If you are looking for someone to broker a domain or portfolio for you, you got a new option today when Trellian/Above.com President announced the launch of Above.com's new domain brokerage service. Warmuz said, "The investment in our brokerage service underscores Above.com’s ongoing commitment to helping domain name asset holders maximize the return on their domain investments."

"Rest assured that this is not just another ordinary brokerage service," Warmuz said. "First of all, our brokerage team has over 35 years of combined experience negotiating and closing domain sales transactions. For sellers, this means that we have what it takes to convert prospects into buyers. And for stealth-mode buyers, it means we have the connections and negotiation skills to find and acquire great domains for you. Our Brokerage Service will hit the ground running by utilizing powerful features included in our existing Marketplace platform. For example, clients will have access to dashboards that streamline the tracking and management of offers, bids, auctions, and prices. We also offer customized For Sale pages and fast domain transfers.

David Warmuz
President, Trellian/Above.com

Veteran intellectual property broker Cyntia King has just opened her own shop, Modern IP, LLC (MIP).  Cyntia, who is based in the Kansas City area, become well-known in the domain side of the IP business after spending nearly a decade as a Senior Broker for Sales and Acquisitions at Marksmen, Inc. She has been involved in deals involving 7-figure domain sales, trademark co-existence agreements and even a stock ticker symbol purchase.

Ms. King, whose experience includes working with clients from farming collectives to Fortune 50 companies, said, "Intellectual property is my passion. I'm excited to bring my enthusiasm for deal-making and IP directly to my clients. Our extensive industry knowledge, worldwide connections and partnerships with IP professionals allow MIP to get results others cannot."  

MIP specializes in transactions including confidential acquisitions of domains, trademarks, social media and

Cyntia King
Modern IP CEO & Founder

more; international negotiations; facilitating court-ordered domain transfers; and brokering select domains. Clients can track cases in real time via web portal or mobile app.

The 2017 Domaining Europe conference is almost here. The 9th edition of the event, that will be staged May 14-16 at the Steigenberger Hotel Am Kanzleramt in Berlin, will mark the first time the show has been staged in Germany. It is an especially appropriate location because that European powerhouse has long been famous for its love of domains.

Germany's .de ccTLD is the world's most popular country code extension (not counting the free .tk extension) with over 14 million paid

registrations and many of the industry's leading companies are based there. Many of those firms will have representatives at Domaining Europe where they will be joined by other corporate leaders and individual domain investors and developers from across Europe and around the world. 

Show founder Dietmar Stefitz has lined up over 40 speakers for the event and finalized the agenda that you can view here. Dietmar has again enlisted Braden Pollock (LegalBrandMarketing) to serve as the conference moderator, a role Braden has excelled in  at shows around the globe.  I will also be going over to cover Domaining Europe for you and to   participate in a panel discussion on the opening business day (Monday, May 15) with Michael Gilmour (ParkLogic.com), Jackson Elsegood (Escrow.com) and attorney Thomas Rickert in which we will discuss what the latest data is telling us about the health of the industry. 

Later that same day there will be another session featuring top brokers and investors, including lze Kaulins-Plascacz, Freddy Schiwek, Michael Bereslavsky, Jordi Gasull, Shaun Wilkinson, Sevan Derderian and  Giuseppe Graziano that will also give attendees some invaluable insight. Those are just a couple of examples from the 20 business sessions scheduled for Domaining Europe 2017. 

There is still time to register for the show and book a room at the conference hotel. If you can make it I will look forward to seeing you there!

Texas domain investors (and anyone who wants to meet up with them) will have a chance to get together when Angela St. Julien brings DNHouston back on Friday night, April 28, 2017. The event, sponsored by the Public Interest Registry (administrators of the .ORG TLD) will be held on the waters along Clear Lake, the Kemah Boardwalk and Galveston Bay aboard a Houston Party Boats vessel. 

Attendees will board promptly at 6:45pm and the meetup is scheduled to run until 10pm. Considering the quality of people you will get to network with and hear speak, as well

as the obvious fun quotient, tickets are an astonishing bargain at $25 but you had better hurry as there is room for just 50 passengers. Better yet, the proceeds will be donated to the Heidi Powell defense fund in a very generous gesture by Angela. 

Over the years I have often commented on the  extraordinarily large number of highly creative people whose path, for one reason or another, led them into the domain business. We have authors, actors, singers, musicians, movie producers, painters and artists of all kinds. In case you haven't already heard, I'm happy to tell you about another one today, Amber West, a domain industry veteran who I first met a dozen years ago when she originally joined domain aftermarket powerhouse Afternic (who is now owned by GoDaddy). 

Amber, who is based in Orlando, just published her second novel, The Cattle Conumdrum, on April 1st. The engrossing mystery details a new case undertaken by female detective Jameson Quinn, whom West first introduced in her highly rated 2012 debut novel - The Ruth Valley Missing that was a Rone Awards finalist.

Author Amber West

In a bold move to take industry conferences beyond what we've become accustomed to, two of the most seasoned veterans in the business, Jothan Frakes and Ray Dillman Neu, have joined forces to create an innovative new event called MERGE! that will make its maiden voyage October 14-18, 2017 at the massive Orlando Marriott World Resort in Florida (the largest Marriott hotel in the world). 

Unless you are new to the industry you already know that Frakes was Co-Founder of the enormously popular NamesCon conference (that was sold to World Hosting Days last year) and was also instrumental in running DOMAINfest and Domain Roundtable conferences dating back to more than a decade ago.

Ray Dillman Neu co-founded THE Domain Conference with Howard and Barbara Neu and ran that event with them the past two years in Fort Lauderdale. Before that he spent a decade helping run the  historic T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences that were

Merge! Co-Founders Jothan Frakes and Ray Dillman Neu

staged in South Florida and other U.S. and international locations (including Amsterdam, Dublin, Milan and Vancouver) from 2004 through 2014. After 12 straight years of putting on shows, Howard and Barbara decided to step back from their leadership role but I've been told THE Domain Conference will continue as the domain branch on the MERGE! tree.

MERGE! will be made up of many events in one location - a concept that will give attendees shared access to multiple networking and educational opportunities in a variety of related fields in addition to domains. The sessions, speakers (including common keynotes), panels, networking, sponsors, and inter-active events will all be focused on fusing ideas, businesses and people. With MERGE! the founders aim to combine the best of Domain Roundtable, DomainFest and THE Domain Conference along with Legal panels, Digital Branding professionals, Website Development, End User Experience, Domain Name Investment and Appraisal, New Business Startups, IP Technology, SEO Design, Security, Hosting and more.

More detailed information on all of the speakers and events available under the single MERGE! ticket will be released in the weeks ahead but I'm told several are already in place including a China Bootcamp, a Hispanic business day, an event devoted to StartUps, a Job Fair and much more. 

Above: The Orlando Marriott Word Resort 
where the 1st MERGE! conference will be held October 14-18, 2017.

Below: An aerial view of the world renowned Orlando Marriott World Resort.

The popular DNSeattle domain industry meetup will be returning for a 4th annual event on Thursday, May 25, 2017. The soiree will run from 6-9pm at a popular Amazon meeting space affectionately know as "The Living Room" (at 426 Terry Avenue North in Seattle) with post-event socializing then continuing until midnight at a local bar.

DNSeattle Founder Michael Cyger kicked off the series with a debut event held at the top of Seattle's Space Needle in 2014. In 2015 Rightside hosted the meetup at their suburban headquarters in Kirkland, then last year GoDaddy welcomed attendees to their offices overlooking Lake Washington.

DNSeattle Founder Michael Cyger (center) 
chatting with attendees at last year's meetup.

DNSeattle activities include networking, speaker/panel discussions and socializing while enjoying appetizers and a bar. Attendees typically come from all over the Pacific Northwest. Last year Seattle, Vancouver-BC, Portland, Montana, Idaho were all represented at the event but attendees from anywhere are welcome. In 2016, Mark Levine traveled from Minneapolis and Joe Styler came from Arizona. In 2015, Braden Pollock and Bob Olea came up from Southern California.  

Above and below: Scenes from the 2016 edition of DNSeattle hosted by GoDaddy.
(Photos courtesy of DNSeattle, Shari Bradbury)

For this year's show Amazon, in addition to providing the meeting space, is the lead sponsor of DNSeattle and Cyger expressed his gratitude to Amazon's Stacey King for her generous support of the upcoming event. GoDaddy, Donuts, Rightside (all Seattle locally-based companies), as well as Payoneer Escrow and Above.com, have joined as supporting sponsors.

A look inside Amazon's "Living Room" where DNSeattle 2017 will be held.

As in the past, all proceeds from DNSeattle will benefit the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle - a phenomenal research institute focused on finding a cure for cancer.  

Global payments giant Payoneer has been making a major push into the domain sales business ever since former Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey joined the company as Senior Adviser last October (Abbey is now Director Strategic Accounts). They are continuing to ramp up their campaign this year. On April 1st Payoneer began offering 50% off their standard escrow fees for all domain sales transactions - a deal that will remain in place until the end of this month. 

Just four days later, on Wednesday (April 5), Payoneer fired another salvo when a new partnership with domain name investment platform Efty.com was announced - a deal that will give Efty customers free escrow services on any sales made this month. 

An Efty announcement about the incorporation of Payoneer's secure, licensed escrow service for global domain name transactions into their platform said, "A deep integration with Payoneer’s escrow API enables Efty users to place Buy It Now (BIN) buttons on their For-Sale landing pages and domain name marketplace, which will allow buyers to purchase their domain names with the help of the licensed and secure online escrow payment service. With it's easy to use interface, Payoneer’s escrow service is one of the easiest and most secure ways for businesses to pay and get paid online."

Payoneer is a digital payments company that powers cross-border transactions to over 200 countries, in 150 local currencies. Thousands of major internet brands, like Airbnb and Google as well as millions of small business owners such as online sellers in China and service providers in India, rely on Payoneer to power their cross-border payments.

Last Friday I told you about Sedo sending a trio from their top management team to Dubai to present domain names as potentially valuable assets to attendees at the 2017 Annual Investment Meeting (AIM) there. The three-day event that ended last night (Tuesday, April 4) at the Dubai World Trade Centre attracted over 15,000 investors from around the world who came seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities in growing markets.

This was Sedo's first time as an exhibitor at a conference of this kind - the latest  in a long line of outreach efforts they have undertaken to grow the domain industry worldwide. With this one providing an opportunity to reach some of the world's top investors, Sedo went all in, sending CEO Tobias Flaitz, Director of Business Development and Operations 

Part of the massive crowd on hand for Dubai's Annual
Investment Meeting that ran April 2-4, 2017 at the city's 
World Trade Centre. (Photos courtesy of Sedo)

Matthias Meyer-Schönherr and Director of Marketing Christian Voss to Dubai to meet speak directly with potential investors.   

Above: Sedo's Director of Marketing, Christian Voss (right), welcomes a 
visitor to Sedo's booth at Dubai's Annual Investment Meeting (AIM). 

Below: Director of Business Development and Operations Matthias Meyer-Schönherr (left) and CEO Tobias Flaitz (2nd from left) told attendees about investment opportunities in domains.

Above: They do things differently - including seminar seating - in Dubai!

Above: A regal security detail at the World Trade Centre where AIM was held in Dubai.

Below: Things are done on a grand scale in Dubai including police cars 
that are often Bentleys, McLarens and other ultra high end models. 

The top level investors who came to Dubai obviously have a lot of money to spend. They also have a lot of options. Convincing them that domains should be among the ones they seriously consider is an ambitious and expensive undertaking, and we appreciate Sedo taking on the challenge. They have made a long term commitment to educational initiatives like this and if their strategy succeeds, it will  pay major dividends for the industry at large for many years to come.  

The 2017 domain calendar just got an important new addition. The first NameSummit conference will be held August 7th and 8th at the Hilton Midtown Manhattan Hotel. Unless you are new to this business, you will recognize all of the names involved it putting this event together. 

It will be co-produced by New York Media (NYM) and one of the oldest domain industry law firms, ESQWire.com. NYM Founder (and veteran domain investor) Steven Kaziyev and