A handy guide to choosing a domain conference.
Well, I guess the domain name conference wars are on again. We already knew about two conferences in the first two months of the year — DOMAINfest and Domainer MardiGras. But then, despite having only two conferences in the U.S. this year, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. found it necessary to hold a conference in Las Vegas just before DOMAINfest. And so it begins.
Since most people don’t want to attend every conference, I’ve put together this handy guide to help you choose a conference. There’s not a “best conference” for everyone; it really depends on what you’re looking for. It you don’t care about programming, ignore that rating. If you don’t care about striking deals at the conference, ignore that rating. Just find the conference that is best for what you’re looking for. These are my opinions on each conference, although I cross checked them with a couple other experts in our field to make sure I wasn’t way off on any of them. And of course, if you disagree, feel free to comment.
Explanation of ratings:
Size – based on audience. Takes into consideration most recent conference and historical trends.
Cost – conference pass cost, excluding hotel.
Programming – quality of programming, including diverse speakers, “fresh” topics, programming scheduled well in advance.
Professionalism – sessions start on time, professional/prepared moderators.
Cohesiveness – level of attendee, ability to easily network and find people you’re looking for (adversely affected by size).
Deal Making – level of deal making at conference.
Conference Venue & Food – overall quality of venue and food
Here they are, in alphabetical order.
Domainer Mardi Gras
What’s new in 2010: No longer under Modern Domainer umbrella
Known for: Fun
Size: Small
Cost: Low
Programming: Medium
Professionalism: Medium
Cohesiveness: High
Deal Making: Medium
Venue: Medium
DOMAINfest
What’s new in 2010: moves to the beach, possible second conference in the fall.
Known for: High quality production, huge parties, big crowd. Organized by Oversee.net.
Size: Large
Cost: Moderate
Programming: High
Professionalism: High
Cohesiveness: Medium
Deal Making: High
Venue: High
Domain Roundtable
What’s new in 2010: Nothing announced; annual conference takes place later in year
Known for: Drawing more than just domainers, policy angle
Size: Small
Cost: Moderate
Programming: High
Professionalism: Medium
Cohesiveness: High
Deal Making: High
Venue: High
GeoDomain Expo
What’s new in 2010: Moves to New Orleans, hopefully less internal drama
Known for: Bringing together the “local web” audience and geo domain owners
Size: Small
Cost: Low
Programming: Moderate
Professionalism: High
Cohesiveness: High
Deal Making: Moderate
Venue: Moderate-High
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
What’s new in 2010: Partnership with Rick Latona, 6 conferences (2 in U.S.)
Known for: First real domain conference, big live domain auctions
Size: Medium
Cost: High
Programming: Low (but improving)
Professionalism: Low
Cohesiveness: High
Deal Making: High
Venue: High
ActNow says
I realize some of the categories are subjective. But, I think your grading Traffic – low in professional is a little low.
Out of all of the conferences, I believe Traffic is the most important to attend if you are a professional “generic” domainer.
Geo is in a sub group of its own. If you are primarily into Geo domains, Geo is the most important to attend.
I also believe DomainFest will be important to attend because I’m positive Oversee/Snapnames/DS have a reputation to defend. So, they will make the 2010 show as good (or better) as the past conferences.
If only to upstage the other conferences.
As Ron mentioned the other day, attendees will be the biggest beneficiary from this domain meeting war.
Bob says
…and so it begins, indeed
How could attendees benefit from this petty “domain meeting war” ? I predict this to be one of the bigger threads on dnw. Here come the defenders of “professionalism” . I predict defensiveness rather than listening with an open-mind .
Francois says
Something is sure we will not support DomainFest as they don’t support domaining.
Adam says
@francois what are you talking about
ActNow says
“Something is sure we will not support DomainFest as they don’t support domaining.”
That is very shortsighted.
So, you are saying – you supply news if they pay you.
Most domainers including myself would be in the dark if Ron, Andrew, Michael and others followed that policy.
Andrew Allemann says
@ ActNow – I’m not sure from Francois comment if he’s talking about ‘domaining’ or ‘domaining.com’, as in his site. Either way, I’ll give him a chance to clarify here.
c'mon domains says
Traffic is the sux. It should be rated lower. Bad food, stale speakers and the most narcissistic organizers on the planet.
Anything for a buck I guess..
Francois says
A distinction must be done between shows that help the domaining community from those that are mainly targeted to promote their own business.
All support our industry for example by inviting their visitors to read the voices of our community shown at domaining.com
Domain Fest is the only one that fails. I tried many times to convince them to land us a hand as united we are stronger.
But the response has allways be the same, officially they don’t want to divert visitors as DomainFest is a “commercial” site.
This is why I written this sentence, if there is no change, I prefer give extra promotion to the conferences that I feel better help our community.
Now don’t mix it with the value of Oversee services that are most of top quality and for which we are a satisfied user.
ActNow says
Quote –
“All support our industry for example by inviting their visitors to read the voices of our community shown at domaining.com
Domain Fest is the only one that fails.”
So, I was correct. You can’t profit from DomainFest so you are against them.
michael berkens says
Andrew
I agree with Francois to the extent that you have to differentiate between shows that are put on by parking companies, such as DomainFest, Domain Roundtable and Domain Mardi Gras, and those put on by independent show organizers like TRAFFIC.
For example admission costs of an independent show, might be higher since those shows are not sponsored by the parking company and admission fees are sometimes heavily subsidized by the parking company.
Having said that, as I told a reader on my blog the other day, I paid an early bird price of $895 to attend TRAFFIC NY, the same early bird price that Domainfest announced the other day. I think TRAFFIC has revamped its pricing to come into line with many other conferences as long as you don’t wait for the last minute.
I also think you have to take into account, the number of attendees that a show has on some of the other criteria you list. For example a show with 100 attendees is naturally going to give you a much better chance to meet and spend time with everyone, than a show with 400-500 people.
Regarding your ratings I don’t agree with you that the professionalism of the TRAFFIC show is low.
While I would say the TRAFFIC show doesn’t have the “hollywood production value” of Domainfest (which I like as well) don’t confuse glitz and glamor with quality of content. I think both DomainFest and TRAFFIC have put on shows with great speakers, sessions and brought brilliant people from inside and outside the industry in front of the domain industry for all attendees benefit.
Personally I plan and look forward to attending, and speaking at both events.
To c’mon domains, I have no idea of what your talking about the quality of the food at TRAFFIC.
Last year in NY I had crab, lobster, sushi, pasta, an overwhelming amount of really good food. (I do wish they would do away with the drink coupons though).
The quality of the speakers are always high, but lets face it, its a pretty small industry. There aren’t going to be 50 new speakers at each show, there just aren’t that many people in the industry. However both TRAFFIC and Domainfest bring you the smartest people in the industry.
Andrew Allemann says
Michael –
I appreciate and respect your comments.
I agree that show size can affect other ratings. One that I pointed out in the post is that larger shows generally have lower cohesiveness.
As for the professionalism of traffic, I was thinking mostly of sessions not starting on time, being thrown together at the last minute, and moderators not being as prepared as other shows. It appears that Traffic is turning the corner with this for the October show.
Jothan says
Andrew, Having been a founder on 20% of these (and thank you for attending, of course) there are a couple comment / questions I’d like to make.
1] ROUNDTABLE, GEO, FEST and TRAFFIC have happened multiple years and even multiple times per year, and I think the ratings might vary on contrasting ROUNDTABLE 2006 to ROUNDTABLE 2008 to TRAFFIC East 2007… Are these marks respective of the last show held or general marks observed over the course of the conference?
2] Where are the Canadian / European conferences like Convergence, DomainVermarktForum, Gathering or DomainerMeeting, etc? International Domainers have benefitted from some of the 5 highlighted conferences happening in Europe (Fest, TRAFFIC) and Asia (Australia) (TRAFFIC) but there are many regional events that happen which force folks to choose from a larger pool of shows as well.
-J
Andrew Allemann says
Jothan,
1. I considered the history but put more weight on recent events. One of the ones you worked on — Domain Roundtable — was spectacular back in 06 (I think it was 06, maybe 05?). Then the format changed, but in 09 it changed back to the “old” format. I had to generalize somewhat.
2. I haven’t attended any of these so I didn’t want to comment on them. Great point; I’d encourage everyone to look into regional events.
One thing’s for sure, all of these shows add to the industry. We should consider ourselves lucky to have so many options.
Rick Schwartz says
Andrew,
Let’s talk about YOUR professionalism. Forget about that your own readers voted for TRAFFIC as the #1 tradeshow by a margin of more than 2-1, we both know the motivation for your post. You were not nominated for any awards by any of your peers. That was brought to my attention just HOURS before your “Hit job” on TRAFFIC.
Let me explain to you that Howard and I do not nominate, the attendees do. Nobody nominated you. It was brought to my attention after the ballots went out by a friend of yours. What was I suppsed to do? I told your friend to nominate you next year. What else would be appropriate? Now you post this. Well it shows about YOUR professionalism and I think I have a right to respond to your nonsense.
Now that your readers can see things more clearly they can balance out some of your nonsense.
PS: I told your friend you deserved to be nominated. I no longer feel that way.
Andrew Allemann says
Rick,
I’m surprised that you think this was a “Hit Job” on TRAFFIC because I wasn’t nominated for your award. Although awards are nice and I certainly like to get them, I think you’re thinking too highly of the influence your award has. I did notice that I wasn’t nominated, but it’s no big deal.
If you look back at DNW over the past several years you’ll see I’ve written plenty of good things about your show as well as plenty of ways it can be improved. In fact, when Rick Latona announced his partnership with TRAFFIC I wrote that he could “save TRAFFIC”. Certainly not a very positive thing to say about your show (although it included five concrete things the show could do to improve) but that was several months before your awards nominations came out.
Before I posted my article about show ratings, I ran it by a couple people who have attended many shows to see if they saw anything that seemed off. I received only minor suggestions; most agreed. I do question you guys scheduling your show right before DOMAINfest, but otherwise think it’s a good show. I think the Brooklyn show in October will be a big hit, too.
I admire what you’ve done for this industry and your business acumen. However, I certainly don’t appreciate you suggesting that my post was in any way affected by not being included in your awards.
Bob says
If you are criticized by your peers, there’s a variety of ways you can respond.. You can be “professional” and respond to it with a “I disagree and this is why.” or even a “I agree and we’ll look in to it and fix the problems” OR you can be a douchebag like the post above.
Just because someone is critical of your product/service/company doesn’t mean that they’re your enemy. In fact the best way to look at it is to consider the fact that they even took the time to come to your show, offer their opinion, etc means they aren’t an enemy. Get some self-esteem. The world isn’t against you.
Rick Schwartz says
Andrew, at night, but not last night.
“Professionalism – sessions start on time, professional/prepared moderators.”
Howard is the best in the business and our show runs like a clock.
Programming – quality of programming, including diverse speakers, “fresh” topics, programming scheduled well in advance.
And if our programming is so bad how come we set the tone and agenda that everyone else copies?? Plus we have brought in big name speakers from the get go that is hard to beat. As for an advanced schedule…..If you think you can set an agenda today for a show next year and have it be relevant, good luck!
I also went over all the other ratings. Funny how TRAFFIC was the only one to score “Low” on anything other than cost.
I stand by my original post! You lost all objectivity and you TRIED to do a hit job! Just did not fly in the face of FACTS!
Andrew Allemann says
“Andrew, at night, but not last night.”
I don’t understand what this means.
“Just did not fly in the face of FACTS!”
My entire post isn’t about facts; it’s all subjective. I think that’s pretty clear. I have my opinion, you have yours, and that’s fine.
eddg67 says
I agree with Andrew 100% about Traffic. Rick this is not about you but what we as a consumer get from your product (Traffic).
Hey Andrew if you and Rick make up do you think he will give you the award he wins every year but turns down? Seems like a nice way to make up.