NamesCon has become the domain industry’s premier conference and without a doubt the place to be if you want to do business in the domain industry. A conference like NamesCon can be a little daunting at first and getting the most out of the event is often the result of good planning rather than luck.

I thought I’d share with you how I approach NamesCon and get the most bang for effort.

1. Have a clear objective in mind. Sometimes this can be to collect information, meet certain people or make a particular deal. Whatever it is make sure that it’s top of your mind.
    
2. Check out the agenda and lock in all sessions that you want to attend. With the calibre of speakers at this years NamesCon, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are quite a number that will add value to your business.
    
3. Check the attendee list on the NamesCon App. Make appointments with people you’re wanting to catch-up with well beforehand. Don’t just “wing it” as everyone is busy at NamesCon and you may discover that the person whom you are wanting to meet has a full diary. They aren’t blowing you off….it’s the reality of a conference.
    
4. I typically get up at around 7am for a breakfast meeting at 8am. I then schedule meetings every hour in the time zone of the conference….this is REALLY IMPORTANT! Since people are flying in from all over the world there is only one time zone that matters…the conference time zone. So get familiar with scheduling meetings outside of your local time zone.
    
5. Typically speaking the registration desk is the only place that is fixed and always present at a conference. Logically, it becomes the default meeting point. I recently had someone say, “Let’s meet at the Tropicana”. Awesome! Where???? It’s a big hotel. Don’t mess up meetings by not being clear where you should meet.

It was announced on the 4th January that CEO, Tobias Flaitz, was leaving Sedo and that Matthias Conrad was to replace him. For the past 7 years Tobias has steered Sedo through some tumultuous waters and in my opinion, he now leaves the company in a stronger state than when he arrived.

Rather than report the facts of his leaving and trying to dig into the reasons for the change I thought that I’d share a few personal words about one of the captains of the domain industry.

When I first met Tobias at DomainFest in Los Angeles, he was both new to his position and the domain industry. I initially found him a little reserved as he took in the various industry players and formulated his own opinion of the domain industry and the role Sedo was playing in it.

When I reflect upon that conference, I imagine that at the time he was bombarded with a huge number of domain investors hoping this “new blood” would listen to their demands so I’m not surprised he was a “little reserved”.

Since he was new to the domain industry, Tobias provided a unique fresh perspective in how Sedo needed to move forward. One of his initial challenging tasks was to manage the transition from the Sedo founders. Many people underestimate whats involved in transitioning from visionaries like the founding team and I looked on in admiration as he managed the various stakeholders while building a dynamic new team to step up and take Sedo on the next stage of its journey.

At this time of year, I like to spend some time reflecting on the state of the domain industry and in particular what I’ve been up to the past twelve months. Let me say from the outset that I’ve seen a LOT of changes take place and from my perspective most of them have been good.

Development
At the end of 2017 I wrote about a project that I was working on that took domain development to a whole new level. Internally we now refer to this project as “Sites” and it’s now integrated into the main ParkLogic core systems.

Along the developmental journey there were a number of critical factors that needed to be resolved. Without revealing too much, amongst many other things, “Sites” now contains:

1. A flexible templating system to display landers that is very different compared to any of the currently available platforms (eg. Word Press, Joomla etc.). Widgets can be placed anywhere on the page and they both display information to the user AND also pass data back to the traffic quality system.
2. A quality system that used both web and behavioural analytics to determine the quality of the traffic being received by a domain. Each and every piece of traffic is scored appropriately, and this score is aggregated at the domain and account levels.
3. A reporting system that produces actionable reports based upon analytics at a dashboard, domain and traffic level.
4. A fully configurable API so that any data can be pulled from any “Sites” server and then analysed by either “Sites” customers or the ParkLogic team.
5. A back-end administrative interface that provides the necessary data for managing massive numbers of instances of “Sites” as well as assisting in determining more optimal monetisation solutions.

At the moment “Sites” processes around five million queries per day and in 2019 we see it continuing to grow as we focus our analytical skills upon it. It’s been quite a journey since its inception and it’s definitely not over yet….not by a long shot. When you control the page there’s a HUGE amount that is possible and this innovation will flow on as a direct benefit to ParkLogic clients.

Once again I find myself in the Melbourne Qantas Club….it’s becoming like a second home for me which in many respects is a bit sad. I’ve just received word that my flight has been delayed by over ninety minutes…..which is not good.

For those of you that are frequent travelers you will appreciate my angst as I instantly calculated whether I have enough time to get to my connect in Singapore. Since it’s the same terminal I may still just make it…..fingers crossed.

The helpful check-in lady suggested that I may have to stay in Singapore for the night but to not worry as Qantas will foot the bill for the accommodation. The fact that my room at the Park Hyatt at my ultimate destination would be sitting forlornly empty didn’t occur to her. This combined with the fact that I’d miss half the conference I was hoping to attend didn’t inspire me to have many smiles.

So what should I do? Get angry and yell at the world or just roll with the punches. When you’ve traveled a LOT you get used to these types of things and realise that there isn’t much point in getting angry at person number seven at the check-in counter. They’re just doing their job.

Now that I’m in the lounge one of the first things I did was check out the number of flights from Singapore to the Park Hyatt…..there were enough for me to begin to relax. I’m sure that some airline will be happy to take my money.

ICANN finished a few days ago and I've finally got the energy to write a few thoughts down about it. I must admit that it does help that I'm now on vacation in Provence, France....

In terms of business, ICANN was gruelling. After stepping off the plane on the Saturday I literally had back-to-back meetings from early in the morning until late at night. For me, each day at ICANN is becoming much more like NamesCon with a continuous stream of excellent meetings followed by a quick sleep.

Of course, it’s always good to catch-up with friends. Many of the relationships go back more than a decade and it’s a privilege to know people of the calibre of many of them. I remarked that one of the great things about the domain industry is that not matter which city in the world I happen to be in there is always a person I can have dinner with.

One of the strange things about ICANN is that it’s almost completely unaware of the domain investment community or at the best views it with a bit of distain. What all of the registrars and registries need to understand is that domain investors underspin the entire eco-system…..that’s the drum that I beat over and over again anyway.