Was GDD in Vancouver Worth the Trip?

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.