they know where the child lives. So then they find the Administrator of that school who authenticates it, and then issues the I-Stick.

Now the one problem which we can’t get around there are parents that are pedophiles. There are teachers at the school, the teachers do not have the password on these kids. The kids are the only ones who have the password. But that’s where the education process comes in. That’s what you do when you educate the kids because that is a problem. You will have a parent whose son or daughter has an I-Stick, and they go out and they say, I’m just going to go in and chat somewhere.

So if you look at that, that’s probably our worst nightmare in terms of that, but at least you have something there for the kids in terms of authentication and being able to talk with one another, play games with one another of their own age.

MR. DRAZEK: Just to follow that up, that's a very good example of in the kids.us space and the restrictions that exist by law. Loopholes like that are a problem in terms of our being able to certify whether that’s a technology that can be legitimately and legally used in the space. But I think it's a good example of that there are options out there to the extent that those loopholes can be closed and mechanisms put into place. And to have that certification that there is the opportunity for this kind of interactive communication, whether its peer-to-peer or at the server level, identifying the individual.

But just to kind of wrap it up it’s something that's going to take a –- there’s a pretty high threshold for our being confident that it’s going to be safe. It’s not something that we would necessarily say, oh yeah, that sounds good, go ahead and do it. It’s going to go through some pretty stringent review process. We’re going to have to be made comfortable and that it makes sense for kids.

MR. KNEUER: That's sort of the most personal level of interactivity. But there are higher level's where it’s less person-to-person. But, Mike, you were talking about the peer-to-server. If you go on Nick.com you have a much richer interactivity, in that consumers can go and get clips of their favorite shows, and get more upcoming information on Nickelodeon content and events. What’s the barrier of having that same level of functionality on net .kids? The cost, what was your analysis in developing this site? You say you don’t have a P & L on it, but if you're spending money you may just have the L. So we need to look to reflect the P as well.

MR. SKAGERLIND: Actually, as I said, in terms of my overall objectives, we’re not viewing this as a business, this is an extension. I think to answer your question it’s really not –- just to step back a moment –- Nick.com just for a moment -- the six to fourteen year olds very largely have well over 10,000 individual pages of content. There’s a lot of stuff in there that even with the best efforts, promotional group, master group, kids just don’t see anymore, but 10,000 pages is a lot of stuff. Rather than just sit there gathering dust, there’s a lot of content that can be rotated which is great internet friendly kid content that can be used in different places.

So one of the things that we will consider going forward, in fact I’m considering as a rotation system of content that works between sites. I think that's good for everybody because that's not been a huge cost for us, it's not a huge outlay of individual people, resource there’s some, but it’s not absolutely frightening. And kids are getting to see things which perhaps they haven’t seen for a while.

In addition, we’re planning to review bits of content. Now that does require some financial outlay. Again I’m sure that all of us who are involved in the game of creation know it’s quite expensive and it doesn't need to be a commercial return on that. So the real issue is finding –- the answer to your question is really about the rotation, that judicious use of rotation of content and how it works both for us and for the audience.

MR. KNEUER: Keith, Mike says they don’t see this as a business. What are NeuStar’s plans to develop and promote the domain? And they were talking earlier about raising an issue of the network effects, that the domain eventually does grow into a big enough site. And I know you mentioned in the first panel, children four to six are the fastest growing demographics on the internet. The only friendly content is certainly compelling enough to make Nickelodeon the most widely viewed cable system in America, cable network in America.

What are your plans and how do you see this growing so that this does become an attractive enough place that the commercial activity makes it self sustaining?

MR. DRAZEK: That’s an excellent question. When we first launched the kids.us space we were kind of a chicken and egg scenario. Where as you want to have the traffic to basically pull the content providers in and want to be there, but you can’t have the kids there without the content. It was like, well, what do we do first? How do we start this up and generate the interest?

And I’d just like to take a second to personally thank my fellow panelists, PBSkids and Nick, for basically being the leaders, the pioneers for getting the content up in kids.us space. And if our friends from NOAA are still here, I know they were here earlier, and have a site up, I mean it's important to recognize that the sites that are up right now are the pioneers of the space.

The next step for us is to basically enhance, expand, bring more content, and more viewers to the space. We have -- NeuStar has undertaken a marketing program. Basically we’ve been coordinating with NTIA to make sure that it's appropriate, appropriately targeted and everything.

But one example is the brochure that we handed out at the beginning of the forum today. I mean this brochure –- one of the things that we started to hear from people is, well, we just don’t understand the process. And that's really what NeuStar does. We basically –- we’re the technology provider. We manage the process of getting these websites turned up, and have the responsibility for the content review.

So we put together a brochure, and we have 250 of them today, but it’s the first of a run of 10,000 that we’re basically going to try to get out into the hands of individuals, teachers, companies, non-profits, foundations so there’s a greater awareness of kids.us, and what the opportunity is.

And I mean as far as to address the questions of the P & L, is this a money making opportunity for companies right now?

And as we’re hearing the answer is, probably not at this time. But the more traffic that’s generated, the more sites that come up I think there’s going to be a real momentum that develops in the kids.us space.

We had a terrific panel this morning where I think there was a lot of excitement and a lot of recognition that it’s an important space. And there should be resources, partnerships, focus put behind the kids.us domain name to basically raise awareness. And as that awareness is raised, whether it’s the end user, foundations or companies, non-profits, or whatever it is, government agencies, as that awareness is raised, I think it will become a more vibrant main space on the internet and that more kids will be wanting to be going there. Parents will be telling their kids, this is where you need to be at this age. Maybe not those exact words. So I think there’s a tremendous amount of potential for the kids.us space.

As the registry operator, we really would like to thank those that have taken the first step when today it may not be generating cash for them. And maybe it doesn't become profitable in a sense, in the long-term, but at least you’ve taken the first important steps. We really, really appreciate that.

MR. KNEUER: I think that's exactly right, both Mike and Sarah being the anchor tenants, and it’s having that sort of content in place. Hopefully we can get to this happy place and as we go along, we can reach the masses. And I think you all are doing fine work on promoting this space.

But as far as partners, these are great partners to have. And Teri’s group, working with educators, what do you feel? And this is open to essentially anyone.

Mike, you say this is essentially a branding exercise, but the branding exercise becomes more valuable and the branding becomes more successful as the domain is more widely used. But who are the next sort of partners that are really going to help, and do this? Is it the educators? Unfortunately we lost our panelists from DOE. Is that the next sort of space that we get to move that along?

MS. SCHROEDER: I think that looking at the kids to really look at partnering with them, the Students Association, get them involved even though this is not –- there really isn’t a lot of money in safety anyway. If you really look at the money makers, this is great, this is a great company and it’s wonderful.

But the one thing is, if you really reach out to the students and the kids and get them involved and this now has become their place, they’ll carry the branding for that. And it will be associated with, oh yeah, PBS and the others are all a part of this, and parents won’t forget that.

But kids take things a long way. I know they have for our program, we really had to think out-of-the-box in terms of how we were actually going to try to reach out to that community. So I would really encourage looking at the student associations, you know the ones that –- the Future Business Leaders of America, DECA, those that the are here.

MR. KNEUER: What are some of your

out-of-the-box exercises that you try?

MS. SCHROEDER: Some of the out-of-the-box exercises are that, for instance, some of those associations, they do nothing but marketing, so have them engage in actually marketing, some of the associations do nothing but webmasters and, you know, different types of technology things, have them involved in spreading the word around the nation to get the schools involved. And really now make this a community for the kids.

So then what you do, is you have the older kids that are really serving as mentors for the younger kids. So now you have a culture adoption going on here with teaming. Now when they look at things like that -- and you know that's pretty cool for some kids who are going, yeah, hey, we work with PBS, we’re doing some co-branding with them for this domain. And you’ll really get the word out there for them and that's really good for them as well.

MR. SKAGERLIND: I think that one of the really big –- it’s actually based around what Teri has described early as one of the two biggest realisms that we have come to know, which is homework, research and assignments. And I actually feel that this space could actually become, with the appropriate marketing, if that's the right word, become really associated with that and actually in the mind of kids. Educators and parents need to know about that. But actually kids need to be the driver, and if they could start to associate this area with a great place to go for homework, resources, safe and appropriate environment, I think that's a terrific start.

That doesn't mean to say that you have to exclude companies like PBS kids, [inaudible] and the internet is really the world, if your like in cyberspace, and they’re all sorts of aspect to the internet. And the same should be true, I believe, of this domain.

But I think if kids have in their heads this is a place where I know I can go, where I don’t have to use certain software, I can just go here, and start my processes in achieving or completing my homework assignment, for example, I think is a great start. I think schools can help to promote that, I think parents can help promote that.

But the important thing is at the end of the day kids will only come back to websites, if the websites are appealing to them. So you have to build sites that really, whether they need to do for homework, or whether they use for game play, which is the two biggest reasons why kids, I think ages 13 - 14 and up there, go to a site. If you don’t do that then I think it's one thing to bring the horse to water but then you have to provide really great fresh water for the horse to drink. And I think that it’s the job of all of us is to really create content, and easily navigable websites, if it’s to be homework assignments, if you can get that sense of that association in the minds of kids that this is a place where I've got one thing, and I’m going to find a whole bunch of other things when I get there, I think that's a really great start.

MR. KNEUER: PBS has sort of this long history of marrying entertainment in one place, in one vehicle. Do you agree that this is –- how do you view that, PBS’ educational partners? I see a lot in transition in PBS development, more interactive resources, what’s your thought on that?

MS. DEWITT: Well, I absolutely agree with Teri and Mike that kids really are the drivers. If this is going to take off, it’s going to be about the kids who are coming to the service. And for the youngest part of the audience, the four and five and six year olds you were mentioning, their numbers are growing so much on the web right now. Most of them really learn about websites from their parents.

So I think their parents are another group we really should try to partner with, to teach about kids.us, and the kids, the kind of things they’re in. We certainly feel that educational content can be fun, it can be downtime, too, it can give kids a reason to come back.

And the important thing is that you allow kids the opportunity to not only to play these games, and go deeply into content, but also to share some of their own opinions, and to feel like they are communicating their ideas and being empowered by the content they are interacting with. And that’s what we’ve tried to do with everything with PBS.org, and we can do with kids.us as well.

MR. KNEUER: This is a sort of blue sky sort of question, and I’m just going to throw it out there. As the internet is developing, I’m sort of following this theme, the theme is how do we keep pace with this theme in the overall development of the internet? But as the internet develops, and computer processing power develops, we're quickly moving away from a paradigm, where the internet access device is somebody sitting at a computer keyboard and a screen. X Box and other systems are becoming interactive, internet interactive.

I don't have to worry so much yet about my child on the internet because he’s just 13 months old, but he does have a roomful of educational toys and little things, and these are going to become interactive devices. This is an age-appropriate thing, I can give my child to play with those things and become interactive.

Again, this is blue sky, maybe again Teri and you guys may have a little bit more visibility into the future technology of this, where it sort of becomes –- it's non-transparent. You're going to a .kids site. There’s this place on the internet that's age-appropriate for a variety of devices, for a variety of education, it's for a variety of applications. I mean I don't know, Keith, whether you are looking that far in the future or if I'm just blue skying or beyond any sort of reasonable measure.

MR. DRAZEK: It's a good question. I'm not sure I have the answer to --I think as it stands right now with kids.us we have the content controls in place, it's for 13 and under. As far as moving ahead, moving that far forward, it's not my specialty so I'm not sure I have any insight into what things might look like even two years down the road. I mean things change that fast, as you're saying.

But as far as the kids.us space is concerned, I certainly think that what we develop, what we all develop together, will be a place that's safe for kids for 13 and under, under 13. Because we have the mechanisms in place to control that content and to review it on a regular basis. Multiple times a week we review every website that's out there. We hope that with regular review we’ll be reviewing thousands of websites soon.

And there's an edification mechanism where somebody sees something they don't think it's appropriate for a 13 year old or under, they could send it to us and we'll look it up. We have very, very strict guidelines that we have to follow to make sure that, if there's a complaint filed with us that within hours, if not shorter, we have to take action and take that site down if there is, in fact, a violation.

So, as far as kids.us is concerned it will function, and is functioning, in the way that it was designed to function. Beyond that I'm not sure.

MR. KNEUER: Maybe stepping back, 10 years in the future, more immediate future, Mike, saying 10,000 pages on Nick.com, something like that, how do you

–- what are your plans? How do you grapple with verifying the content when we get into these much more richer experiences? You know, it may not be five or six pages or a game, but is an hour video clip from PBS, or from Nickelodeon, or from somebody else, those sort of things that are coming in.

There was a big debate, about what we're doing, talking about mandatory rating for television, for broadcasting television. It's impossible. Millions and millions of hours of cataloged entertainment that nobody can review, if it hasn’t already been done. I mean, what's the vision on that?

MR. DRAZEK: Well, fortunately technology does exist today. As far being able to review the content to websites, we use it today through our subcontract with our company KidsNet They have this automated technology today and it’s working today. It's how we reviewed and approved the content in the last few days for Nick.kids.us and Nickjr.kids.us and it works very quickly.

MR. KNEUER: Thanks. Mike, over the weekend would that have been at all possible, do you think, if you were trying to basically reflect everything at Nick.com?

MR. SKAGERLIND: No, I don't think that would be reasonable, but then I think we would have expected a much longer review time than would be normally expected.

MR. DRAZEK: But it still would have worked. In other words, the process would have worked. It would have gone, it may have taken a little bit longer, particularly if you looking at 10,000 pages, just by the math of it you’re going to end up with some more potential violations, which means it’s going to delay the process. Once a violation is identified we get a report of what it is, was it a hyperlink, was it a word that was not appropriate, was it part of a word that seemed like it was not appropriate. Then basically what we do is an official review of that and if those things pop-up we do visual reviews, and a manual process where it takes somebody making a judgment.

MR. KNEUER: I don’t want to guess how the software for Sponge Bob Square Pants --

MR. SKAGERLIND: It sails through every time. That’s a very good question, but it did pass. So anyway, I think the answer is that technology exists today to be able to handle vast quantities of content review. The timing, obviously, if we have thousands of sites someday, and maybe five to ten new sites every day, that’s a problem I’d love to have. I believe that the technology will develop appropriately where it’s a process that we’ll continue to be able to manage effectively.

MR. KNEUER: How are you dealing with it today?

MS. SCHROEDER: Well, we're always looking ahead, but because we work so close with the students we really like to listen to them in terms of -- because they always have it first. They’ve got the latest and greatest, and then too with various partners that we have, even though they always have it first we look at what else is out there to be able to put something in place, so that they can be first and safe, and try to instill that within the program as well.

In one response, we just talked about it earlier, I really think that if you do have the students invested in this domain, they’ll own it, they’ll own the content, they’ll manage it, they’ll monitor it, if it’s theirs, and it’s something that they take ownership in. A lot of these problems that we’re looking at here, I’m not saying that they’re going to go away, but they may be minimized because I know one of the things in the classroom students will say, how come nobody asks us? And it’s not that kids know best for themselves because, of course, but fact is, they do. There is the digital divide between the parent and the kids.

And we’ve done a survey with parents, and it’s interesting to see what the parents say, what the rules are, and they go, yep, and what the kids say. And those are real live data that we get from the same parents, and the same kids of those parents. So we know that there’s something there.

Now if we could bring some cohesiveness to it, giving the kids the ownership of that, you might be really surprised to see how this thing just really starts fertilizing and growing.

MR. KNEUER: You’ve all told us your experiences of putting it together. Teri, what you are doing to promote it? What can we be doing here? This is something that we grapple with a lot. We have a responsibility to help get the word out about this space, to work with you, to work with others. What could we be doing? Let’s sort of toss that out.

MR. DRAZEK: Well, I think a forum like this is a terrific opportunity, and I think this was a great chance for all of us to get together. The first panel this morning, I mean there was some terrific ideas that came out of that. The word partnership came up a number of times in the first panel discussion.

And I think just as an example, we would -- NeuStar put together these brochures. We’re talking with Teri, and the folks at I-Safe about doing some sort of co-branding, or co-marketing brochure about kids.us that ties in with the outreach in the grass roots program that Teri and I-Safe have with the schools, with the Parent Teacher organizations, and basically get the word out. But doing it in such a way that makes sense to the audience, I guess.

So back to your question, the forum this morning talked about a partnership. NeuStar, from our perspective, would love to be able to work as a partner, whether it's with one entity or multiple entities coming together and to really get the word out about the process, about the domain names, about the opportunities in the space.

I throw that out there, so if there’s anybody in the audience, or on the webcast that thinks they have, or they are a person, or they have a contact that would be interested in being involved in something like that, then I say let’s try to develop that idea a little further, and see if there are opportunities for partnership.

MR. SKAGERLIND: Yeah, I would say, and this is just an idea right now, broadband in the United States is really taking off, as I’m sure you know. And there’s a lot of cable operators and DSL providers who are installing broadband connections in homes every single day. We’re probably approaching a peak, and it strikes me as a real opportunity for you guys to absolutely convey to some of those providers in some form like this, Hey, this is what we’ve got going, is there an opportunity to educate as you go in those homes?

Because broadband is really the key to a lot of it. There's no question that once your broadband connected you start to use the internet much more often than you previous did, and you visit many more sites, and you stay online a lot longer than you previously did. And that is clearly going to –- if the people are not educated that is clearly potentially a big rise to some problems as well as the benefits. And we’ve heard some horror stories this morning.

So it strikes me that perhaps there are industry bodies that could be prevailed upon, with your help, to, as I say, to convene here in the city and say, here, this is what we’re up to. How can you help us? It could be possibly the schools, as well as entertainment companies to get the appropriate industries together and just to start to promote this and educate them and ask them to help.

MS. DEWITT: I think I agree with also educational organizations trying to see how kids.us can work with them. This is something we hear teachers talk about all the time, that they are very nervous about having their kids spend much time on the internet in the classroom because there’s such a possibility of ending up where they shouldn’t go.

But at the same time they’re supposed be teaching their kids how to be safe surfers and if something like this could partner better with school organizations, and teaching organizations, and began to develop more content that really is educational. It could be tied to a curriculum of regular standards then I think there’s huge opportunity there.

MR. KNEUER: We got started a little bit early, I also don’t want to lose the opportunity. The purpose of this panel was to talk about having these resources to talk about how you can, in fact, get on and establish a site. I think we wandered a little far back-and-forth but it’s a very interesting topic. So any questions from the floor? Certainly we encourage everyone to take advantage of the resources we have here. If you could come up to the microphone.

MS. DRANE: I’m Karen Drane and I work on the Department of Justice website. We’re moving towards a portal system, database driven, either next month or three years from now, depending how things go. And I know that Mike had mentioned moving pieces of existing websites over, and I’m wondering how that fits in with NeuStar’s evaluation of things? If you’re data base driven and you’re changing little things every day, do you still need things to be approved or do you just rely on that regular survey?

MR. DRAZEK: That’s an excellent question. The answer is you don’t have to submit anything that you’re changing on the site, the regular review process takes care of that. We do the regular technological review process multiple times a week, and basically if there's anything new that’s on there that doesn't meet the standards, it’s going to get caught. At that point, if we had to, if it violated the content policy sufficiently, we would take the site down, or there’s a notification process if it’s just a minor blip or something like that, where it gives you the chance to take it down or take that blip off before the site is removed from the space. So the answer to your question is you don’t necessarily have to regularly submit new content for review. Review is an automated process at that point.

MR. KNEUER: What’s NeuStar’s cost structure on that? If somebody wants to constantly update but load in entirely new content?

MR. DRAZEK: The answer is that the subscription is a $250 annual fee for the content review's subscription and that’s it. It’s just $250 per year.

MR. KNEUER: There’s no limit on the amount of content?

MR. DRAZEK: That’s right.

MR. KNEUER: Any other questions?

MR. HOURCADE: Juan Hourcade from the Census Bureau. The Government would have an additional requirement for making our sites accessible under Section 508, and that sometimes can put a little bit of concern with providing very rich content that can be appealing to children. Can you share, I don’t know if you’ve had any experience in trying to make that very rich content accessible at the same time for blind children, for example?

MS. DEWITT: I can definitely speak to that and part of PBS’ mandate is also to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Children with disabilities, learning with disabilities, as well as trying to make sure we’re accessible in lower income areas, and community centers, and libraries. And as a result, what we do is try to always offer a wide variety of content, and using a variety of technologies for every flash or name that is not assessable. That’s means it can’t be a screen reader at this point.

We also offer some offline activity or text driven activity they can complement that. Obviously what that means though is that there’s a higher cost involved. That means for every rich activity we do we need to do something that's lower end, and lower tech. And it’s something we thought about kids.us, is how much could be put into trying to be a site completely accessible, and how much we just keep trying to get some rich content there? It's not an easy thing to address especially in content for kids. I know that Micromedia is working on trying to develop a version of Flash that can be read by screen reader, but it isn’t quite there yet. So really the easiest thing to do is to be making every effort for all text so everything can be read. But the technology just isn’t there yet and it’s disappointing.

MR. KNEUER: Any other questions? I wanted to thank you all again. It’s very valuable information and informative for me. I hope everyone here, as well, Keith I think in particular, you offered to be always and readily accessible to the folks here, and to the folks staying online. I hope they take you up on it. Again, congratulations to Nickelodeon for being the newest member of the .kids. family. And Sara, PBS, has been there from the beginning, so we appreciate that as well. And also Teri with your work. Teri will make sure that we continue to have a safe technical place. I think Mike can make a few closing remarks. And thanks again.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thank you, John. And thank you to our panelists. Our second panel, this has been a very robust discussion.

Just a few concluding thoughts. I think that we’ve moved up the bar forward today. I think we clearly have a long way to go. We’re at 15 websites, with the desire to be at 1500, and have it be really rich content for children. Have it be a safe place to be.

Then we heard from John Shimkus this morning, exactly why this is as important as it is. He has a passion for this. His passion has moved through Congress. The President shares that commitment, and today is yet another manifestation of that. In the discussion that we’ve had, and the commitment that we’ve had our from our invited guests we’ve greatly appreciated it.

And I would just say, if there's one word that seems to sum up where we are in this partnership, you look at the opportunities between PBS and PTA, and back-to-school, there should be a rich vein of opportunity there to work with teachers and parents to help drive this to the next step of awareness. And it is an awareness campaign, and we heard that from our panel this morning that it is, really is, an awareness campaign. And I understand this digital divide is between parents and children, not the traditional way that other people look at it. And I think that’s a very good observation.

And so at this point, I need to say thank you to our panelists. We need to say thank you to NeuStar, who’s very committed to making kids.us a success for the right reasons. And we appreciate your commitment to that.

And we also need to thank some people here at NTIA. Because today was brought to you with the effort of a lot of very dedicated people. In particular we have Joe Watson. It’s his team who is primarily responsible for putting it on today. That includes Sandra Ryan, and Maureen Lewis, and Sheree Stalling.

And we have three interns here that all helped as well, Neil Shah, Cristina Miller and Brian Chamowitz. And then finally I just wanted to say for Sallianne Schagrin right here, thank you. Thank you to all of you for making this possible. Now let’s get out there and make .kids a success.

(Whereupon, the forum concluded at 1:15 P.M.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

I, Pamela M. Wallace, do hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings were taken down by me by voice recognition and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me using computer-aided transcription under my direction; and I further certify that I am not a relative or employee or attorney or counsel of any of the parties hereto, nor financially or otherwise interested in the outcome of the action.

Pamela M. Wallace

My commission expires: 5/04/2008