Back in June I told you about an exciting development in India when the organizers of DomainX announced they would hold the country's first major conference devoted solely to domain names. That event, staged by the Domain Name Owners Association of India (DNOAI), will be held on Sunday, September 7 at the Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre in Hyderabad.

A lot has happened since that story came out. There was apparently a split among those planning the original show, resulting in a fracture that couldn't be healed. As a result, a second group with a similar name - the Indian Domain Owners Association (IDOA) - will stage their own 

India keyboard image from Bigstock 

show called World Domain Day on Sunday (August 24) at the Avasa Hotel, also in Hyderabad, two weeks before DomainX.

This is obviously not an ideal situation for either group but to their credit they have concentrated on on getting their own projects together rather that wasting time, energy and good will publicly bashing each other. So, now it will be up to the market to pick a winner. Both one-day events have a good line up of speakers, sponsors and a full agenda and there is bound to be a lot of pent up conference demand in India, a great market with a lot of very active and intelligent domain investors, so perhaps both can succeed with their debut shows despite their close proximity in both time and place. 

	At the World Domain Day website you can get all of the details on the speakers who will be featured Sunday, as well as the sponsors and agenda details. The show is scheduled to run from 9:30am to 6:00pm local time. I'll have more details on the DomainX conference when we get closer to that event on September 7.

As I mentioned in the June story I will be speaking at DomainX. At the time I had planned to travel to Hyderabad to speak in person but due to some huge problems in getting Indian visas that exploded  this summer when a new company took over (and apparently thoroughly botched up)
visa processing, I will not be making the trip but will speak via Skype instead. As of this writing, some other U.S. based speakers, despite the many reports of interminable delays and lost or stolen passports, were still trying to get visas so they can make it in person and I am hopeful they will beat the odds and get their visas. Given this unexpectedly chaotic situation I'm thankful for Skype, but will regret missing this initial opportunity to meet so many of our Indian friends in person.