In the Expo's first seminar Thursday morning a panel featuring Dan Pulcrano (Boulevards New Media), Sean Smyth (Groupon), Tony Wills (AllMenus.com) and Alisa Cromer (LocalMediaInsider.com) sat on a panel that covered how local media sites can compete against national sites that have a local focus.

Opening business seminar - Local Media vs. The Nationals -
Thursday morning at the GeoDomain Expo.

Next up the Castello Brothers, Michael and David (Castello Cities Internet Network) talked about Maximizing Geo Brand Traffic Revenue.  We will have details on their session (and all of the other seminars) in a comprehensive conference review article we will be publishing next week.

At the Thursday luncheon I gave a media person's view of the prospects for the geodomain industry. I reiterated something I have said a number of times in the past - that I think .com geodomain owners are perfectly positioned to reap huge benefits from the migration of advertising money from traditional media to the web.

After lunch there were seminars on Creative Local Branding (featuring Fred Mercaldo of Scottsdale.com and Cathy Maddox of NewOrleans.com), Hotel Marketing (with Chad Montgomery of Expedia.com, Bill Marbach of GetARoom.com and Rob Kazmierski of Advanced Reservations Systems) and Social Media & Geodomains (featuring left to right in the photo below Patrick Ruddell (ChefPatrick.com), Courtney LeClair (ZCO Corp.), Josh Metnick Chicago.com), Jim Smith (Sobiz10) and Marian Mariathason (Sobiz10).

After a final afternoon session on how to Mobilize Your Site (hosted by Don Jones of NewOrleans.com and Davis Asplund of ZCO Corporation) it was time for the big evening social event - a night out at the famous New Orleans concert venue Tipitina's. 

The evening got off to a rousing and unique start when a New Orleans jazz band led a procession of Expo attendees on their short walk from the hotel to Tipitina's. 

Inside attendees were treated to a buffet of traditional New Orleans dishes including jambalaya, red beans and rice, gumbo and po boy sandwiches. There was also a free open bar at the party sponsored by Universal Business Listings. 

After the party in an upstairs room at Tipitina's, attendees were offered free tickets to any of three concerts that got underway at 10pm in the multiple showrooms on the ground foor at Tipitina's. 

As I write this early Friday afternoon, the closing day of the GeoDomain Expo is underway (I am currently listening to the keynote address from GetARoom.com co-founder David Litman). Tomorrow I'll have photos and highlights from all of today's activity for you in this column.

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The 2010 GeoDomain Expo opened last night at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans with a welcoming reception sponsored by Local.com in the hotel's famous Blue Room. In its heyday the stage in this room was graced by music legends ranging from Frank Sinatra to Louis Armstrong to Ray Charles.

Above: Part of the crowd in the Roosevelt Hotel's Blue Room for last night's 
welcoming reception at the 2010 GeoDomain Expo in New Orleans. 

Below: A jazz trio played on the Blue Room stage while geodmainers got better acquainted.

Faces in in the crowd last night included (left to right in the photo below): Canada's Peter 
Maxmych and Zak Muscovitch, Local.com's Dawn Paduganan and Moniker.com's Don Lyons.

The first full day of business at the Expo is underway as I write this from the conference room. I'll have photos and highlights from today and tonight's activity for you in a post in this column tomorrow.

While the GeoDomain Expo is getting into full swing, the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Milan conference is wrapping up today in Italy. One of the show's main events - the Rick Latona Auctions live domain auction generated over $530,000 in sales yesterday.

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Greetings from New Orleans where the 2010 GeoDomain Expo gets underway today with private sessions for Associated Cities members followed by the public opening of the Expo at a 7pm welcoming reception tonight. The conference, being held at the Waldorf Astoria's historic Roosevelt Hotel, will be in full swing with a series of seminars and social events Thursday and Friday when the event concludes.

The Roosevelt is a stunning venue. It was closed for several years after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 but after a $145 million renovation project it has been restored to its former glory. The lobby and even the guest rooms make you feel like you are in a grand museum rather than a hotel.

Photos above and below are from the ornate lobby at the Roosevelt Hotel 
in New Orleans where the 2010 GeoDomain Expo gets underway today.

Diana and I came to New Orleans on Monday so we could spend a few days enjoying the city before the conference gets underway. The Big Easy is bouncing back from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina in a big way and is drawing throngs of visitors from around the world again. Yesterday we took the Grey Line's highly recommended 3-hour Katrina bus tour that gives you a much better understanding of what happened here, how much destruction the city suffered and what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again.

We have also enjoyed spending time in the French Quarter, at beautiful Jackson Square (and nearby New Orleans favorites like Cafe Du Monde). We'll visit the Garden District today while we look forward to seeing everyone at the Expo's opening session this evening.

Scene from Jackson Square in New Orleans Monday evening. Just one of the attractions 
within walking distance of the Roosevelt Hotel where the GeoDomain Expo is being held. 

While the GeoDomain Expo gets underway the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Milan, Italy that opened Tuesday continues today with one of its main events - the Rick Latona Auctions live domain auction. It starts at 10am U.S. Eastern time and will continue for several hours. 

One other reminder today, the AfternicDLS has a free webinar coming up tomorrow (Thursday, April 28). The one-hour session will start at 2pm (U.S. Eastern time) and will cover how to "Increase Your Sales Velocity With Premium Promotion." You can register for the webinar here.

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Our latest free monthly newsletter was emailed to opt-in subscribers Sunday night. In it we broke down domain sales results for the 1st quarter of 2010. While total dollar volume was 

down 18% from the same quarter a year ago, the entire year over year difference can be attributed to the three biggest sales in each of those quarters. In 1Q-2009, the three largest sales; Toys.com at $5.1 miilion, Fly.com at $1.76 million and Auction.com at $1.7 million totaled $8.56 million. In 1Q-2010 the three biggest sales; Flying.com at $1.1 million, Poker.org at $1 million and Credit.fr at $851,000 totalled just $2.95 million. That is a difference of $5.61 million in the top three sales alone -  accounting for more than the $5.2 million drop in the entire market total, year over year. 

While total dollar figures are subject to wide fluctuations depending on the value of high dollar sales, a more revealing figure - the median sales price - gives us a more accurate view of the overall market. The median is the price at which half of all sales were higher and half were lower. By that standard 1Q-2010 showed a slight improvement over both 1Q-2009 and the last quarter (4Q-2009). The median sales price reported to us in 1Q-2010 was $2,643. In the last quarter that number was $2,610 and in 1Q-2009 it was $2,600. That number shows us that overall domain values have held up and even improved a bit over the past 12 months.

The numbers also showed continued momentum for ccTLDs. In 2009, the average total of quarterly ccTLD sales was $4.47 million. In 1Q-2010 that number jumped 23% to $5.49 million and represented 24% of all reported sales - continuing a hot pace the country codes set in 2009 after they had accounted for just 11% of all reported domain sales in 2008. You can read the entire report here. 

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Before heading into the weekend I wanted to bring you up to date on a number of interesting developments in the domain industry. First kudos to Andrew Allemann and George Kirikos who have uncovered some remarkably embarrassing shenanigans involving both complainants in UDRP proceedings and National Arbitration Forum (NAF) panelists who are charged with rendering 

Speaking of Domain Name Wire, in association with SnapNames they currently have an online domain auction running that features names submitted by a number of domain bloggers. The auction will end on Tuesday (April 27) at 3:15pm (U.S. Eastern time), so check out the catalog now to see if anything catches your eye.

Elsewhere, Jason Cupp and Patrick Ruddell (Chef Patrick) have just re-launched GoDrops.com, a site that provides a filtered list highlighting the the top domains on each's day drops list. The site has a free service covering .com and .net domains as as well as a new $19.97 a month premium service that covers more extensions and provides more statistical information on each domain. 

The domain industry is in for a busy week ahead. On Monday (April 26), the .CO registry begins its Global Sunrise period that will run through June 10. This phase allows qualified trademark holders to claim matching names. Land Rush will be held June 21-July 13, with general availability of .CO domains beginning July 20.

A pair of major domain conferences will also be held next week. The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Milan, Italy opens Tuesday (April 27) and runs through Thursday. The GeoDomain Expo in New Orleans gets underway Wednesday (April 28) and will continue through Friday. GeoDomain Expo organizers posted some significant additional agenda details today and told me the schedule is now virtually complete. I'll be in New Orleans to speak and cover the show for you.  I had committed to be there before the conflicting T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Milan dates were announced and will certainly miss being with the many European domainers gathering in Milan for what should be a great show as well. We'll try to have some photos and details from that event sent to us during the week so we can show you what is going on on the other side of the pond as well as in New Orleans. 

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When I head over to New Orleans next week for the 2010 GeoDomain Expo, one of the many people I will be looking foward to seeing again is Scottsdale.com Managing Partner

Fred Mercaldo
Managing Partner,
 Scottsdale.com and
GeoDomain Development 
Ventures, LLC

Fred Mercaldo. Fred is an exceptionally bright businessman who is expanding well beyond the boundaries of operating a single geodomain website. In fact he recently  took on another role as Managing Partner of GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC and in that capacity he just announced a major software development and marketing deal that will give him a hand in the further development of over 40 .com geodomain sites representing various cities.

Mercaldo said “Our proven software platform (www.CityInTheBox.com) will power the sites then, once they are launched, CitiesPlanet will perform all marketing and advertising functions, and will procure local partnerships and contracts that will monetize the sites. Our goal is to grow to 150 pure City.com properties under management within 24 months” 

Scottsdale based CitiesPlanet has worked with numerous 

creative technology and digital marketing specialists to develop a marketing platform that reaches out to local business in each City.com area. Combined with a proven CRM system, each business receives a custom media kit with their specific company featured, giving business owners numerous advertising and partnering options with their local, official City.com branded site.  

Mercaldo said “Our success rate so far has been 15% to 30% response rate, depending on which Directory category is being marketed, which is incredible. In addition, our system features a “nurture” campaign in the event a business has not responded to our first offer, and will automatically continue to send the opportunity to the business owner three additional times.”

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1-800-BUSINESS LLC,  a company that was formed to operate a business around the toll-free vanity number, 1-800-BUSINESS and its numerous URL’s, including www.1-800-BUSINESS.com plans to sell off essentially all of its assets in a May 27 auction. 

In a press release Streambank Founder Gabe Fried said, "Premium vanity phone numbers such as these, and their companion domain names, can prove quite valuable, providing the marketing foundation for a new company or for more effective marketing campaigns in an existing company. Employing the generic and memorable term business’ in seeking new business customers, these assets could be utilized by a variety of B2B entities including banking and credit card firms, business loan brokers, accounting firms, insurance companies, search engine/Yellow Pages/directory assistance
firms, business publications, franchisee recruiters, payroll companies and business brokers, to name a few.”

Streambank partner Margaret Birlem added “Successful B2C companies utilize premium generic
easy-to-remember phone numbers for the sale of a variety of products including flowers,
contact lenses and pet medications, and now there is an exciting opportunity in the B2B
arena with 1-800-BUSINESS. This is a rare opportunity to acquire an easily-recalled and
recognizable B2B vanity phone number and URLs that can help create and reinforce a
powerful brand.”

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Fans of the .tel extension that was introduced in March 2009 got a new resource to draw on today when the TelMasters.com website went live. The site was founded by Mark Kolb and Scott Smith, two early adopter .tel evangelists who saw a need for an exclusive .tel "domain

boutique" to address the unique requirements of the .tel community. As most of you know, .tel domains have different characteristics than other domains, one of the most notable being that all .tel pages have to be hosted on the registry's servers and there are restrictions on the kinds of content they can contain.

Smith said, "Our goal is simple - to help expand brand notoriety and to enable greater use and more creative ways to exploit .tel worldwide. Since March 24, 2009, over 275,000 .tel domains have been registered by individuals and businesses looking to create new channels of 

of communications and/or to enhance and broaden the distribution of their respective brands. During that same time there has been an explosion of trial and error activity by .tel owners attempting to find better and faster ways to add content to their domain properties and to monetize those assets.”

The founders said TelMasters is offering new .tel registration services, aftermarket .tel sales and leasing, news, updates and is especially pleased to introduce “Mark’s Tools” - tools designed exclusively to help manage and maintain .tel domains. Traffic counters, bulk up loaders, guest books, color and logo managers and quick updates are just a few of the current offerings that are free for TelMasters members.

Kolb said, “We’ve been .tel ambassadors since before the Sunrise period in late 2008. We maintain and manage a portfolio of over 800 .tel domains and have extensive experience in building tools and .tel sites for our own account and for our growing list of satisfied clients. We’ve established strong relationships with many international .tel domain owners with portfolios ranging from a few domains to those with several thousand domains. Those associations will continue to help guide us in the types of new tools we build and the features we incorporate into TelMasters.”

For more information you can visit both www.telmasters.com and http://telmasters.tel. 

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GeoDomain Expo organizers have posted more speaker and session information on the upcoming show's website. The event will be staged at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans April 28-30.  

Shawn Pilfold of Ogopogo Media and Fred Mercaldo of Scottsdale.com have been selected to speak during a Thursday morning (April 29) session on Creative Local Branding and Marketing. At the luncheon that follows that session I will give a brief talk on the current state of the geodomain industry. 

Speakers have also been named for two of the Thursday afternoon sessions. The Castello Brothers, Michael and David, will share tips on Maximizing Geo Brand Traffic Revenue and Marion Mariathason of Sobiz10 has been added to a panel that will discuss Social Media & Geodomains.

A dozen show sponsors have also been added to the conference agenda page. As we told you earlier this week, Moniker.com is also running an online geodomain auction in conjunction with the show featuring Lisbon.com, Raleigh.com, Bucharest.com, Crete.com and VisitRome.com to name just a few.

You can register for the GeoDomain Expo here and as of press time hotel rooms were still available here. 

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We have several bits of news to pass along to you today. GoDaddy Auctions announced they're opened a new public "Closeouts" section to their sites. These are domains that have 

expired at GoDaddy that will be made available for $5 to $9 each, plus the cost of a one-year renewal. GoDaddy says that approximately 25,000 new domains are added to this list daily,

GoDaddy has offered similar closeout deals in the past but they were only available to registered site 

members. Now anyone can buy without taking a membership.  To help you keep up with new inventory, GoDaddy Auctions has also set up a Twitter account that announces "Daily Gems." To access those follow GoDaddy Auctions on Twitter.com @GoDaddyAuctions.

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We're currently tabulating first quarter of 2010 industry sales data for an aftermarket report that will be published within the next few days in our free monthly newsletter for opt-in subscribers. We do that each quarter and compare the results to the previous year as well as the previous quarter to give you an idea of what direction the domain sales market is headed in. 

Our database includes sales information from all of the industry's major sales venues including Oversee.nets's Moniker and SnapNames divisions. This morning Oversee released an interesting report covering 1Q-2010 results on their sales platforms that indicates things are looking up there. Moniker and SnapNames reported a 42% jump in total sales over the previous quarter. 

Oversee said its results included a private 7-figure sale as well as a half dozen 6-figure sales including Guns.com ($800,000), PartySupplies.com ($360,000), ScreenSavers.com ($335,000), LoanCalculator.com ($215,000), HomeRun.com ($131,000) and Migraine.com ($125,000). (Guns.com was sold jointly with Recall Media and Migraine.com was sold jointly with Sedo).

Moniker and SnapNames are positioned to post more solid sales in a special April Showcase Auction tied into the GeoDomain Expo coming up April 28-30 in New Orleans. That sale of geodomain names features Lisbon.com, Raleigh.com, Bucharest.com, Crete.com and VisitRome.com to name just a few. The online auction began Tuesday (April 13) and will continue until 12:15pm (U.S. Pacific time) on May 4, 2010. You can get information on that auction as well as all other upcoming Showcase auctions here. 

Moniker is also accepting submissions for three DOMAINfest live auctions they have coming up in the months ahead. Those will be tied to DOMAINfest events in Ft. Lauderdale May 13, New York City August 18 and Prague, Czech Republic October 6. Here are the links to submit names for each of those auctions (you'll need to act quickly for the May 13 sale as submissions for it close on Sunday (April 18).:

http://domainauctions.moniker.com/2010/DOMAINfest-Fort-Lauderdale

http://domainauctions.moniker.com/2010/DOMAINfest-New-York

http://domainauctions.moniker.com/2010/DOMAINfest-Prague  

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Tessa Holcomb, who brokered several million dollars worth of domain sales as a Senior Consultant at Sedo.com has taken a new dual position with PPX International and DomainManager.com. PPXi Chairman Gregg McNair told us that Tessa will serve as the Director of Business Development with new company partner DomainManager as well as Director of Philanthropy for PPXi. Ms. Holcomb said, "Having recently visited philanthropy projects associated with PPXi in Africa in conjunction with the charity climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, I am so pleased to be part of an organization that generously supports so many worthwhile causes. It is good to know that my business efforts will make a real difference among the underprivileged."

Tessa Holcomb draws a crowd while in Africa 
for a charity climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in February 2010

Ms. Holcomb was a member of the Mount Kilimanjaro climb team that successfully reached the 19,340 foot peak in Tanzania in February. With sponsors supporting the individual climbers, the effort, organized by McNair and Rick Latona, wound up raising almost $200,000 for The Water School, a non-profit organization that has developed a cost effective water purification program that is saving lives in Africa and other developing nations around the world.

In conjunction with the announcement that Ms. Holcomb has joined PPX, McNair also announced that the company has entered into a cross-technology agreement with DomainManager.com. McNair said the new pact will allow PPXi to expand its reach into the domain management space. Underscoring the integration between PPX and DomainManager,  Ms. Holcomb will report directly to DomainManager.com CEO Richard Lau who also serves on the PPXi board.

PPXi Chairman Gregg McNair

DomainManager.com CEO Richard Lau

Lau said, "Tessa brings a wealth of industry experience and knowledge to the organization and we look forward to building DomainManager into a major service provider." For more information on PPX or DomainManager.com you can contact [email protected].

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I was interviewed Sunday by Las Vegas based reporter Steve Friess for an article that appeared on AOLNews.com today about a local battle over a proposed new .Vegas gTLD. This would be one of the unlimited number of new TLDs ICANN plans to roll out within the next year or two. 

As you may have heard at least two competing entities plan to go after a .Vegas extension. One is backed by the city of Las Vegas and the other by Clark County who has jurisdiction over the Las Vegas Strip. If you are interested in the wrangling over .Vegas, you can read Friess's account of the situation. 

What I found more interesting in my conversation with Steve was a quote he relayed to me from a Chicago attorney named Paul 

McGrady who accepts consulting fees from people who are considering plunking down as much as $500,000 in an effort to land a new gTLD and get it into operation.  I was incredulous when Friess told me McGrady said, "Some day people will look upon .com as the less professional, mom-and-pop segment of the Web where only small businesses and amateurs dwell." I have to admit I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I heard that.

Granted, we have all become pretty much accustomed to a lot of unsubstantiated claims from both sides of the new gTLD debate (with the viewpoints expressed almost always directly related to the financial interests of the person making the claim). Even so, I am dumbfounded that anyone could be so uninformed and lacking in common sense as to really believe that the world's corporations are going to discard their .com addresses for new gTLDs that no one has ever heard and in most cases never will. No entity on earth has the marketing budget to equal the billions upon billions of dollars that have been spent advertising .com domains and making .com synonymous with the Internet (before anyone brands me as a .com fanatic you should know that I personally own more domains in other extensions - including previous new gTLDS - than I do in .com, but that doesn't change the reality of .com's dominance on the Internet).

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DN Journal: OK Patrick, after years of being your own boss, why did you decide to give up the entrepreneurial life and take this new position with Oversee.net?  

Chef Patrick:  Being self employed for the last 5-6 years this was not an easy decision. After discussing the options with my wife and a couple of industry friends it seemed to be a perfect fit for me. Many factors came into play - health insurance, ability to increase my income while continuing my current projects, location (large domain community in South Florida ), goals of becoming a high-end domain broker and travel.  

DN Journal: What will your specific duties at Oversee/Moniker entail? I understand there will be some nice perks like an upcoming trip to Prague ?  

Chef Patrick:  My primary focus is to help clients acquire and sell domain names. I will spearhead a Social Media push for Moniker/SnapNames and co-host the Domain Masters radio show. In addition I plan to travel a lot, at least one show per month. In the next 60 days I have plans to attend the GeoDomain Expo in New O rleans (April), iGaming Super Show in Prague (May) and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in Vancouver (June).  

DN Journal: I know DNCruise, your domain conference on a cruise ship coming up in October, is also still on with Oversee now also signing on as a sponsor. Will this help make the cruise and even bigger and better event?  

Chef Patrick: Yes, Moniker/SnapNames has signed up for a sponsorship package and overall the company has been extremely supportive of my conference. For now there are no plans on making Oversee.net a major part of my first conference. Because I do plan on making this an annual cruise, who knows what will happen next year. 

DN Journal: Tell us more about your new role as co-host of the Domain Masters radio show.  

DN Journal: One final question - are your already lobbying for Oversee to return to the Playboy Mansion for next year’s DOMAINfest Global conference?  

Chef Patrick: Heck I’m lobbying for the offices to be moved to the Playboy Mansion , LOL!

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Just about every serious domain buyer has gotten used to receiving Rick Latona's Daily Domains newsletter offering carefully selected domain name for sale. Today's newsletter contained something different though - an announcement that Latona is changing his entire 

sales model. Instead of continuing to send a daily list of domains with first come first served set sale prices, domains in the daily email will be up for grabs in a 24-hour auction that will be conduced on the company's slick new online auction platform at Latonas.com.  

To get the new format off to a fast start, Latona's pulled 120 domain names from their own inventory for the first 24-hour event (now open for bids here until 10am Eastern time tomorrow - Friday, April 9) and gave each of them a reserve price of just $1. 

Below is a list of the top 20 sales from this auction:

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With the opening sessions at two major domain conferences, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in Milan, Italy and the GeoDomain Expo in New Orleans,  less than three weeks away the agendas are firming up for both events. 

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. promoter Rick Latona just announced on his blog that representatives from France's fast growing .fr reigstry, AFNIC, will be in Milan. Until recently the .fr registry was one of the most tightly regulated ccTLD extensions in the world but AFNIC has loosened the reins to make the extension more accessible and that is fueling growth for .fr.  

AFNIC just published a very interesting white paper (.pdf file) on the global secondary market for domain names and it is refreshing to see a fair and balanced view of professional domain investors in their report. 

In keeping with the show's ccTLD theme, many other registries will also be featured at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Milan including Russia's .ru administrator that is sending three representatives to the show. With interest in the conference ramping up the official show hotel, the Milan Marriott has now sold out, however Latona provided links to some nearby alternatives in another blog post yesterday. The event runs April 27-29 so now is the time to act if you want to be part of it. You can review the full agenda here. 

Speaking of hotel rooms, the GeoDomain Expo, scheduled for April 28-30 at the Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New Orleans, got some good news today. The hotel had told the Expo that any remaining rooms in their block would be taken back today and made available to the huge crowd of people coming into town for the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival that will be running at the same time. However, the hotel relented today and gave the Expo one more week (through Wednesday, April 14) to offer rooms for the conference at a discounted rate. 

With that concession, the GeoDomain Expo decided to also extend their early bird registration rate ($995) through the 14th as well. After that it will go up to $1,195.

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Major registrar Register.com has signed an agreement to join NameMedia’s Domain Listing Service, the AfternicDLS.  The DLS platform is similar to the MLS network for physical real estate, in that it provides a source of liquidity for digital real estate (domain names) that are currently registered but are available for purchase. 

The deal gives Register.com customers access to more than two million domain names currently offered for sale through the DLS service. As a retail focused registrar that primarily serves small to

medium sized business end users, Register.com, one of the world's 10 biggest registrars, will help put domains listed on NameMedia's global distribution network in front of an ideal group of potential buyers. 

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I was surprised to see Rick Latona's announcement Sunday that he and David Clements, who was serving as President of Rick Latona Auctions, are going their separate ways. Clements said he and Latona have known each other for about 20 years now. David met Rick through David's brother Toby who has been one Latona's closest friends over the years, as well as a business partner in recent years.  Latona said Toby brought David into the company and the trio has worked together for the past two years. Rick and David both said the split was an amicable one. 

Toby, who worked with Rick to start Latona's domain brokerage business, will now shoulder more work in the auction company as he and Latona will jointly run that operation. I've gotten to know Toby over the past couple of years and he is a good man who I'm sure will continue to do  a great job in the various Latona enterprises.

In his blog post Sunday, Latona noted, "As for David, please know that he’s like a brother to me. He really is a brother to Toby. We respect him and have nothing bad to say about his character or abilities."

Rick and David seemed to be inseparable over the past two years. In February they impressed a lot of people when the two of them rode bicycles from their homes in Atlanta all the way to New Orleans for the 2010 Domainer Mardi Gras conference. Clements said he now plans to look for investment and business opportunities and he added. "If you would like to speak to me about one, please shoot an email to david at davidclements.com."

David Clements

Toby Clements

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If you are planning to go to the 2010 GeoDomain Expo in New Orleans this month and have not yet booked your hotel room, time is running out. The show will be held at the historic Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel April 28-30 and those dates happen to coincide with one of the biggest annual events in the Big Easy - the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

People will be coming to the city from all over the world for the 40th anniversary of that landmark music festival so hotel rooms in New Orleans are going to be next to impossible to find. Organizers of the GeoDomain Expo reserved a block of rooms for their event but the hotel has informed them that after Tuesday (April 6) all rooms in their block that have not been reserved will be taken back so they can accommodate demand for space from people coming in for the music festival. 

So, if you want to be at this unique industry event reserve your room now before you forget. To get the discounted $229 per night GeoDomain Expo rate when booking, call 504-335-3138, reference Geodomain Expo, and let them know your arrival and departure dates or book online through this page set up for GeoDomain Expo attendees.  If you think you may want to go to the show but can't finalize your plans by Tuesday, you should can still go ahead and reserve the hotel room now. There is no upfront charge and you can cancel your reservation up to 3 days before arrival with no penalty (if you don't cancel and don’t show up, the hotel will charge for a one night stay).

In a bit of good news, with the hotel deadline being set at an earlier cutoff date than had been expected, show organizers decided to extend an early bird discount that was set to expire today through Tuesday (April 6) to match the hotel reservation deadline. As a result, the current early registration fee of $995 will still be honored through the 6th, after which it will move up to $1,195. You can register for the Expo here and the show agenda can be reviewed on this page. 

If you are have never been to a GeoDomain Expo before you can get a taste of what they are all about from our comprehensive reviews of previous shows in the popular series: 
DN Journal Review of 2009 GeoDomain Expo in San Diego
DN Journal Review of 2008 GeoDomain Expo in Chicago
DN Journal Review of 2007 GeoDomain Expo in San Francisco

(Posted April 1, 2010) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL:
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