"Who do you admire in the domain industry and why?"
Well, i would say a few words on the other segment of DN industry the end-user clients, businesses.(if you find this OT, erase of course). While there in public regularly presented statistics and estimates of digital economy growth, and domain names and websites being one of the constituents, and even in politics/administration many supportive statements to digital economy, it turns from my experience that companies/corporations who are actually ruling trends, are totally reluctant to any entrepreneurship aside their major business activities. From the agri plantations, food producers, payment services up to entertainment industry - i've reached this year in out-bound selling, almost none of the companies representatives was responsive in any way, while still being presented with a competent domain name industry business offer matching their business profile. It seems companies are simply not interested even with offered domains closely related to their projects and priced at average monthly salary value. So, maybe it is questionable among all numerous NgTLD what are all offered DN's about? It is not just registered/reserved DNS record, as along of deciding on any of domain registration are entrepreneurship ideas, that later continuing with a promotion, advertising and even business planing, thus many working hours are delivered to end business clients.