The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley conference  opened last night with a welcoming cocktail party at the Marriott in Santa Clara, California. Though the crowd is lighter than usual for a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. event, the caliber of people here (in terms of their ability to make deals and dispense potentially life changing advice) should assure that those who made the trip will get their money's worth. NameMedia drew a steady flow of traffic to their booth with a wine tasting event that actually started an hour before the official party got underway. 

NameMedia's David Zakur pours samples at last night's wine tasting during 
the welcoming cocktail party at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley.

The NameMedia booth attracted attendees eager to try a full range of wines from Napa Valley's Suhr Luchtel boutique winery. The cocktail party ended at 9pm but many of the attendees simply moved around the corner to the hotel bar where the conversations were still going strong well past midnight.

The first full day of business got underway this morning with welcoming comments from T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Co-Founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu. The day's events are continuing as I write this but tomorrow I will have a post in this column recapping all of the Tuesday highlights. 

Companies continue to use T.R.A.F.F.I.C. as a platform to announce major news. This morning Parked.com announced the acquisition of mini-site monetization service WhyPark.com, a company founded by Craig Rowe that we profiled in our March Cover Story. For that piece we also interviewed Parked.com President Donny Simonton who essentially telegraphed the acquisition to his highly successful parking company announced today. 

At the time Simonton said, "Coming up with a way to combine a domain parking feed and a content system would be the best of both 

Parked.com President Donny Simonton
(today at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley)

worlds."  That combination is now a reality and it will be interesting to see if this new hybrid can provide the breakthrough in domain monetization that so many domain portfolio owners are looking for. Just before the deal was announced WhyPark provided some extra incentive to try the service but making it completely free of charge (the company previously charged $99 to use their platform).