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Having
been up late putting the Day 1 column together, I was only able to catch the
final session on the Europe Stage (above and below) this morning, titled The
Future of Intermediary Liability. The discussion
around Intermediary
Liability is drawing ever closer circles around Internet
infrastructure intermediaries like access providers, DNS resolver operators
and domain name registrars. The panelists (clockwise from top left), Volker
Greimann (General Counsel at CentralNic LLC), Lars Steffen (Director
at eco – Association of the Internet Industry), Julia Reda
(Project coordinator control at Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V.), Klaus
Landefeld (MoB Infrastructure & Networks at eco e.V.) and Thomas
Rickert (Director Names & Numbers at eco Association of the
Internet Industry), talked about the legislative trends
they are currently seeing in the European Union and around the globe, as well
as what the potential liabilities and risks in the future are for
intermediaries.
A
great thing about NamesCon Online is that the conference offers replays
of virtually all sessions within a day or two when they first ran (those will
be available to all show registrants until the end of October). That, will
give me an opportunity to see the two earlier Europe Stage sessions I missed
live today. Those were The Future of Domain Name Registration
Data and New gTLD Subsequent Procedures - The next round of TLDs.
Stage
1 Photos & Highlights (Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021)
A
little before 11am, the Chairman of the NamesCon Advisory Board, Soeren Von
Varchmin, welcomed viewers to Day 2, then turned the reins over to
moderator Jonathan Tenenbaum (above) to get the business sessions on
Stage 1 started. The first of those (below) covered the connection between
Domainers and Daily Fantasy Sports. NamesCon has decided to
expand its horizons into other Internet areas that have proven to be popular
with domain investors due to their potential for big returns and/or their
recreational value.
The
Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) session featured Andrew Miller (top left) and
Roman Edmond, two of the most successful domain name investors and
deal-makers that have also both won multiple high-paying daily fantasy sports tournaments. Roman is world champion in fantasy football as well as one of the biggest movers and shakers in the domain industry
and Andrew is one of the most widely-known domain investors, having founded
CreditCards.com, InsuranceQuotes.com, and recently overseen the sales of
Home.com, Candy.com, and Universal.com. Andrew and Roman provided some basic DFS education and strategies on how to win a big-money, large-field NFL tournament on
Draftkings and Fanduel.
The
next session (above), Develop Your Domain Portfolio, featured Tommy
Butler, widely renowned in the geodomain development space for the network
of websites he built devoted to Glasgow and surrounding communities,
including Glasgow.com. Tommy shared his vast
experience in turning a domain name into an online business including how to
generate revenue and increase the value of your domain by having a
social platform that matches the domain.
After
a short networking break, one of the world's top domain brokers, Kate
Buckley (CEO at Buckley Media) took center stage (in the session above)
with a presentation on The Art of Collaboration. In her talk Kate said The
Art of the Deal is dead. It’s out of date, and no longer speaks to
the values of an integrated, ever-evolving society—one in which it’s
recognized that creativity loves company. Effective collaboration,
creating values-based community, and developing deals that benefit all
parties is the next-level way to grow a business vs. the churn-and-burn
tactics and scorched-earth aftermath of old-paradigm thinking such as the
"Art of the Deal.” She noted, "Collaboration ensures the
systemic health of not only your business or brand, but also the health of
our industry, and society as a whole.
Next
up, the Internet
Commerce Association (ICA) presented a session called
Decoding the Domain Leasing Agreement, that explained how domain
owners can unlock a major new stream of revenue by leasing domains. The key is
doing to doing it safely is having a professionally written agreement that
spells out the terms of the lease, an agreement the ICA will provide you with free
of charge! This session featured (clockwise from top left), ICA's
General Counsel Zak Muscovitch, ICA Executive Director Kamila
Sekiewicz, attorney Stevan Lieberman (Greenberg & Lieberman)
and Nat Cohen (Founder of Telepathy, Inc. and ICA Board Member).
The
topic turned to domain parking in the final Stage 1 business session Thursday
- DomainParking.com - How to build and maintain a profitable domain
portfolio, hosted by James Tuplin (Director of Business
Development at BODIS). James shared his personal
experience of how to build and maintain a profitable domain portfolio by understanding
which domains which are worth registering, how and where to find them, and how
much to pay.
Now
it was time turn attention to one of the conference's biggest events - The NamesCon/RightOfTheDot.com
Live Premium Domain Auction. To get everyone ready for the big sale, the Auction
Red Zone session (above) brought together a panel of experts to talk
about the 112 domains that would be going up for sale and the ones that were
among their favorites. The panelists were, clockwise from top left, moderator
Jonathan Tenenbaum, Manish Lunja (Founder at BrandPros.com, Inc),
Kate Buckley (CEO at Buckley Media) and Laszlo Schenkhuysen (Account
Director at Dan.com).
In
addition to talking about the upcoming auction, Laszlo took the opportunity to
announce the winners of five new Dan.com Awards. The winner and
their categories were:
-
Most data-driven domainer of the year 2021
– Nikhail Jain
-
Most community-driven domainer of the year
2021 – Leanne McMahon
-
Best newTLD domain investor of the year 2021
– Swetha Yenugula
-
Best ccTLD domain investor of the year 2021
– Nils Buurman
-
Best .com domain investor of the year 2021
– Ehren Shaiberger
One
of the new Dan.com Awards presented Thursday afternoon at NamesCon Online.
Then
it was on to the big auction, with RightOfTheDot.com Founder & President Monte
Cahn (at left in photo below) and World Champion
Auctioneer Wayne Wheat conducting the sale live from a studio in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
RightOfTheDot will not be releasing
the final auction results until after their extended
online auction concludes on October 7. Name that did not
meet reserve or sell in the live auction will remain available in the extended
auction until that date.
Stage
2 Photos & Highlights (Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021)
The
auction officially concluded the activity on Stage 1. Now let's take a look at
the four sessions that were presented on Stage 2 Thursday.
First
up was a session titled So You Want to Run a New gTLD featuring,
clockwise from to left, moderator Christa Taylor (Head of Marketing at
Dot Brand Services & Founder), Phil Buckingham (CEO at Dot
Advice Consultancy), Jeff Neuman (Founder & CEO at JJN
Solutions, LLC) and Jothan Frakes (CEO at Private Label
Registrar). This session filled registrants in on the
timeline for ICANN’s second round of nTLDs, the challenges applicants to run
a new gTLD will face, and how the landscape has been shifted by the changes
put in place since the first round was released.
The
next session was for those who are more interested in running their own
business than administering a new TLD. Titled From Start-Up to Grown-Up:
Strategies to Make it Happen! it featured, clockwise from top left,
moderator Krista Gable (Founder at Domain Domme, LLC), Richard Lau (Founder
at LOGO.com) and Tatiana Bonneau (Founder & MD at MarkUpgrade). This
group provided insight into why some startups make it and others don’t. They
also detailed how certain verticals, particularly those that were already
beginning to grow before COVID, have accelerated tremendously due to
the pandemic forcing so many businesses to build or improve an online
presence.
The
next session on stage 2 covered a subject that always draws huge interest at
NamesCon - What’s my domain worth? With panelists, clockwise from top
left above, Braden Pollock (LegalBrandMarketing.com), Leanne McMahon
(Domain Investor at Pixel Corp), Josh Reason (Founder at
DNWE.com), Alan Shiflett (Sr. Director at GoDaddy) and Louis
Pickthall (Co-Founder & Vice President at BrandForce.com), NamesCon
assembled the right people to answer that question. The panelists provided real-time,
no holds barred domain name valuations, with case studies from high-profile
sales used to back up their appraisal instincts.
The
final session on stage 2 - ParkLogic - A Future of Innovation -
featured a presentation by ParkLogic Co-Founder Michael Gilmour, who
had also presented another one of his Masterclasses on a separate track
earlier in the day. This session was put together for
large portfolio investors that already understand the basics of domain
monetization and wanted additional insights into advanced domain traffic
management.
Day
2 Masterclass Track (Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021)
In
addition to Michael Gilmour's masterclass, there was a second session (above)
on the Masterclass track - All Things Expiry 2.0 - presented by GoDaddy.
In this well attended workshop GoDaddy Aftermarket
experts shared tips on how to build your portfolio through Expiry Domain
acquisitions.
Handshake
Stage (Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021)
There
was also another four full hours on content on the Handshake Stage
Thursday. We had a chance to catch the session below - Handshake: A
community-first blockchain project, that featured, clockwise from top
left, Kiba Gateaux (Founder, DATA Index), Fist Full (HNS fund
community manager at HNS Fund), Matt Zipkin (Lead Developer at
Impervious), 0xStefan (Creator at niami.io) and Chad Folkening (Leader
at RealtyDAO). This group discussed how Handshake
fits in to the larger blockchain ecosystem. Rather than going into the
technical details of the project, they covered how the project was started,
funded, developed, and released.
All
of the other Thursday sessions on the Handshake Stage will be available for replay
with the next day or two. Those included Alexa100k - The Missing
Link Between Alexa Ranking Sites & Handshake, What is Bob Wallet?,
Decentralized Name Exchange and You, Issuing Lifetime Domains: Data
and Insights, War Stories: Handshake Pioneers Share SLD Sales and
Lessons Learned for TLD Owners and Use cases for Handshake names.
This
edition of NamesCon Online concludes with another full day of activity Friday.
I'll have all of the final day photos and highlights for you in my next
Lowdown post!
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