As I write this, I’m sitting in the LAX Qantas club, wearing my traveling clothes of loose jeans and a really comfortable Escrow.com T-shirt that I picked up when I visited their office in San Francisco on the last trip. I’ve just had a shower before the long-haul flight to Melbourne and I find myself in a bit of a reflective mood…..was the trip to Vancouver and the GDD conference really worth it?

In terms of a conference, the simple answer is, I don’t really know. I didn’t get to any of the sessions….in fact, I don’t even think I knew where they were being held. Given the flow of people I believe they were down some long hallway.

What I do know is the people at the ICANN GDD event were top notch. It appeared that all of the movers and shakers of the new gTLD space were present. There were representatives from registrars, registries and a whole host of ancillary businesses from all over the world were present. The reason why I didn’t get to any of the sessions was because I ended up in back-to-back meetings. The best thing about the meetings was the fact that most of them were outcome focused rather than just another chin-wag that goes no where.

I would like to highlight both Kevin and Lars from dotICU (I-See-You). They are two of the founders of dotICU and they both worked incredibly hard speaking to registrars and others about the new extension.....it's clearly an enormous passion for them to evangelise ICU. If their work ethic is any indication of success then I’m sure you’ll see many ICU domains cropping up in the wild.

I also had the privilege of spending some time wth Andrew Allemann from Domain Name Wire (DNW.com). I’m sure he will provide his perspective on the event. For those of you that don’t know Andrew, he’s been writing about domains for around a decade and a half and provides an excellent service for the industry.

Of course it was great catching up with my many friends from around the world. One of the great things about the domain industry is I now have friends in just about every city in the world.. How great is that!

I stayed at the Hilton hotel and the elevator numbers were a lesson in CHiP domains. If you take a close look at it there are a number of floors missing; If you look carefully, you'll find that floors 4, 13 and 14 aren't accessible as it would be bad luck if you ended up on those floors. Either that or there is some secret organisation hidding on those floors....LOL!

Yes, there was a lot of business conducted but I found that in many cases it was more a meeting of minds of friends rather than a sales effort. I think that I will definitely be attending the next GDD and I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to grow into one of the preeminent ICANN conferences for the year.

I’d better finish up as I think my flight is just about to be called.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been sharing with readers on the principles that have helped me in my life. If followed, I believe the principles of truth, trust and learning will assist you in your own decision making and help you grow as an individual. This article will cover the principle of communication, which is one that encompasses everything that I’ve shared so far….and in many respects is one of the most difficult.

There are many aspects to communication and the first one I will unpack is whether you should enter into a dialogue with a person or not. I believe that most of the time it’s important to keep the lines of communication open, even in the most difficult of circumstances but there are exceptions.

As I mentioned in a previous article I recently experienced a situation where the other person was immediately very aggressive in an email. It was a difficult email to respond to and required a very measured response that I had checked over by a number of people I respect before hitting the send button.

I find that in emotionally charged situations it’s often good to have someone else check over what you are communicating. It’s so easy to get caught up with your feelings and responding in a controlled manner can be difficult. If you find yourself in a difficult situation then make sure you get some advice from someone that is invested in your life. They will often provide a clearer insight to the situation than you can yourself.

Once again I find myself sitting in the Qantas club waiting for good old QF93 for Los Angeles. Although I spend a lot of time in the airline lounge I did find it a little disconcerting when the front desk staff greeted me by name before I'd handed them my passport.

So what am I up to? I plan on hitting all the sites and living it up a little.....I wish. In summary, it's all about work. One of the things I really like about the USA and it's northern cousin is that there's just so much business to be done. I find that I step off the plane at the other end of the 15 hour journey, sniff the air and smile at all the opportunities.

This is going to be a short post.....my flight just got called. I'll see you in LA and at the GDD conference in Vancouver.

CheerS!

I’m jumping on a plane again on Thursday morning to start the journey to the ICANN GDD conference in Vancouver. I attended the Madrid GDD event last year and this year is looking to be even better.

In the past ICANN has helpfully published the list of attendees to help registered participants arrange meetings etc. For some reason, they’ve elected not to do this for the Vancouver event…..which is a bit frustrating.

I’ve now posted the event here in the “Domainers Network” so if you’re planning on attending GDD then you can see who else is attending. Hopefully we will get a reasonable list of people that are willing and wanting to connect.

Here is the link for the event.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharing in “Saturday Musings” a number of principles that I try to live my life by. The last two articles in this series cover the result of living a life of truth/trust and truth/learning. This article will address the topic of empowerment and why trust/learning are fundamental to everyone’s success.

At it’s core, trust has two aspects:
1.    Relationships – trust is all about developing strong relationships.
2.    Longevity – trust is also in it for the long-term.

What learning is all about is making sure we don’t continue to make the same mistakes with those all important relationships in our lives. Let’s face it, we’ve all made mistakes with relationships. Learning also has another sense to it that many people don’t consider……and that’s humility.

When you are truly trying to learn and strengthen your relationships you’re not worried about whether you are right. What you are seeking is understanding and this often requires that you suspend your own opinions in order to understand the other persons point of view.