Above: There were few empty seats in front of the Webpros Stage when NamesCon/Cloudfest CEO Christian Jaeger welcomed the audience Thursday morning. They got there early to see the day's featured speaker, Matt Mullenweg (below). Matt is co-founder of the wildly popular open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers 43% of all sites on the web. He is also the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day One, Texts, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. With those credentials, its no surprise that this was a session no one wanted to miss and Soeren's insightful questioning brought out countless takeaways that will continue to benefit conference attendees now and for years to come. 

Above & Below: After Matt Mullenweg's session, I headed back over to the Keynote Stage where Andrew Allemann (DomainNameWire.com), at right above and also seen below, interviewed Atom.com Founder and CEO Darpan Munjal in an 11am session dedicated to Cracking the Code: Essential Data and Strategies for Domain Investors. They also covered Atom’s roadmap, discussing how the company (formerly known as SquadHelp) aims to create an ecosystem to accelerate domain sales.

Above & Below: The Keynote Hall audience had a lot to like Thursday morning, including the session below in which Joe Styler (GoDaddy Senior Marketing Manager/Domain Academy) detailed how the company's Domain Academy educational platform provides value for every investor, including data and and tools that can help give you the edge in an ever-changing, competitive environment. Domain Academy offers access to industry experts through classes, materials, and tools that are laser focused on domain name investing. 

With one session to go in the Keynote Hall before the lunch break I ducked outside to grab a cup of coffee. That's when I spotted two guys who really know how to take a break! However, you would think Greg Ricks (a former owner of DNForum.com), at right, could have let Saw.com's Jeff Gabriel have at least one of the ottomans! 

Above: Back in the Keynote Hall for the final session before the mid-day break, we caught Johannes Steck (Head of Reseller at Team Internet), at left, and Haydn Simpson (Head of Brand Services at Team Internet) discussing The Domain Opportunity at Team Internet. The dynamic duo explained how their top brands like CentralNic Reseller and BrandShelter are driving better-than-industry growth globally.

The highlight of the Thursday lunch break had nothing to do with food. That was when the fabulous Woman of of the Web (WOW) held their annual get together just down the hall from the main stage. When I entered this business in 2002 you could literally count the women in it full time on one hand! Now we are graced with hundreds of talented women in the domain space and WOW has had a lot to do with that by providing an organization that welcomes and supports every woman who wants to join in and build a career here. 

Above: In a highlight of Thursday's WOW meeting, NamesCon CEO Christian Jaeger popped in to help two of WOW's tireless leaders, Lisa Box (standing next to Christian) and Susan Lawrence, honor Evergreen.com Founder Jen Sale (far left). Many years ago Jen invited a handful of visionary woman to her hotel room to kick around an idea that evolved into the amazing WOW organization we have in our industry today.

Above & Below: Professional women of the web enjoying lunch, support, companionship and perhaps a glass of wine at the WOW gathering. There were many familiar faces in the crowd including GoDaddy's Kathy Nielsen (at left below) and IT.com's Tess Diaz (at center below). Tess also adroitly handled some of the moderating chores during NamesCon Global.

Above: Several personal and professional services were offered at no charge during the WOW meeting. A particularly popular one was the opportunity to have a new head shot done by a professional photographer.

Brightening up the room below are, left to right, Brooke Hernandez (Saw.com), Diana Jackson, Noelle Filippenko and Andee Hill (ICANN).

Above we see Carla Bourque (Rebrandly) and below, left to right, are Tess Diaz, Kina Merdinian, Kamila Sekiewicz (Internet Commerce Association) and Jen Sale (Evergreen.com).

After the Women of the Web event only one big thing remained on the conference agenda Thursday - the annual NamesCon/RightOfTheDot Digital Assets Auction that took place in a re-configured Keynote Hall. Coincidentally, I had spotted Scott Pruitt, the CMO for RightOfTheDot and .HipHop at the company's booth in the Exhibit Hall earlier in the day (below), when he was starting to get revved up for the big sale.

Above & Below: Before the live auction there is always a very entertaining and informative DomainSherpa Domain Auction Preview discussion on stage. The expert panelists give their opinions about some of the top names in the auction and what they might go for. The panel included, left to right, Shane Cultra (D3 Global), Ammar Kubba (Afterthought.com), Andrew Rosener (MediaOptions.com), Jen Sale (Evergreen.com), Braden Pollock (LegalBrandMarketing.com) and Jonathan "JT" Tenenbaum (DomainSherpa.com), who is also seen below.

Jen Sale, below, was an especially welcome addition to the panel after making her first trip back to a live conference from Australia in seven years.

Just minutes before the live auction started, another panelist from the pre-show discussion, MediaOptions Founder Andrew Rosener was called back to the stage to accept Escrow.com's #1 Broker of the Year Award for an unprecedented 6th consecutive year! For each of those years Andrew and his team, including Chris Zuiker at far left, have totaled more $ sales volume on the Escrow platform that anyone else. The award was presented by Escrow.com Global Director (Enterprise & Escrow) Shaun McMeeken and Operations Manager Sofia Canala.

Andrew's wins have come against some very stiff competition as can see when you look at the top ten finishers on the Escrow list. Those were 1) Andrew Rosener, 2) Andrew Miller, 3) Jeff Gabriel, 4) Steve Miholovich, 5) Brian Harbin, 6) Matthew Chase, 7) Brent Oxley, 8) Ryan McKegney, 9) Mark Daniel and 10) Joe Uddeme.

Above & Below: At 3pm it was time to get the live auction underway in front of a standing room only crowd. As always, World Champion Auctioneer  Wayne Wheat (at left below) and ROTD President Monte Cahn ran the big sale.

When Wayne Wheat was done auctioning off the assets, there were the top ten sales:

While the live auction is over, buyers can still bid in an ongoing online auction. That is a timed auction that will run through June 18th. Starting at 1:00 PM US CST, the lots will close on a timer with 30 seconds between lots. 38 new lots have been added since the close of the live auction with a total of 563 total lots still available. Total revenue as of this writing is just under $700,000 with a 48% sell-through rate. You can participate by going to bid.rotd.com. Bidder registration is still open and anyone who already registered online for the live auction is automatically registered for the timed auction. A downloadable .csv file of the current catalog is available at bid.rotd.com in the auction description as well as rotd.com. The catalog link is: https://rotd.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/auction-catalog-06-12-2024.csv

Here is an interesting side note. While I was sitting in the audience watching the live auction, Sedo CMO Christian Voss came over and told me they had just completed a $75,000 sale of MyFy.com. That one had nothing to do with the auction but would have been the second biggest sale in the event had it been sold through the platform. It turned out that the deal was put together by two friends, Dan Adamson, representing the seller and Sedo's Yiqiu Tao, representing the buyer. So, I caught up with them soon after I got the news to congratulate them on the sale and snap the picture above.

Because of the auction, there was very little activity on the Moniker Stage Thursday. It was limited to two sessions presented by Moniker's Mark McCutcheon, who we told you about when reporting on a session he did in the Keynote Hall on opening day Wednesday. So, with the business day done, it was time to get ready for the evening's main event, the annual NamesCon/Internet Commerce Association Member's Dinner.

When my wife and and I came down from our room for the short walk over to the dinner location, Austin's Eureka! restaurant, I spotted Trillion.com Co-Founder and CEO David Warmuz and his team in the lobby getting ready to head in the same direction, so I took the opportunity to get a photo in case we got lost in the crowd later.

Above at Eureka!: The ICA Dinner gets bigger every year, just as the ICA itself does. The secret is out. By joining the non-profit organization that fights to protect domain owner's right, you are helping yourself, as well as the industry at large. In addition to the NamesCon dinner and a broker's breakfast (that was held Thursday morning), the ICA has a fabulous annual meeting every January in Las Vegas. 

Below: David Thorpe hits the buffet table while its hot! Food comes out throughout the evening but if you get lost in conversation, which just about everyone does, you could miss the boat on some great Tex Mex treats!

Above: Two of the ICA's staunchest supporters (and domaining investing's best friends), Dr. Gregg McNair (Chairman, Premium Traffic Ltd. Group) and Paul Nicks (GoDaddy, VP/Domain Investor). GoDaddy and Dynadot sponsored the ICA dinner, assuring it would be yet another top notch event.

Above: SAV.com Founder & CEO Anthos Chrysanthou emerges from the crowd to explore the many food options.

Below: All of the kids in the ICA are the cool kids but this table may have gotten more than its fair share with, left to right, Ammar Kubba, Billy Tenenbaum (Media Options), JT Tenenbaum (MediaOptions/DomainSherpa), Josephine Kubba and Art Malkov (Lever.io).

Above: Wrapping  up Day (and Night) 2 of NamesCon Global on a happy note Thursday evening at the ICA Dinner are, left to right, Larry Fischer, Russ Goodwin and Jack Dai. I could have sworn that Larry was a lot taller than Jack when the night began. Must have been an optical illusion!

With that it is time to move forward to NamesCon Global Days number 3 & 4, Thursday & Friday, June 7-8, 2024. CLICK HERE to continue. 

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