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Dr.
Chris Hartnett and Dr. Kevin Ham
at Harvard Business School graduation
ceremony October 24 in Cambridge, Mass. |
reported back in
August,
Chris and Kevin were accepted into Harvard's prestigious Advanced
Management Program, the highest level executive
program offered by the Harvard Business School. They
joined 177 other executives from 45 countries around the
world for the intensive two-month program that had them
sequestered in a classroom 14 hours a day, six days a
week. They successfully completed the rigorous course and
were awarded their diplomas on October 24.
In addition to
their personal achievement, Chris and Kevin were able to
serve as evangelists for the entire domain industry
while going through the Harvard program. Chris told me
that after their discussions with leaders from so many
global corporations, "all of the major companies of
the world now know what a “Domain” is and also have a new
found appreciation for their value, Traffic and future
development potential."
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Dr. Hartnett
and Dr. Ham are close friends and Hartnett serves on the
board of the company Dr. Ham founded, Reinvent
Technology. Both were featured in DN
Journal Cover Stories ths year, Dr. Ham in May
and Dr. Hartnett in June.
We'll have more on their experiences at Harvard in our
next monthly newsletter.
P.S. Just got
a note from reader Brendan Regan who let me know about a
recent Wall Street Journal video report on the Harvard
Advanced Management program that happened to catch a shot
of Kevin and Chris at work! You can see it here. Elsewhere,
in another positive development for the geodomain industry
the owners of Richmond.com (The Whitlock Group)
have sold their award winning site to Media General,
a communications giant based in the Virginia city.
The price was not disclosed but is believed to be well
into seven figures (the press release is here).
By spending what it took to acquire Richmond.com, Media
General confirmed our belief that the future of local
media belongs to the the owners of .com city domains.
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I
happen to be very familiar with Media General
because they own the local newspaper and NBC-TV
affiliate in our home town of Tampa, Florida.
In my opinion buying Richmond.com was a move they
had to make in order to survive in the long
run. Like many other local media companies,
Media General has been taking it on the chin
(especially their newspaper properties) as more
and more people turn to the Internet for their
news.
I
have subscribed to Media General's Tampa
Tribune for 25 years but the paper has
shrunk so much that it is now just a shadow of its
former self. After the latest downsizing a few
weeks ago I switched to the more robust St.
Petersburg Times and will let my Tribune
subscription lapse. I had mentally pretty much
written Media General off entirely but the forward
thinking they showed in acquiring Richmond.com
makes me believe they now have a chance to
navigate the treacherous straits from traditional
media to the new media world online. I think more
and more old media companies will be forced to
make similar moves if they want to survive. |
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One final
note today, Fabulous.com has announced the 10
domain names that will be sold in a charity auction to
benefit the Internet
Commerce Association November 19th (during
the
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