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Above: The closing
day on the Keynote Track began at 11am US Eastern time with a panel
discussion about the innovative DAN.com
ecosystem titled Uniting and Pushing the Domain Industry Forward.
Domain buyers need to be able find domains that meet their needs and sellers
need better selling tools, so the founders of the DAN.com platform set about
building value-added partnerships and using the latest technology to knock
down the barriers to connection between buyers and sellers. The
panelists included (clockwise from top left), DAN.com CEO Reza Sardeha,
Efty.com Co-Founder Doron Vermaat, MediaOptions.com CEO Andrew
Rosener and DNWE.com Co-Founder Josh Reason.
Above:
The next session was the last of the three State of the Industry panels
I hosted at NamesCon Online. After talking to Corporate leaders Wednesday and
some of the world's best Domain Brokers Thursday, I got together Friday
with three successful Domain Investor/Developers to see how they navigated
the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 and get their forecast and advice on where you
will find good opportunities in 2021 (the series was an expansion of the 17th
annual State of
the Industry Cover Story we published last week). I was pleased to
be able get insight from friends representing three different continents.
Clockwise from top left are Ron Jackson (DNJournal.com), and, in the
U.S. corner, Morgan Linton (Bold Metrics Inc. and MorganLinton.com),
from India, and a star on NamesCon's South Asia Track, Deepak Daftari (eSiksha.com)
and representing Europe, Munich-based industry veteran Jochen Kieler (SuperSource.de).
If you are a show registrant and missed this, or any of the other NamesCon
sessions live, replays are (or soon will be) available to you to watch
at your convenience.
Above: The
Future of Domain Monetization was the topic of the first afternoon
conference. Everyone is familiar with the traditional
parked page that has been utilized for so long now, but this panel of
experts discussed what is in store for the future of domain monetization,
covering how it will differ form today and changes that could be beneficial
for domain investors. Clockwise from top left, the panel included moderator Christa
Taylor (dotTBA.com), Michael Gilmour (ParkLogic.com), Adam
Wagner (ParkingCrew.com), David Warmuz (CEO, Trellian/Above.com)
and Matt Wegrzyn (Bodis.com).
Above:
Domain investors and major corporations often hold hundreds, or even thousands
of domains in their portfolios. That can create a management headache but
there are solutions that moderator Bill Sweetman (Name Ninja), at right
above, discussed in the next session with Nisha Parkash (Online
Compliance and Brand Protection Manager, Sky Limited) titled You're
Doing it All Wrong: Lessons Learned from Managing a Large Corporate Domain
Portfolio.
Above: People always
want to know what their domains are worth, so when a session is titled What's
My Domain Worth?, a big audience is sure to gather, especially when
the people doing the appraisals are of the caliber featured on this panel.
Clockwise from top left are Josh Schoen (Co-Founder, DNWE.com), Keith
DeBoer (Brandable Insider podcast), Kate Buckley (BuckleyMedia.com),
Ammar Kubba (afterTHOUGHT.com) and Braden Pollock
(LegalBrandMarketing.com).
Above: The show's
final Keynote Track session Friday afternoon was a great Fireside Chat
With Tucows CEO Elliot Noss, sub-titled, How Do We Make The
Internet Better From Here?. Asking the questions was, at right above, Christian
Dawson (Executive Director, i2Coalition). The session's synopsis will tell
you why you should check out the replay on this one if you missed it live. It
noted, "Tucows was started in 1993 and back
then they weren’t even in the domains business - pretty much nobody
was!...CEO Elliot Noss, has coached his organization through many shifts over
the year, and knows something about surviving and thriving through change.
He believes that current events have made the DNS industry the canary in a
coal mine for the whole Internet and that we have a unique role to
play in the coming decade as platforms, not countries, will be “making
law” whether we like it or not."
As has been the case
every day at NamesCon Online, additional sessions on the Breakout Track
ran concurrently with the Keynote Track throughout the day. I had to miss the
first two while I was onstage doing my State of the Industry Panel but will
catch those in the replays. In the first, Yogi Solanki (Founder,
Outbound Domains) covered Outbound Objection Handling. In the
second, Darpan Munjal (Founder & CEO, Squadhelp.com) presented Data
Driven Domaining: Insights & Trends for Brandable Domains.
Above: Action on the
Breakout Track continued with the final chapter in Drew Walsh's 3-day Development
Series: Go All in With Full Development. Drew, who runs MovingSites.com,
has been a domain investor since 2001. He buys premium domain names with the
sole purpose of developing them. He works to extract the value of the
domain as a business rather than selling them. Drew also does a weekly live
stream called Domain to Profit where he works to help others develop
domains.
Above: Next up,
the topic turned to Blockchain Domains & the Decentralized Web.
This session covered how blockchains provide a new
platform for domain registries. The panelists, clockwise from top left,
were Brad Kam (Unstoppable Domains), Andrew Rosener (MediaOptions.com)
and Julia Szyndzielorz (Senior Public Relations Manager, Opera).
Below:
In the next session, James Tuplin (Co-Founder, Bodis.com) answered
the question, Can You Ever Have Too Many Domains? Building
& Maintaining a Profitable Portfolio. In this one James focused
on how to build a revenue-generating portfolio of domains that attract web
traffic.
Above: Domain
investors are always looking for places to market their domains. This session
tells you about what could be a marriage made in heaven if you approach it in
a professional way. LinkedIn & Domain Sales featured,
clockwise from top left, Tessa Holcomb (Founder, DomainAdvisors.com), Jeff
Garbutt (Founder, Prime Loyalty) and Morgan Linton (COO,
Bold Metrics Inc.).
Below: In the show's
final session on the Breakout Track, united-domains AG CTO & Board Member Tobias
Sattler (who is also Editor-in-chief at
MyNext.Events and Founder of Domain Name Basics), delivered a timely
talk on the COVID-19 Impact on Domain Names. Here, Tobias (at
right) is introduced by energetic Breakout Track host Peter Schwinge.
Above: In addition
to the Keynote, Breakout, Americas, and South Asia Tracks, many attendees were
able to set up or participate in many other meetings that were held throughout
the show in the Workshop Rooms. One of the best attended Friday was an Internet
Commerce Association discussion about UDRP Issues.
Handling that, clockwise from top left, were ICA Executive Director Kamila
Sekiewicz, attorney Jason Schaeffer (ESQwire.com) ICA General
Counsel Zak Muscovitch and ICA Board Member Nat Cohen
(Telepathy).
With business now
done at NamesCon Online 2021, it was time to say goodbye to the
hundreds of registrants who logged in from around the world. Ecstatic to have
produced another outstanding conference in the face of so many
Covid-releated obstacles, NamesCon CEO Soeren von Varchmin (top right),
and (clockwise after Soeren), Moderators Bill Sweetman, Christian
Dawson and Christa Taylor, were all on hand to provide a heartfelt
farewell for now. We couldn't help noticing that Bill apparently took the
occasion to adopt a new stage name- DJ HotDomains! It was obvious that
Soeren noticed it and wondered if his eyes might be deceiving him! Hey, we are
in a business that is all about the name, so if it works for
Name Ninja Bill, more power to him. Congrats to Soeren and the entire NameCon
team on a job well done and thank you for the incredible value
you delivered for attendees this week.
Of course, after
every NamesCon there are always a lot of people who don't want to go home,
and just because this one was online, it was no exception. A three-hour
special edition of Arif Mirza's The
Domain Social was held immediately after the conference on Zoom
and when I dropped in the number of attendees was already in triple digits
and steadily growing.
Arif Mirza
(above) with help from Jothan Frakes (below) - both snapped at today's
social - have been hosting The Domain Social every Friday (along with some on
other special occasions) and it has helped a lot of people stay connected
through the pandemic. It is open to all and you can get email notices
that will alert you to every upcoming event by signing
up here.
One final note, the
show is over but our coverage is not. NamesCon's outstanding South
Asia Track ran in what were the overnight hours in the U.S. when
most of us were sleeping. So, as I did in covering the first
NamesCon Online event in September, I will sit down and experience
the full South Asia track via the replays so I can put together a separate
post detailing those sessions. That will appear in this column one day next
week. In the
meanwhile, everyone stay safe and put all of the great tips you got
this week to good use in 2021!
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