Hurricane Harvey, the  historic storm that wreaked havoc on Houston, Texas and beyond this past week, is expected to be the most expensive natural disaster in American history with losses running as much as $160 billion. As the fourth largest city in the U.S., Houston, as you would expect, is home to a number of domain industry professionals who were caught in the middle of the disaster. Fortunately, none to our knowledge, was seriously injured in the destruction and, miraculously, most (again, that we are aware of at this stage) did not lose their homes. 

Unfortunately, most is not all, and a well-known figure in our business, Lead Community Administrator at the NamePros forum for the past 8 years, Eric Lyon, his wife and infant son lost their home, their cars and virtually all of their physical possessions in the flooding (as did close relatives who lived across the street from them).

Eric Lyon at the 2015 NamesCon 
conference in Las Vegas
(Photo courtesy of NamesCon)

This photo shows the Lyon family's home and two cars (at top left) as the water rapidly rises (it would go much higher) during the Hurricane Harvey disaster in Texas. This shot was taken from a relative's home across the street where Eric, his wife and son had sought refuge. That house would also become completely flooded with everyone in the extended family finally being rescued by friends who boated in to to take them out after overwhelmed public first responders were unable to get to them.

As I write this Eric's family has found temporary shelter in the home of Eric's brother-in-law, but they have a long road to recovery ahead of them - one that begins with no home, no cars, no furniture and very little clothing. A domain industry colleague, George Verdugo, took the bull by the horns and opened a GoFundMe page for the Lyon family Tuesday night with the goal of raising $15,000 to help the Lyon family get back on their feet.  I am proud to say that the domain industry has responded to their plight admirably with over $10,000 raised as of this writing (barely 36 hours after the campaign began).  I would encourage you to help push it over the top and beyond by making a donation of any amount you can spare. 

Many have already stepped up. One initiative I saw just as I began writing this was NamesCon offering to donate 50% of the cost of any ticket purchased today (Thursday, August 31) for the 2018 NamesCon conference coming up in January. Many of you are going anyhow, so if you haven't ought your ticket yet, doing it today will be a big help to the Lyon family. You can use this code "Back2SchoolSale" to purchase your ticket here.

Eric and Amanda Lyon with their son at the 2017 NamesCon conference in Las Vegas.

While helping anyone in this situation in whatever way we can is the right thing to do, I would just note one other thing. Eric has a well deserved reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty to help others in any way he can (he has certainly provided invaluable help to countless industry newcomers in his role at NamesPros, on both a personal and professional level). This is a time when he and his family are the ones who need help now - let's continue to give it to them and get them back on their feet!

Those of us in the domain business are generally assumed to be Internet experts but I would be the first to admit we don't know everything and might even blow an answer or two on some of the basics. For example, is the Internet and the World Wide Web the same thing? If not, what's the difference? If some of us don't know that, how wide is the "knowledge gap" within the general public with respect to this amazing medium that has changed all of our lives in such a dramatic way?

The Public Interest Registry (the operators of the .org domain) wondered about that too, so they conducted an in depth survey that revealed  consumers know significantly less about the internet than they think (something we may be guilty of as well). While 84% believed they were “knowledgeable” about the 

Image from Bigstock

internet, the findings showed most consumers fell far below that mark. For example, on that Internet vs. the World Wide Web question, only 20% knew the World Wide Web is different from the internet (The correct definition of the internet is a system of interconnected networks that allows different computers to connect with one another. The World Wide Web is an information system on the Internet that allows documents to be connected to other documents by hypertext links).

PIR noted, "The survey results underscore the need for widespread internet education among users and spotlight critical issues from net neutrality to global internet access disparities. Public Interest Registry’s Internet 101 Survey also reinforces the organization’s goal to provide useful information for individuals and companies on topics ranging from internet operations to online security to help users more safely and effectively harness the power of the World Wide Web."

Here are some other basic Internet facts that stumped many respondents:

• Only 29% of participants correctly identified the meaning of HTTP, with 31% admitting outright they did not know the meaning of the term

• 68% of people could not identify the decade when the World Wide Web was invented

• Only 31% of users could correctly define a “domain name system”

• Less than 50% of participants correctly identified HTTPS as a more secure protocol that’s safer to share personal or financial information

While the survey revealed a handful of widely held misconceptions about the internet, consumers did fare slightly better on the below questions.

• Most participants (59%) correctly defined a URL as another term for a web address

• 66% of people correctly identified a domain name from a browser, an email address and a social media handle

• 80% of users knew that they could find official information from their Congressman at a .gov domain name

Battle of the Ages – Millennials vs. Boomers

Millennials may have grown up using the internet, but users from the boomer generation are more knowledgeable than both millennials and Generation X when it comes to basic information about the internet, from online safety to internet operations. Here are a few areas where boomers outpaced their younger counterparts.

• More baby boomers could identify a safe site (47%) than millennial or Generation X users. 

• 34% of boomers compared to 29% of millennials knew the World Wide Web was created in the 1980’s

• Fewer millennials (42%) knew the correct definition of the internet than boomers (46%) More boomers knew the correct percentage of the world’s population with access to the internet than the other age groups surveyed

1. A total of 47% of the world's population has access to the Internet, which amounts to approximately 3.9 billion people globally who are not online.[2]

2. The World Wide Web was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee in a paper called “Information Management: A Proposal.” The concept was initially deemed “vague, but exciting” by Berners-Lee’s boss.

3. The HTTP at the beginning of a website stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the standard over which data is sent between a browser and a site.

4. A site that begins with HTTPS is a secure site that is safer to insert credit card info or personal information. The “S” at the end stands for secure and means that communications between your browser and the website are encrypted.

5. HTML is the standard language for creating websites, but a variety of web development languages such as Java and Python exist to help make webpages more dynamic and complex.

6. While the internet is not managed or regulated by any one individual, organization or country, some organizations help maintain the internet, such as The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which manages internet protocols and domain name systems.

7. The first generic top-level domains created in the early development of the internet were: .org, .com, .net, .gov, .edu, .mil and .int. 

8. If you’d like to create a website, you can purchase a domain name from a registrar. 

For more information on the Internet 101 Survey and to test your own knowledge of the internet please visit https://pir.org/internet101/.

Domaining Europe Conference Founder Dietmar Stefitz launched an additional conference called Brands & Domains last year in Valencia, Spain. While Domaining Europe covers every 

aspect of the industry, Brands & Domains was created to focus on one sector - .brands - those new gTLDs that are owned and operated by specific companies to reinforce their online identity. More than 500 .brand extensions are now live including .google, .audi, .canon and .philips to name just a few.

This year the Brands & Domains event expands from one day to two and moves to a new city - The Hague, Netherlands. The show will be staged at the Grand Hotel Amrath Kurhaus (where the  2016 Domaining Europe conference was held) on October 2 and 3, 2017. Stefitz has also enlisted two men with well established .brand expertise -  Guillaume Pahud (DotStories.com) and Martin Sutton (Top Dot Ltd.) - to co-produce the upcoming event. 

Brands & Domains describes itself as "a neutral and non-biased platform organized around three topics: Brand & Customer Protection, 

2017 Brands & Domains Conference Co-Producers Guillaume Pahud (left) 
and Martin Sutton

Governance and Brand Communication & Customer Experience." At the 2017 show marketers, brand executives, IP Specialists and policy makers will gather to exchange and discuss opportunities and  best practices as well as research and analysis. Representatives from registrar
and registry operators will also be on hand to connect with marketers and brand specialists to help develop and generate brand value. The objectives of the conference are to:

• Inform brands about the existing use cases so that brands include dotBrand in their digital marketing tools landscape.

• Raise awareness & Educate communication and web agencies about the potential of
  dotBrand domains.

• Connect the world of digital marketing and branding with the domain name ecosystem.

Those scheduled to speak include Akram Atallah (Deputy CEO and President, Global Domains Division at ICANN), Georges Edouard Dias (former Chief Digital Officer of l’Oreal) and Tony Kirsch (Head of Professional Services and Evangelist for Neustar) to name just a few. You can see the full speakers list here. 

Organizers will also exclusively share the results of an SEO contest run by web agencies with the co-operation of universities and researchers. Those who wish to attend can Register here (the cost is €300). Brands & Domains has also secured a special hotel room rate of €125 per night for conference attendees. Rooms can be booked here.

New gTLD registry operator Radix continues to come up with new ways to promote the nine new domain extensions they operate. Already known for their innovative Startup League program (that I've previously written about - most recently in June) Radix has just rolled out another initiative - a global web design contest called F3.space - with $30,000 in prize money up for grabs. 

Web designers, developers and existing customers are invited to submit their website built on any of the gTLDs operated by Radix: .ONLINE, .TECH, .SPACE, .STORE, .PRESS, .SITE, .WEBSITE, .HOST and .FUN. The contest will have weekly and monthly winners, chosen based on public votes as well as evaluation by a panel of  judges. Radix expects the contest to engage existing new TLD users while also promoting usage of new TLDs in the web design community. 

Last year Radix launched the Startup League, a startup-centric program to encourage the use of new TLDs among new businesses. Today, the League has 100+ startups on board and 50+ partners from the global startup ecosystem. Radix has also been an active supporter of hackathons around the world since 2012. As a result, more than 5,000 hackathon projects have been developed on Radix domains so far. 

Domain brokerage and consultancy GGRG.com has released their latest free quarterly report (available as a .PDF file as well as a video produced by DomainSherpa.com) breaking down aftermarket sales and development of "liquid domain names." In past reports GGRG has defined those as being very short .com domains consisting of all letters (L) or all numbers (N) that are relatively easy to sell at prevailing market prices. With their latest report they have included 3-character (C) .coms as well for the first time. Those are domains that mix letters and numbers together like SF8.com (LLN), 88G.com (NNL) or alternating number/letter combinations  like  G7H.com or 9H5.com.

GGRG reported that 3-character category accounts for 28,080 domains, roughly the same number of domains as 3Ls and 4Ns combined (27,576). They also noted, " 3Cs were all registered years ago and have traded consistently ever since, mostly on auction platforms." GGRG also looked at how many domains from this category have been developed into active websites and reported, "the 3C category has a 13.81% development rate, the 2nd lowest in the liquid markets, but not too different than the more expensive 3Ns and 4Ns categories which present 

GGRG Founder Giuseppe Graziano

development indexes in the 15% range. LL domains remain once again the most developed category at 36.39%, followed by CCs at 28.65% and 3Ls at 27.43%.

On the sales front, GGRG said, "According to Escrow.com, 3C domains rank surprisingly as the most traded category for the quarter with $5.8 million USD in gross volume, which could be the result of large end user sales or portfolio transactions. For the same period, ShortNames.com reported over $700,000 in disclosed 3Cs sales, featuring the highest turnover per category ever reported at 2.7% (758 sales). The overall liquid market turnover is slightly up at about 0.9% (5,512 transactions) for the quarter."

The debut edition of the NameSummit digital branding conference ended Tuesday (August 8, 2017) at the Hilton Midtown Manhattan Hotel in New York (you will find opening day photos and highlights here). The event was co-founded by Steven Kaziyev (NewYorkMedia.com) and Jason Schaeffer (ESQWire.com) with invaluable support from Co-Producers Ari Goldberger (ESQwire.com) and Andrew Rosenener (MediaOptions.com). Jodi Chamberlain (32Events.com) was also brought onboard to direct the show. 

The founders and producers are all domain industry veterans but with NameSummit they wanted to expand their horizons beyond domains to also include all aspects of starting and operating a business online, including domain acquisition, website development, SEO, social media, marketing,  management and more.

Above: Despite being a first year show, NameSummit was able to attract A list speakers from all of the fields the conference set out to cover.  A perfect example of that came right off the bat Tuesday morning when conference Co-Founder Jason Schaeffer (left) kicked off Day 2 by bringing  Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz on stage for a Fireside Chat in which the leader of the domain industry powerhouse discussed The Evolution of the Domain Industry and Branding Trends. 

Below: A view from the audience as the closing day of NameSummit 2017 got underway Tuesday morning (August 8).

Above: The second Tuesday session on Influencer Branding and Social Currency featured two stars from that category - Greg Yuna (at left), who is widely known as Mr. Flawless after being given that nickname by boxing champion Floyd Mayweather, and Gerard Adams (The Millennial Mentor) who founded popular social impact startup accelerator FOWNDERS. Gerard became a self-made millionaire at age 24. Yuna is an Instagram star who is known for selling custom medallions, watches, diamond and gold pieces to heavyweights in the music and sports world.

Below: Next up was Tony Kirsch, the Head of Professional Services and Evangelist for Neustar, who covered .BRANDS - TLDs and the Evolution of Digital Super Brands. Neustar administers or provides backend services for many top level domain extensions including many owned by corporate brands, as well as generic and geocentric extensions like .co, .biz, .us and the new .nyc, to name a few.

Above: In a special lunch hour coaching session, the audience learned about the Body of Power - Branding Through Body Language from Stacee Mandeville of Red Leaf Coaching. Stacee provided proven strategies for building your personal brand through physical communication skills.

Below: After lunch the hot topic of Blockchain was tackled by an expert panel is a session titled Disruption in Digital Advertising and Marketing and the Wolk Exchange. The session featured (left to right) Peter Borovykh (Blockchain Solution Architect at Blockchain Driven), Harish Thimmappa (SVP of Revenue at Wolk.com), Alex Mashinsky (Founder & Managing Director at Governing Dynamics) and Rob Monster (DigitalTown.com).

Above: Attendees KW Boswell and Lyra Simmonds pay close attention to the advice being offered from the experts on stage during the Tuesday business sessions at NameSummit.

Below: The Tuesday schedule continued with New Domain Usage Case Studies: Three Leading New TLD Registries Share Insights and Real World Examples. Those registries were represented by (left to right) Matt Bamonte (Donuts), Jeff Sass (.CLUB) and Victor Pitts (MMX.co). 

Above: Legal matters were also well covered at NameSummit. This session, featuring five highly experienced Internet/IP attorneys, was titled Starting Up and More - Protecting You and Your Business - From TMs to Social Media Law. It featured (left to right): Jason Schaeffer (NameSummit Co-Founder and IP Attorney at ESQwire.com), Brett Lewis (Lewis & Lin LLC), Daliah Saper (Saper Law), Stevan Lieberman (Partner, APLegal.com) and Ari Goldberger (Founder, ESQwire.com).

Below: The next session featured another quintet - this one detailing a Marketing Strategy Holistic Approach for Clients to Maximize ROI. It featured (left to right - participating in a group photo at the end of their discussion) Moderator Braden Pollock (LegalBrandMarketing.com), Alex Melen (Co-Founder & CEO, Smart Sites), Roberto Blake (RobertoBlake.com), Michael Mahler (Senior Strategist, Ajax Union) and Michael Suarez (Senior Strategist, Ajax Union).

Above: At 4pm it was time for the final business session of NameSummit 2017: Name Selection - Identifying Great Names for Branding - How Domains Can Propel Your Business. The session featured moderator Jason Schaeffer (standing at left) and (seated  left to right on stage) Amanda Waltz (Executive Director, North America, BrandIT), Dave Evanson (Senior Broker at Sedo), Loren Stocker (TollFreeMarket.com), Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com) and Joseph Peterson (Director of Operations, Epik.com).

Below: With NameSummit business now officially concluded attendees started filing from the ballroom to an adjacent hall where a Farewell Cocktail Party was just getting underway.

Above: Time to Say Goodbye (until next time)! (left to right) Jodi Chamberlain (32Events.com), Karen Bernstein (KarenBernsteinLaw.com) and Ilze Kaulins-Plaskacz (ExcellentDomains.ca).

Below: Some of the guys formed a trio of their own (also arranged by height - purely coincidental though, as none of us has the organizational skill to plan something like that!). Left to right are Jeff Sass (.CLUB), Ron Jackson (DNJournal.com) and Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com).

Above: On her way out Karen Bernstein (who lives in New York) was asked by George Verdugo (VisitSpace.com) for her opinion of the show. Karen gave it a big thumb's up!

Below: Finally, a big Thank You to NameSummit's Co-Founders - Steven Kaziyev (left) and Jason Schaeffer - for being such great hosts and for putting on a wonderful debut event that helped all of their guests expand their horizons (in both the virtual world and the real one). The same goes for NameSummit Co-Producers Ari Goldberger and Andrew Rosener as well as Show Director Jodi Chamberlain who teamed with Steven and Jason to make it all happen!

The opening day of the inaugural NameSummit digital branding conference is in the books. The two day event began at the Hilton Midtown Manhattan hotel in New York on Monday (August 7, 2017) on a stormy day in the Big Apple.  The weather was bad enough to force cancellation of several flights at nearby airports but spirits were high in the Hilton ballroom and attendance steadily rose throughout the day. Attendees were attracted by an agenda that covered virtually every aspect of launching and 

operating a business online, including domain acquisition, website development, SEO, social media, marketing and management.

The inaugural edition of the newest conference on the industry show circuit, NameSummit,  got underway this morning at the Hilton Midtown Manhattan Hotel in New York City. The morning sessions are still underway as I write this with a full slate of afternoon activity to follow before the opening day closes with a cocktail party this evening. I will have photos and highlights from all of the day's sessions in my next post from the Big Apple but wanted to give you a flavor of what is going on as well as New York's role as a conference co-star.