The Rocky Mountain Domain Conference will be 
held in Denver, Colorado Feb. 26-27, 2011

Denver is the latest city to get its own regional event. Michael Law just announced he will host the first Rocky Mountain Domain Conference on the weekend of February 26-27, 2011 in the Mile High City. Plans call for a domain discussion/networking session in downtown Denver on the first day then a trip to the nearby Copper Mountain Resort for a Ski/Snowboard Excursion the second day. 

I expect local and regional shows to play an increasingly important role in getting the good word about domains out to mainstream businesses in various markets around the globe. While most of these events are currently primarily aimed at 

domainers their scope is likely to  broaden considerably as time goes on. Meetings at this level are exceptionally well suited for showing local business people how to establish their own presence online.  With everything headed to the web, business owners are going to be looking for guidance in  that area and it all starts with a good domain name.

Elsewhere, the .CO Registry just announced it will auction off the single letter domain I.CO in the week ahead. Only pre-qualified bidders will be eligible to participate in the auction. Bidder qualification opened today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and will end on January 21st, 2011. The registry said the i.CO auction will be the first in an exclusive series of single-letter private domain name auctions commencing early in 2011.

The i.CO auction will be managed by Moniker® and SnapNames®. To register as a qualified bidder, or for additional information, you can visit: www.i.CO, email [email protected] or call 1-800-688-6311 to speak to an agent. Bidder names and bid details will be kept confidential to protect your anonymity.

Over the weekend ICANN released the 5th (and they say "final") version of their New gTLD Applicant Guidebook. Don't bet on this being the last iteration though. Those who have been following the process closely are already finding some major flaws in version 5. As always with ICANN matters, George Kirikos offered some keen observations in a letter he submitted shortly after the public commentary period on V5 opened (the commentary period will remain open until Dec. 10 so if you wish to file your own comments, do so before then). Bloggers Kevin Murphy and DomainIncite.com and Michael Berkens at TheDomains.com are have also posted some excellent material on this topic that is recommended reading. 

Elliot Silver of the award winning ElliotsBlog.com has launched a nice new informational resource for people who have questions about domains. Always a proponent of category 

defining domain names, Elliot of course built the new site on DomainQuestions.com! With Elliot personally answering questions along with a little help from his friends, this could be just  the place to get you questions answered. 

Last but certainly not least today, Lizzy Grant (seen in the photo at right), AKA Lana Del Rey (an up and coming young singer who is the daughter of domain veteran Rob Grant) just reached another career milestone. Lizzy made a trip to Berlin, Germany where she joined one of Europe's hottest bands - Mando Diao (who has sold over 1 million CDs) to record a video for MTV Unplugged. The video played on MTV Germany throughout the weekend and is helping spread Lizzy's fame across the continent.