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Today
I'm on my way
to Valencia, Spain to
cover the Domaining
Europe 2012 conference that gets
underway Thursday (April 26) at the Sercotel
Sorolla Palace Hotel. I'll have daily photos
and highlights from Spain in this column for you
starting with an on location pre-show post on Wednesday. This
will be the 4th Domaining Europe conference
staged in Valencia by Dietmar
Stefitz (who is getting a big assist
from co-producer Jodi Chamberlain for
this edition of the show). Valencia,
which sits directly on the Mediterranean Sea,
is Spain's 3rd largest city (only Barcelona
and Madrid are bigger), a metropolis that
offers a stunning mix of ultra modern
architecture (exemplified by the futuristic Hemisferic and Palau de Les Arts)
and buildings that have stood for centuries
including the 13th century Cathedral
in Plaza de la Reina where a chalice
many believe to be The
Holy Grail resides. Dietmar
and Jodi know that networking is the #1
reason people attend domain conferences so they
have built ample time into the show
schedule for registrants to enjoy Valencia
together, a perfect way to get to know each
other and get more business done. The entire closing
day Saturday has been set aside for leisure
activities that foster group networking (for
those staying through the weekend, as Diana and
I will, those opportunities will continue with a
Sunday brunch). Of
course there will be plenty of traditional
business sessions too with top notch speakers
Thursday and Friday. New gTLDs will be
among the subjects covered - a particularly hot
topic since ICANN has had to postpone
closing of the new gTLD application window
(originally scheduled for April 12) due to technical
glitches. As of this writing we
still don't know when the application system
will
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Hemisferic and Palau de Les Arts in Valencia, Spain
Image
from Bigstock
 Above:
The Sorolla Palace Hotel in Valencia, Spain
- site
for this week's Domaining Europe 2012 conference Below:
One of the meeting rooms at the Sorolla Palace
Below:
The Poolside terrace at the Sorolla Palace
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On
a personal note, one of the highlights
of the week in Spain (or lowlights
depending on how you look at it) will be
finding out whether or not I'll be
coming home from Valencia with any
hair left on my head. As I told you last
month PPX International Chairman
Gregg
McNair has |
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started
a campaign to raise $50,000 for The
Water School and he has
already gotten $10,000 each in
pledges from Frank
Schilling (InternetTraffic.com)
and Jan
Barta (Elephant
Orchestra) if he can get me
to let him shave my head in
Valenica. |
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Those
who want to see it happen can make a tax
deductible donation at WaterShave.org
or in person in Valencia if you will be
there for the show. I am a big fan of
the Water
School's life
saving work that helps
eradicate water borne diseases in
developing nations through an effective,
low cost clean water solution. If donors
step forward I'm coming to grips
with the idea of coming home with an
entirely new look next
week. |
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A couple of
other notes before I head for the
airport - Thursday (April 26) is
the deadline for the public to
comment on renewal
of ICANN's widely reviled
contract with Verisign that
would allow then to jack up .com
renewal prices 7% a year in four
of the next six years. You can make
your feelings known by sending an
email to [email protected].
You can also read comments others
have already made here: http://forum.icann.org/lists/com-renewal/.
(Hat tip to George Kirikos
for the reminder on this important
impending deadline). |
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Michael
Mann goes "gangsta" |
And last,
but certainly not least, kudos again to Paul
Sloan for a very
interesting article on
domain industry pioneer Michael Mann
that was published over the weekend at CNET
where Paul is now the Executive
Editor. Sloan wrote about Mann's domain
registration binge earlier this
month in which he went through $100,000
piling up almost 15,000 new
registrations in just 24 hours!
Some
immediately piped up saying it was a
waste of money, but Mann, who co-founded
BuyDomains and later sold the
company to NameMedia, has proven
over and over again that, when it comes
to domains, he doesn't make many
mistakes (we've written two Cover
Stories about Michael, including one of
our earliest ones in 2003
and another in 2007).
As for
Sloan, no one from the mainstream
business press has written more
insightful and influential
articles about the domain space than he
has. His 2007 piece about Kevin
Ham |
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called The
Man Who Owns The Internet
(written when Sloan was at Business
2.0 magazine) put this
industry in the mainstream spotlight and
had a lot to do with a boom in the
business that peaked that year. |
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