|
Domainer
Mardi
Gras keynote
speaker Tim Burns
delivering his address Friday in New Orleans |
Louisiana State
Representative Tim Burns, followed by a pair of
luncheon speakers and a trio of afternoon seminars.
Burns, who has authored
three books, including one titled Entrepreneurship.com,
delivered an interesting talk on how the current global
economic crisis developed and the role that entrepreneurs,
like domain investor/developers, will play in helping
get business moving again.
In the lunch break that
followed DomainNameWire.com's
Andrew Allemann released some results from his
annual survey of domain owners and I spoke about current
industry and aftermarket trends. |
|
The three
afternoon seminars covered Risk Management, Domain
Tax Issues and Lessons in Offshoring. I'll
have more details on all of the Friday sessions and
addresses in a comprehensive conference review article
that we expect to publish on March 2.
|
As informative as the
seminars were, the light attendance at those
sessions compared to the crowds that turned out
for the social events made it clear that the #1
attraction at this show was the chance to party
with old and new domain industry friends during
the world famous Mardi Gras celebration.
The "distractions" in New Orleans during
Mardi Gras are even more pronounced than they are in
popular conference cities like Las Vegas
and Orlando where local attractions lure
people away from the hotel meeting rooms.
While that can be a
challenge for show promoters, registrants get
great value from getting to know their business
partners better in the relaxed, entertaining
environment that cities like this provide. Parked.com
certainly provided a perfect environment for that
by sponsoring a Bourbon Street balcony
party that ran until 3am this morning (long past
the time Diana and I were back at the hotel and
sound asleep!). |
Late
afternoon view of the Parked.com balcony
on
Bourbon Street where attendees would get a birds
eye view of Mardi Gras revelers below when the sun
went down and the street was packed wall to wall. |
In
the photo below you can see the view from the balcony a
few hours after dark when Mardi Gras revelers
packed every square inch of the street below. At the far
left you see Thought Convergence exec Jay
Westerdal among the Parked guests tossing strands of
beads to the throng below.  The
Domainer Mardi Gras conference closes today. A brunch at
the Court of Two Sisters will take up the entire
morning then business gets underway at Noon with the
first of two seminars. Aftermarket.com's live
domain auction will follow at 2:45pm local time, then a
closing awards ceremony brings the curtain down at
4:15pm. Many will stay in town for a second night on the
Parked.com balcony, but Diana and I have to catch a
flight to Ohio for my mother's 90th birthday
celebration this weekend. I'll have closing day
conference highlights in this space for you on Monday.
(Posted
Feb.
21, 2009) |
