The 2016 Domaining Europe conference closed Tuesday evening (May 31) at the Grand Hotel Amrâth Kurhaus in The Hague, Netherlands. The 8th annual event staged by show founder Dietmar Stefitz drew a nice cross section of domain investors and high level company executives from around the globe. This was the first  time the event was held outside of Valencia, Spain (Stefitz's home town) and, as beautiful as Valencia is, the change of scenery apparently paid off as Dietmar said the turnout was DE's best to date. He told us he plans to continue taking the conference to new locations with places like Berlin, Germany among those he is considering for 2017.

Above: On the first business day of Domaining Europe 2016 Monday (May 30) - a day focused on .COM -  Verisign Senior VP Pat Kane delivered the keynote address. (This photo and all others on this page courtesy of Radix Registry who posted a public conference photo gallery here).

Below: Closing day Tuesday - billed as Not .Com day with the spotlight on new gTLDs - featured another compelling keynote address from Ingrid Baele, Vice President, Intellectual Property and Standards at global corporate giant Philips. When asked if Philips will re-brand immediately to their new .philips TLD, Stefitz said Ms. Baele answered "No, there are so many things to take into consideration , when re-branding such a huge multi-national. Packaging, divisions, 10,000s of  thousands of machines which have the brand philips.com engraved on them and specially the health care units that are still not very comfortable with the new GTLD's, because they are not yet implemented from all ISP's and this could cause problems."

Above: An audience view from one of the nine business sessions held at Domaining Europe Tuesday (May 31). You can review the ambitious full agenda for both show days here. 

Below: .CLUB's globe trotting CMO Jeff Sass filled the audience in on the latest news from one of the web's most visible new gTLDs (one that just celebrated its 2nd anniversary) in an entertaining talk Tuesday morning. Jeff is on the road almost continually spreading the .CLUB/New gTLD gospel.

Dietmar Stefitz told us the afternoon sessions featured Ramon Rautenstrauch, a panel discussion on new GTLDs and ccTLDs and also had a strong ICANN flavor thanks to appearances made by Jean Jaques Sahel, Stephane Van Gelder and ICANN  ombudsman Chris LaHatte. 

The day and conference closed with a live charity domain auction of new gTLDs put together by Undeveloped.nl that raised €4,120 for Inara.org. Undeveloped.nl is also conducting a separate premium domain auction online that will continue to June 14, 2016. In the photo above, Undeveloped.nl Founder Reza Sardeha (far right) is seen with Domaining Europe Founder Dietmar Stefitz and (at far left) masterful show moderator Braden Pollock.

With another successful Domaining Europe conference in the books the global show spotlight now swings to China where the 2016 Global Domain Industry Summit gets underway Friday (June 3) in Hangzhou.