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The European Conferences

The European Conferences

I’ve just arrived home after traveling for 38 hours in multiple flying tin cans. An Air Berlin plane delay combined with their baggage handlers walking off the job played havoc with the itinerary and caused us to miss our connecting flights in both Dusseldorf and Dubai. Got to love air travel.

Escrow.com

I pointed out to the Air Berlin ticketing agent that the measly 10 euros of compensation could not even buy us a sandwich and a bottle of water at the airport. At which point the person next to me in another line completely agreed. As you can imagine, Air Berlin is now at the top of my list of “never fly again” airlines. Enough of the complaining.....!

My first stop on this European business trip was Madrid. It’s a fascinating city with a great old quarter and some of the most modern artistic architecture I’ve ever witnessed. It was also the host of the ICANN GDD summit. Unlike many ICANN policy centered, sleep inducing, events the GDD was a hive of activity.

The air crackled with entrepreneurial drive as new gTLD registries jostled with registrars in the great Darwinian game of survival of the fittest. Some of the registries were in the process of bleeding out their remaining capital while others had made it to the illustrious goal of profitability. The blood in the water seemed to excite many would be suitors and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a round of acquisitions in the not to near future.

In terms of business…..there was a lot to be had if you were prepared to jump out of your comfort zone and meet a lot of new people. I personally love meeting people for the first time and enjoy hearing from them how they are using domains in their business! So I was right in my element. :-)

After the breakneck pace of GDD I headed to Berlin for Domaining Europe. As normal, Dietmar, the conference convener, organized a great event and the attendees had clearly been bitten by the domain investment bug.

I had the privilege of being invited to participated in three panels and take a brief session at the end of the conference. The panels I was involved in were moderated by Braden Pollock and covered the health of the domain industry, development, and monetization. The wide range of topics illustrate how creatively domain names can be used in business.

Jothan Frakes, co-founder of the new Merge conference, also moderated many sessions and applied his vast knowledge on domains to really pull out some interesting perspectives from panelists.

As an aside, the Merge show is being co-founded with Ray Neu and will be held on the 14-18th October this year in Orlando. It’s shaping up to be an outstanding event that I’m sure will attract many domain investors and industry luminaries.

Although Domaining Europe was not a large conference it’s still a great one and should be on your conference calendar. The days are literally packed with fantastic content and the evenings are full of wheeling and dealing amongst many of the elite domain investors in the European market.

So despite the mind numbing sensation of me feeling like my consciousness is still in the air traveling somewhere across the Indian Ocean was the European trip really worth it? You bet it was! I did an incredible amount of business with people I love doing business with….what could be better than that? Absolutely nothing!

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Friday, 29 March 2024
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