The Lowdown is compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron Jackson.

I'm back at our Florida home base  after a nine-day west coast swing to cover the GeoDomain Expo in San Diego and the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley conference in Santa Clara. Both were very productive events that drew highly favorable comments from those 

who attended. We will be publishing comprehensive review articles about each show and expect both of those to be online by this time next week (introductions and links to each story will appear on our home page as soon as the respective articles are completed).

A highlight of the trip was the electrifying Ad.com auction staged by Moniker.com at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. that ended with a $1.4 million sale to Directi Co-Founder Divyank Turakhia. Two different videos showing the spirited bidding for that name have been posted on YouTube. You can check those out here and here (the first is shot from a wide angle perspective whle the second has a lot of close ups of Dviyank during the dramatic bidding). 

The extended online auctions associated with both conferences are still underway. The GeoDomain Expo's extended auction ends tomorrow (Tuesday, May 5) at 3pm U.S. 

Moniker's John Mauriello (left) with 
Divyank Turakhia immediately after 
Turakhia won Ad.com with a $1.4 million 
bid. (Photo Courtesy of Barbara Neu).

Eastern Time (Noon Pacific). Names still up for grabs in that sale include Reserve.com, Ponce.com, ChicagoTravel.com and Geography.info. RickLatona.com's extended online T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction will conclude Wednesday at 5pm Eastern time (2pm Pacific). The catalog includes TechnicalSuport.com, FLR.com and IT.co.uk. Moniker's extended T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction will continue until 3:15pm Eastern time (12:15pm Pacific) on Thursday. Some of the notable names in that auction are Plans.com, Relatives.com and RepairMyCredit.com.

Though I've just gotten back home, I'll be back out on the road in less than two weeks and have three trips scheduled over the next six weeks (one of those overseas). First stop will be Philadelphia where my daughter Brittany will graduate magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania on May 17 (she was a bio chem major and will be moving on to medical school 

with plans to be a pediatrician). As an Internet guy, Penn's commencement speaker, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is someone I am really looking forward to listening to.

Two weeks later the show circuit resumes with the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs conference in Amsterdam June 1-4. Then, less than two weeks after I return from that European show I'll be back on a plane headed to Washington, D.C. for the Domain Roundtable conference June 14-17. The conference schedule was heavily frontloaded this year with six shows in the first six months. So far, only one major general interest conference is scheduled in the second half of the year. That is T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York October 26-29 in Brooklyn.

(Posted May 4, 2009)