|
For Schwartz and Neu, the bad news was that attendance at this
show was down considerably from their February
show in Las Vegas, south of 300 by most estimates. The good
news is that many people who went to Orlando, including me, will tell you
that it was the most enjoyable conference they've ever
attended. In the short term customer satisfaction may not cover the
cost of taking over
the entire conference center (and guaranteeing a huge block of
expensive rooms) at Disney World's crown jewel - the Grand
Floridian Resort. However, those happy campers will
create word of mouth buzz, letting people know that someone is
hitting the refresh button on the conference scene. I
believe that is the prescription needed to cure the current trade show
blues.
A lot of people advised Schwartz and Neu not to
go to Orlando in late May. Domainers were used to attending
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East in the fall at an Atlantic Coast resort.
Skeptics correctly
pointed out that Orlando is hot
in late May and Disney World is not a big attraction for the many young
single guys who are active in the domain business. They also noted
that for
those who do have families and would be attracted to Disney, the
dates fell before their kids were out of school.
|
Brittany
Jackson in front of Cinderella's
Castle May 23 during domainer's late
night out in the Magic Kingdom. |
So what made it such a great week despite all
of that? One thing I learned was that a lot of people (again
including me) had a misconception about how adult friendly Disney
World is for conventioneers today. I only live 75 minutes from the
park but my wife and I had not been there since our daughter entered
middle school over a decade ago. To us the thrill of Disney World
came from the wonder in our daughter Brittany's eyes as she explored the Magic
Kingdom.
I didn't know about the night clubs and shopping that
have grown up on Disney's Pleasure Island. TrafficZ's traditional
show party at the Raglan Road Irish Pub (which will talk
about more later) was a riot - one of the best ever. To top it off,
we got to experience it through our daughter's eyes again as she
made it to her first domain conference, having just gotten
home after finishing her junior year in college.
Several other college age kids were there with
their parents too and we all had a fabulous time together as
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. delivered in a big way on their promise of a family
friendly show. The nice thing is that the young single guys loved it too. |
|
The brilliant
20-something founder of Skenzo, Divyank Turakhia, went Disney hook,
line and sinker, wearing mouse ears just about everywhere he went.
Because of that I am now in his debt. After being in a large group that wore various
Disney headgear at the farewell dinner Friday night, I was alarmed
to find I was the only one still wearing mine when a large group got
together to go into the Magic Kingdom for hotel guest only extended
hours from 11pm - 2am. Seeing my discomfort, Divyank promptly pulled
his mouse ears out of his pocket and placed them on his head. With a
great sense of relief I exclaimed "All right! Now there
are two idiots in the crowd!" I'm not sure that was the
right way to phrase, but I now owe Div big time.
Some
of the domain "mouseketeers" at Friday night's
farewell dinner. (L to R): My new hero
Divyank Turakhia, Caroline Grant, Ron
Jackson, Brittany Jackson, Rob Grant, Diana
Jackson, Gregg McNair and Elizabeth Grant
(Caroline and Elizabeth are Rob's daughters) |
The next morning my daughter commented on what
a great night it had been noting "I have never been in a crowd where
people ranging in age from 20 to close to 70 had so much fun together." I know you are saying, "That's all well
and good but I thought there were supposed to be some business benefits
to going to conferences!" There were plenty of those too.
I
have to refer to Turakhia again (he was was lit up like a 500-watt
halogen bulb all week). Near the end of the show he told me "I
thought this show might suck, but it has been a blast and I did some
great business deals too!"
|
Michael
Gilmour (WhizzbangsBlog.com) |
Michael Gilmour,
the PPC expert who came all the
way from Australia expressed similar sentiments on his blog writing
"In terms of business T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Orlando was by far the
best conference that I've ever been to. Deals were coming left,
right and center. Not just small ones but BIG ones! My
opinion is that it was a well run event that had some very
interesting and thought provoking sessions."
That potent combination of brisk business and
loads of fun was the story of the week. But I'm getting ahead of
myself. Let's pick things up from the beginning and give you the
grand tour you've come to expect.
The event got underway with a Tuesday evening
cocktail party (May 20). We made the short drive from Tampa to
Orlando and reached the hotel shortly after check in time. We had
stayed at several other hotels at Disney World but had never been to
the
|
| Grand Floridian, which was a revelation. The facility is
stunning with classic Victorian architecture, multiple swimming
pools (one open around the clock and usually frequented at 4am by a
group of insomniac domainers), waterfalls, a private beach, marina,
24-hour restaurant, direct monorail service to the Disney
parks, etc. Just a wonderful venue that, at least to my tastes, was
the best I've been to at any show. |
|
View
from the balcony of our room at Disney's Grand Floridian
Resort.
|
The first story we heard upon arrival was how
"lead foot" Sahar Sarid had made the drive from South
Florida to the Disney gate in record time, only to get lost inside
the complex for an hour and a half while he futilely searched for
the Grand Floridian! You wouldn't think it would be hard to find,
but locating the narrow road that leads to the resort is a bit
tricky. Here's the secret. Ask which road to take when you go
through the gate! Worked like a charm for us :-)
Sahar
Sarid (at far right above) finally found his way to the hotel
where his
partner Jeff Bhavnanie (far left) and Alina Schwartz
helped cheer him up!
(Photo courtesy of Barbara Neu)
We had plenty of time to change and head down
to the cocktail party where many new faces were sprinkled
among the old friends. Show organizers said this was the first
domain conference for about a third of attendees. They picked a good
one. The fact that the crowd was smaller than usual was actually a
plus for registrants. It allows you to spend more time
networking with specific individuals you might never have a chance
to talk to in a crowd of 600.
(Left
to right): Ray Neu, Barbara Neu, Pat Carbonaro
and Greg Carbonaro
at the opening night cocktail party.
The cocktail party wrapped up at 8 on the
button so people could move into an adjacent room for Moniker.com
auction appetizer, a no or low reserve sale limited to about 30
domains. That trial run for the main live auction event Friday
produced $62,750 in sales despite the short list (DayCare.org
was the top name, going for $16,500).
The first full day of business opened Wednesday
(May 21) with welcoming remarks from Schwartz and Neu. Schwartz
talked about how the malaise in the general economy would open up
some great opportunities to acquire premium assets at below market
prices in 2008 as some owners will be forced to sell names they
would not put on the market in better times.
|
Internet Commerce Association Legal Counsel
Phil Corwin and Executive Director Michael Collins also spoke during
the opening hour. Corwin gave up update on the success the ICA has
had in fending off the Snowe bill that threatens all domain owners.
While our side seems to have the upper hand in the opening battle,
there is still a war to be fought and won that will continue over
the next several years.
Collins asked domain owners to get involved
with the association as it will take all of us rowing the same
direction to fend off the increasing threats to our assets.
The decline in parking revenue has been the hot
topic in the industry over the past year so it was fitting that the
opening seminar at 11am addressed that
|
ICA
Legal Counsel Phil Corwin |
| subject. The panel included Michael Gilmour,
Donny Simonton (Parked.com), Jonathan Boswell
(LeaseThis.com) and Jerry Nolte (Domainer's
Magazine). Gilmour is a numbers guy who has posted a lot
of terrific research and articles on his Whizzbang's
Blog. In fact both of the complete Powerpoint presentations
he delivered in Orlando have been posted on his blog. |
I thought Simonton made one of the most
interesting observations of this session. He said that a number of
advertisers had told him they were now buying domains outright
instead of buying traffic from Google and Yahoo as it was more cost
effective in the long run. If that is occurring it would partially explain
both the fall off in advertiser bids and the fact that the
aftermarket has continued to outperform previous years despite the
big falloff in PPC revenue.
Parking
panel members (left to right): Jerry Nolte, Jonathan
Boswell,
Michael Gilmour and at the podium, Donny Simonton.
As Boswell pointed out, the nice thing
about domains is that there are many ways to profit from them beyond
PPC, "Domain owners have tons of options," Boswell said.
You can raise cash through CPA programs (that pay for each completed
sale rather than each click), selling domains, leasing, partnerships
and of course full-scale development.
| During the lunch break Domain Name Wire
founder Andrew Allemann delivered some previously unreleased
results from his site's annual survey of domainers. Schwartz and Neu
were happy to hear that 60% of DNW's readers picked T.RA.F.F.I.C. as
the top domain conference (more than double the percentage that went
to the runner up).
Survey respondents also picked Schwartz as the
most influential person in the industry (outpointing runner up Frank
Schilling 27% to 19%). You can see the complete survey results on
these and other questions here.
Andrew does an excellent job with his site and is a great guy as
well. I take great pleasure in seeing the domain media corps that
has grown up around this business as it is a sure sign of a healthy,
growing industry. We are really blessed to have so many good writers
with interesting and insightful points of view covering this space. |
Andrew
Allemann
DomainNameWire.com |
After lunch, Rick Schwartz unveiled a
fascinating new product, Vertisi, that he has taken an
ownership interest in. In a nutshell the product allows you to
apply a special film on any glass surface and turn it into an
interactive display (with full web access). Schwartz predicted it
would be a billion dollar product and the possibilities for the
technology do indeed appear to be endless. We wrote about it from
Orlando in our Lowdown section May
22 so check that out for more details.
In the first afternoon informational session a
half dozen experts took seats on the dais to talk about the future
of parking. The participants included Ammar Kubba (TrafficZ),
Divyank Turakhia (Skenzo), Don Ham (HitFarm), Matt Bentley
(Sedo),
Jeff Kupietsky (Oversee.net) and the afore-mentioned Micheal Gilmour.
|
Kubba said that parking is never going to go away (no matter what
Google and Yahoo do) but that it will evolve into a form that will
include other monetization methods beyond PPC, including the ability
for domain owners to sell their own direct advertising on their landing pages.
"That's how we are going to get revenue back up," Kubba
said.
Ham agreed that parking will become a hybrid model and that
was the upshot of the whole discussion - all of the participants are
working on ways to incorporate multiple revenue sources into the
parking model. With PPC revenue down, the parking companies are catching some flack but it is worth remembering that they
make more money if you make more money, so they have a vested
interested in improving the current model and keeping their client
base happy.
|
Don
Ham (HitFarm.com) |
| The final seminar Wednesday focused on what is
happening with the Snowe
bill and how the industry needs to prepare for this and
other threats in the future. ICA Legal Counsel Phil Corwin, Nat
Cohen (Telepathy.com) and Andrew Allemann (Domain Name Wire) were
the panelists. Corwin said the Snowe bill is currently bottled up
(partly due to stiff opposition the ICA was able to help rally) but
that backers of the bill will keep fine tuning it and trotting it
out there in new iterations an effort to make it easier to get
assets away from domain owners without paying for them. This is not
the time to fall asleep at the wheel, rather it is a time to arm and
prepare for the inevitable next skirmish in the battle. |
That was it in terms of seminars on opening day
- just three of them - part of T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s plan to refresh the
show model and give people more of what they want and that in a word
is "networking". At 5pm the first of two speed networking
sessions was held (the second followed the next morning), this one
returning to a popular format introduced at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East two
years ago.
Participants faced each other across tables throughout
the hall, with one row moving down a seat every 90 seconds so that
every got to meet, exchange cards and comments with over two dozen
people before the hour ended. You would be amazed how many valuable
contacts you can make in those 90-second bursts.
Scene
from the speed networking session Wednesday (May 21)
The networking continued at a TrafficZ cocktail
party that got the crowd warmed up for the evening's main event - a
bus trip to Pleasure Island and TrafficZ's Official T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Party at the Raglan Road Irish Pub. I already commented on this
earlier in the article, so I will just reiterate that it was a great
party with Irish music, dancing, drinks and great conversation. This
is a point where the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words
proves itself,
so here are some scenes from that memorable night out:
It
was wall to wall domainers inside the Raglan Road Irish Pub.
Fabulous.com's
Michael Robertson learning the finer points of Irish folk dancing.
Taking
a break from the action inside (left to right): Michael Bahlitzanakis
(BPHG Media),
Patrick Carleton (Associated Cities), Uri Kerbel (NetRocket),
Lonnie Borck (NetRocket),
Sean Stafford (DNZoom) and Dan Kimball (DNZoom).
We have dozens of additional
photos (including more close-ups of individuals and small groups
that we will be posting in a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2008 Photo
Gallery that will be added to this article no later than noon
Tuesday (June 3). We will add links to the upcoming Gallery on all
pages of this article to make it easy to find, so check back for
that early next week.
As usually happens the day after the TraffcZ
party, morning arrived long before most registrants were ready to
get out of bed! Still the highly motivated ones made it to the
second speed networking session at 10am Thursday (May 22). This time
the format changed with people divided into groups based on their
expressed areas of interest. Some new partnerships came out of this
session as like minded people came together and decided two (more
more) heads were better than one in realizing their business goals.
|
The biggest panel of the week, seven members
strong, followed at 11am to talk about the "holy grail",
the possibility of discovering a way to develop hundreds or even
thousands of domains en masse. The panel featured Jeff Beasley (BlueFrog
Interactive), Gregg McNair (Domain Holding Group), Dr. Chris
Hartnett (founder of USA Global Link), Andrew Allemann, Jerry
Nolte,
Donny Simonton and Ammar Kubba.
Kubba (the COO at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s
lead sponsor TrafficZ.com
and, along with CEO Kevin Vo, the subject of our October
2007 Cover
Story) said he did not believe that
developing thousand of domains in a worthwhile way would ever be
possible. Instead he advised developing a few key domains in one
vertical, then taking other domains with traffic in that same
vertical and directing their traffic to the developed sites.
Hartnett (a spectacularly successful
|
TrafficZ
COO Ammar Kubba |
| entrepreneur who will be the
subject of our upcoming June Cover Story) told attendees to "Do
what gets you excited. Money will follow when you do something you
are excited about." |
Nolte ran through a series of useful tips on
how to develop websites quickly, pointing out that there are often
overlooked free programs that come with the Control Panel most
hosting companies provide with even the cheapest hosting accounts.
Using programs like Fantastico, Nolte showed a string of sites he had
been able to do in as little as 15 minutes, some that include
scripts that update content several times an hour.
Allemann advised
those looking for content writers to hire interns from their local
university. English and journalism students will work cheap (or
free) just to get experience. His base in Austin, Texas is home to
the University of Texas, giving him a large pool of talented young
people to draw on.
|
Hal
Bailey (head of Google's domain
channel) made an unscheduled
appearance at the podium Thursday. |
An interesting situation developed just before
lunch. Moderator Howard Neu shook up some people at the beginning of
the day by announcing that he had been involved in a
conversation with Hal Bailey in which the head of Google's domain
channel said some derogatory things about domain owners - calling
them all cybersquatters and people who clicked on their own sites.
(Dr. Hartnett corroborated Neu's account).
Bailey got wind of this and asked to address the audience before
lunch. When he took the podium he indicated that what had been said was in the context of a
larger discussion about the problems of trademark violations and
click fraud. I wasn't privy to the original conversations and Bailey
did make an attempt to diffuse the situation so I would be inclined
to write this incident off to miscommunication, but it does
underscore the wisdom in domain owners exploring ways to reduce their reliance on Google and Yahoo. |
|
There is
nothing to stop the two search giants from deciding one day that they are no longer
interested in using the domain channel and eliminating it from their
ad network. Fabulous.com's respected COO Dan Warner has been very
vocal about this possibility, so it is something that needs to be
seriously considered in your monetization strategy. |
Once again, there were just two afternoon
seminars following lunch. In the first of those a four man panel
discussed, among other things, UDRP issues and how to deal with
them. Those on the dais included Bill Mushkin (Name.com), Monte Cahn
(Moniker.com), Freddy Schiwek (EuroDNS) and Divyank Turakhia (Skenzo).
|
Name.com
CEO Bill Mushkin speaking
on registrar issues Thursday (May 22). |
People sometimes ask if their domains would be safe from arbitration
and legal issues if they were held with registrars based overseas.
With the popular global extensions the answer is no. Newcomers
frequently confuse registrars with registries. The registry
administers one or more entire extension (for example Verisign
controls the .com and .net registries). Registries do not deal
directly with
the general public. Instead you register your domains with any of
the dozens of registrars out there, who in turn pay the central
registry a set fee for each domain that you register through them.
Since the central registries hold the "book" on all
registrations in the extensions they operate, they have ultimate
control over the domains. As a result, holding domains with a
registrar overseas would not insulate you from arbitration or legal
proceedings directed against .com, .net, .org, .info or .biz domains
because the registries that control those extensions are all based
in the U.S.
|
I had the opportunity to sit on the final
seminar panel Thursday called Insider Tips. Our group
included Lonnie Borck (NetRocket.com), Page Howe (TheCardShop.com),
Dave Evanson (NetVantagePoint), Lissi Mack de Boer (Sedo) and
Ofer
Ronen (Sendori.com). I know I may be a bit biased but I thought our
session was one of the best of the show - partly because several of
our speakers took the podium for the first time at a domain
conference.
| Borck, Howe and Evanson were in that group and I hadn't
heard Lissi speak before either. Listening to these highly
experienced domainers and executives provide tips for the first time
was an exceptionally valuable experience.
Borck was a special treat
for me because I haven't had a chance to talk with him privately as
much as I have some of the other panelists. In my casual
conversations with him he is always polite, low key and even a bit
reserved. As a public speaker he quickly shifted into a high gear
I
haven't seen before and he was great, delivering one excellent tip
after another throughout his talk. Several members of the audience
mentioned that to me later and he left a crowd eager to hear more
from him in the future.
By 4:30 the business day was over - the earliest
ever, again by design as Schwartz |
Lonnie
Borck (NetRocket.com) |
| and Neu decided to loosen the
agenda and leave people more free time to enjoy their surroundings
and chat with friends and associates. Many hung out at a wine and
cheese tasting in the sponsor exhibit hall while others headed for
the pool or one of the Disney parks. |
|
My family opted for the wine
tasting and a chance to visit some of the sponsor booths. Parked.com
quickly sucked us in with free rides on CEO Sig Solares' Segway personal
transporter. None of us had been on one before and we all decided we
wanted one after taking a ride. They would be the perfect
alternative to $4 a gallon gas if they didn't cost $5,000 each!
When Brittany took off on her maiden voyage aboard a
Segway (see photo at right), Sig quickly turned his back -
obviously afraid to see what might happen to his vehicle
(she did almost crash into one of the sponsor booths, so his
concern was not entirely unjustified). To Brittany's right, Michael
Ward and Monte White watched as she peeled out of
the Parked lot.
Everyone regrouped in the evening for
Parked.com's Beach Party. Due to inclement weather that event wound
up being moved indoors to the main lobby of the convention center.
No one minded a bit as the tropical band set up alongside the
buffets and open bars and quickly got the party underway.
A pair of
Disney artists were a huge attraction as they did cartoon
caricatures |
|
| of anyone who wanted one made (some
may have been sorry they
chose to do so but most got off relatively easily). A crowd gathered
around the artists and their subjects throughout the night, laughing
as they watched the cartoon likenesses develop. |
Ammar
Kubba on the caricature hot seat. The cartoonist didn't
quite
capture his good looks (probably just a coincidence but I
understand
the artists's rev share at TrafficZ dropped dramatically the
next day!)
The
ladies fared better at the cartoonist's hands - but with
subjects like this to work how could they go wrong?
The final business day Friday (May 23) opened
with a 10:30am seminar (the last of the show) devoted to Search
Engine Optimization. Rick Waters (Webcast1), Paul Bliss (Elliance.com)
and Eric
Schiffer (SEOP.com) handled this session.
|
Schiffer, whom
Business Week has referred to as one of America's top
ten entrepreneurs, said his company also owns about 30,000 domain
names. He said they have put together a development system,
utilizing content writers based in the Philippines, that
allows them to develop 1,500-2,000 sites a month. By concentrating
on content and proven SEO techniques, Schiffer said they are seeing
revenues quintuple from their starting points before SEO. Schiffer
said that employing SEO experts provides a strong return in
investment and those who do not take advantage of SEO are leaving a
lot of money on the table.
He said his company is also entering
partnerships with domain owners with flexible arrangements that can
include cash payments or equity. Extra value is created and shared
as they add content, video and SEO in the site building
process.
|
Eric
Schiffer (SEOP.com) |
|
At the Friday luncheon I gave an update on aftermarket
domain sales trends. Despite a continuing downturn in the general
economy, the domain aftermarket continued to grow in the first six
weeks of 2Q-2008, though the rate of growth appears to be
slowing. Over that |
| time frame $11.1 million worth of
completed sales were reported to us. In the same period in 2Q-2007,
$10.9 million in sales had been reported, so the increase was
2% year over year. Things could change considerably over the second
half of the quarter. Moniker sold $3.3 million worth of domains in
the live and silent auctions at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East and many of
those sales will be completed and booked by the end of the quarter.
In a related noted, the Senior VP and General
Manager of NameMedia's Domain Marketplace (which includes the
AfternicDLS) Peter Lamson told me that his company had their
best quarter ever in 1Q-2008. Lamson said, "Our SMB
(Small to Medium sized Business) “end user” focus really seems
to be paying off, as global business demand for a compelling online
identity seems only to be accelerating. The momentum is
continuing in Q2, so we are definitely seeing on AfternicDLS
what you are seeing with respect to domain sales remaining strong in
an otherwise challenging economic environment." |
Ron
Jackson (DNJournal.com) |
After lunch, it was time for the main event,
Moniker.com's live domain auction. By the time the dust had settled
in the four-hour event, a little over $2.55 million worth of
domains had been sold, including a half dozen 6-figure domains
including GasPrices.com and InsuranceRates.com at $225,000
each. The complete list of auction results is available here.
Auctioneer
Joel Langbaum and Moniker CEO Monte Cahn
conduct the live auction Friday (May 23)
While the auction total was lower than recent shows a higher
percentage of domains was sold. Moniker has been pushing sellers to
set more reasonable reserves and when they do so more names
naturally change hands. People are looking for bargains and just as
potential real estate buyers are waiting on the sidelines, hoping to
see prices fall more before they jump into a house, many domain
investors are being patient, waiting to see if problems in the
general economy spillover to this business and start pulling domain
prices down. Many have strong cash reserves and are ready to pounce
if they think domains are priced right. I've also talked to many
domain owners who say they would rather sit on their assets until
the economic storms blow over than sell out cheap, so it's largely a matter
of who will blink first.
| Throughout the day Friday, normally dignified
men and women were seen decked out in mouse ears and
princess tiaras. Many were coming from a Disney character breakfast
where this kind
of fashion was de rigueur. By the time the farewell dinner rolled
around at |
|
At
left, Gregg McNair (AKA Goofy)
with Goofier (AKA Ron Jackson)
(Photo courtesy of Barbara Neu) |
7pm, it seemed like half the people in the room had a
silly hat on. I didn't plan to be one of them, but earlier in the
day I had taken a photo of a group sporting new Disney headwear. I
razzed Gregg McNair about being the oddball because he was the only
one not wearing an extra set of ears.
Later at lunch McNair showed up
with an eye catching Goofy headdress on. In the interest of good
sportsmanship I felt like I had to reciprocate so I selected a fine
piece of haberdashery on an afternoon outing to Epcot that I wore to
dinner. Unfortunately, there were people with cameras running around
that ignored the time honored code that says "What Happens at
Disney World Stays at Disney World." |
|
|
| After dinner Disney left the Magic Kingdom open
from 11pm to 2am for hotel guests only so a large group (of all
ages) decided to take advantage of the it and hit the park together.
We started be catching the spectacular fireworks show above
Cinderella's Castle, then went on to hit rides in every corner or
the park. In those wee hours there were few lines (a real
rarity at Disney) so we felt like we had the run of the place.
Rob Grant, Chris Hartnett and others adopted a new slogan and
tried it out on every stranger they saw, declaring "This
is the best day of your life!" I'm sure that as soon as some of |
Fireworks
display over Cinderella's Castle May 23
(captured on a handheld Sony H50 camera) |
|
those folks put some distance between themselves and our mad hatters
they probably did indeed feel that way. Still it was all in good fun
and has now been commemorated at...where else would domainers
commemorate something....a website of course: ThisIsTheBestDayOfYourLife.com. Here are some photos from one of the best
evenings of our lives: |
Inspired
by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride he just
disembarked from,
Dr. Chris Hartnett grabs a sword and goes postal.
| The ride below looks safe
enough, proving looks can be deceiving... |
We almost lost one of
our best men on it! |
|
|
|
They
conquered space mountain and lived to tell about it.
(photo courtesy of Barbara Neu)
By the time we got back to the hotel it was 3am. That made it a
short night (but well worth the sacrifice) before the final order of business
Saturday morning - a meeting of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. advisory board.
Anyone at the show is free to sit in on these gatherings. The board
consists of about ten volunteers who provide the promoters with
feedback on what they are doing right or wrong, where future shows
might do well and the like. This time they were also asked to help
provide input for a transparency seal of approval T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
plans to make available to qualifying parking companies and domain
monetizers.
Attendees at these meetings also get updates
from Schwartz and Neu on what their plans are for the future. In
this case, next will be the New York City show Sept. 23-26 that will
be held at the Marriott- Brooklyn Bridge. That will be
followed by the first overseas T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Down Under that will be staged by Fabulous.com
on Australia's Gold Coast November 18-20, 2008.
In 2009, Schwartz and Neu plan to cut
back to two shows, likely to be one on the West Coast (San Francisco
or Silicon Valley) and a return to New York. Florida is expected to
be back on the schedule in 2010 with Orlando in the running again.
Schwartz said he is also considering a very limited capacity
boutique show back where it all began in 2004, the Marriott in
Delray Beach.
You may recall that at the New York show last summer
Schwartz told the advisory board he was interested in selling his
share of the conference and returning to " civilian life". At this
meeting it was announced that he had changed his mind and plans to
stay at the helm with Neu.
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Marriott
at the Brooklyn Bridge - Site of
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York Sept. 23-26, 2008. |
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| That means T.R.A.F.F.I.C. attendees will
continue to be greeted by Rick and Alina Schwartz alongside Howard,
Barbara and Ray Neu. I'm personally glad to hear that. They have
been consistently great hosts from day one and it just wouldn't feel
like T.R.A.F.F.I.C. if any of them were missing. |
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Rick & Alina |
Howard, Barbara & Ray |
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*****
That's all for
now, but our T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2008 Photo Gallery
with dozens of
great photos you haven't seen is coming by June 3, so check
back for that! |
Return
to Domain Name Journal Home Page |
