Scott Seitz

Scott Seitz is CEO and majority (90%) owner of dotgay LLC, a California corporation, and founder and owner of SPI Marketing, a leading LGBT agency with over 16 years of service on behalf of corporate and not-for-profit clients. SPI has planned the strategic entry or supported existing programs targeting gay and lesbian consumers for ABSOLUT Vodka, Diet Pepsi, North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association, LOGO, Aquafina, American and IBM, among other clients.

SPI Marketing has been LGBT agency of record for ABSOLUT since 1996; in 2009 it received a GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Outstanding Advertising award for its print work on behalf of ABSOLUT, considered the leading brand in the U.S. gay market. Scott has been listed in OUT100 and Instinct Men of the Year, and has been awarded recognition by several LGBT service organizations he has supported.

The SPI team, which has been looking for a way to give back to the community, views .gay as a vehicle for social entrepreneurship, with the potential to deliver tangible financial and strategic benefits to the global LGBT community. The team’s vision for .gay is based on 1) channeling 67% of the profits from the sale of .gay domain names to non-profit LGBT client organizations, and 2) safeguarding key community domains based on important generic keywords—e.g., lesbian.gay, hotel.gay, health.gay, marriage.gay and pride.gay—as communal resources to be operated for the mutual benefit of LGBT constituents: the service and non-profit community, business community, advertisers and media, plus a diverse range of individuals and emerging community groups.

A graduate of Michigan State University with a BA in Chemistry and a BS in Packaging Engineering, Scott honed his business, technology and marketing acumen at Kodak and Pepsi, working in a range of disciplines including business-to-business sales, operations, distribution, new product introductions, quality control, reengineering, brand and consumer marketing. Recognizing that maximizing affinity with gay consumers required highly specialized marketing communications strategies, he founded SPI Marketing in 1996.

Active in community service, Scott has served on the Board of Governors of Bread & Roses, a Connecticut AIDS service organization, Stonewall speaker bureau, and is a founding board member of Honoring Our Journey, a men’s spiritual group. Active in the First Congregational Church of Norwalk, he has provided expertise to a variety of other community organizations and businesses. Scott lives with his partner of 15 years on the Connecticut coastline.

Alexander Schubert

A native of Berlin, Germany who now resides in the Republic of Latvia, Alexander originally proposed .gay to the governing body of the Internet’s domain space, ICANN, in June 2009. A heterosexual, he recognized from that outset that in order for the .gay proposal to advance, ownership and stewardship of the domain space would need to be in hands of the LGBT community.

Launching an outreach effort to GLBT businesses and organizations, Alexander cold-called SPI Marketing. Initially unfamiliar with idea of lobbying ICANN to create a top-level .gay domain space, SPI’s Scott Seitz nevertheless wound up be being impressed with Alexander’s persistence and follow-up efforts, as well as his deep understanding of the technical and policy nuances of Internet domains. Alexander’s proposed community domain strategy will serve as a cornerstone for making .gay a vibrant resource.

One of a handful of entrepreneurs working to bring new top-level domains to the Internet, Alexander holds a masters degree in aviation and space engineering, and has been working in the domain name area since 1997. He became a full-time domain consultant in 2000, and has been attending ICANN meetings on a regular basis since July 2004. In 2005, envisioning an distinct Internet identity for Berliners, he co-founded (with Dirk Krischenowski) the .berlin initiative.

Seeing the potential of .gay as a community resource, as well as the need for LGBT custodianship of the proposal, Scott ultimately purchased a controlling stake in the corporation Alexander formed to own the .gay initiative, dotgay LLC.

Mediapolis

SPI Marketing maintains a strategic partnership with Mediapolis, a New York City-based software engineering and interactive media company. The initial Web developer for many prominent LGBT organizations—including the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Lambda Legal, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network and Commercial Closet—Mediapolis has been a quiet but strong partner in the community for over 15 years, combining a solid grounding in LGBT initiatives with valuable technical capabilities.

Founded in 1994, Mediapolis has developed a set of software tools that it customizes for each client’s specific needs. These tools combine the best of open-code software libraries with industry standard hardware to automate the creation of even the most complex web sites. As dotgay’s technology partner, Mediapolis would manage online operations and the implementation of sponsorship and advertising programs.

Leading the Mediapolis team:

Carl Pritzkat, who oversees project management and business development. With over two decades of experience in traditional and interactive media, Carl will work to develop online strategies for the .gay and index Web sites. Before co-founding Mediapolis, Pritzkat spent six years at German media conglomerate BMG. As director of the ECM Records label, he oversaw marketing and production of releases by performers ranging from Keith Jarrett and Pat Methany to Arvo Part and Hilliard Ensemble. Carl graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music composition and performance.

Alan Emtage, who oversees programming and content management. Before joining the company, Alan co-founded Bunyip Information Systems, Inc., where he created the Archie(R) system, the Internet’s first search engine. A native of Barbados who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer Science from McGill University, he lectures and speaks at conferences around the world on topics relating to Internet information systems and the impact of the Internet on society. Alan has chaired the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working groups on Internet Anonymous FTP Archives (IAFA) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URLs, URNs and URCs), as well having served on advisory boards for the National Science Foundation and other agencies.