Two business competitions coming to DOMAINfest conference.

Oversee.net wants to know, “what would you do to develop Planners.com?”

That’s just one of ten domain names contestants in DOMAINfest Global’s LAUNCHfest can submit a development plan for. Contestants submit a plan for developing one of the domain names, and pitch it to a panel of expert judges during the January contest. The winner will get to go through with their plans by leasing or buying the domain name. If they opt to lease the domain, they won’t have to pay for the first year of lease payments.

DOMAINfest will also feature PITCHfest, where entrepreneurs can present their innovative product to a panel of judges and show attendees. This is a great way for any company releasing a new internet marketing or domain product to get an early boost. It reminds me of the popular DEMO and TechCrunch 50 conferences. A winner will be selected by the judges and audience using real time text message voting.

The conference included a similar program at its January 2007 conference called FastPitch.

Here are a couple news notes from Domainer Mardi Gras and WhyPark.

Domainer Mardi Gras special ends today: Domainer Mardi Gras is giving away a 500 GB external hard drive to anyone who signs up to attend by midnight tonight. Registration rates are as low as $595 if you also stay at the conference hotel. This is the lowest fee you’ll ever see for attending an industry-wide domain conference. It’s a lot of fun, too. I recommend taking advantage of this offer if you’re sitting on the fence about attending Domainer Mardi Gras 2010.

WhyPark announces auction details: WhyPark is teaming up with Rick Latona Auctions to test out the latter’s Latonas.com auction platform for WhyPark’s upcoming charity domain name auction. Not only is the auction for a good cause, but I’m excited to see what Latona has developed. His company has used Proxibid.com for its previous auctions, but the system has serious limitations.

To learn more about the auction, listen to the DNW Radio interview with WhyPark founder Craig Rowe.

VeriSign reports earnings and domain growth.

VeriSign, which manages the registry for .com and .net domain names, reported a profitable third quarter. The company earned $53.6 million in the quarter, compared to a loss of $201.1 million in the same quarter in 2008.

VeriSign has divested a number of businesses lately, and is focusing on its core businesses, which includes domain registry. At the end of the quarter VeriSign had 94.9 million domains registered in the domain base for .com and .net, which is most of the company’s registry business.

The company has what amounts to a monopoly on .com and .net domain registrations, although a lawsuit challenging that monopoly is working its way through the courts.

VeriSign opted not to raise rates on .com and .net domain names this year. This is the first year in its current contract with ICANN that it has not levied the maximum increase of 7% on .com and 10% on .net. This is likely due to political pressures more than the stagnating economy.

Valuate.com’s solid user interface gives quick access to domain data.

It’s been a couple weeks since Cybertonic, the same company behind Domaining.com, launched Valuate.com in beta. Valuate uses Estibot 2.0 in the background to create domain appraisals.

Now, I’m not usually a fan of automated appraisals. I think I’ll hit the next person who tells me a domain sold below market value “because Estibot says it’s worth x”. But there’s something to be said for the underlying stats used in automated appraisals. The way Valuate.com pulls them together in a simple interface makes it a valuable tool.

There are three ways to get a valuation on Valuate.com. One is to cut-and-paste your list of domains into the input box at Valuate.com. Another, which could be very useful, is a Google Gadget that lets you just click a button when you’re visiting a domain to get the valuation. And finally, you can just type valuate.com/domain.com to get an appraisal. (This is how I usually visit DomainTools.com.)

After entering your domain(s), Valuate.com quickly offers a valuation of the domains. But beyond the valuation, you get one click access to Google Trends for the domain’s terms, DomainTools.com, Archive.org, Adwords preview, and more. You also get data on traffic rank, Adwords competition, and cost per click.

Valuate.com doesn’t change my opinion about automated appraisals. But it’s one of the first systems I’ve seen with a simple, clean interface that gives quick access to the real value in such tools — the underlying data.

Here are ways to make next year’s conferences even more valuable.

As the 2009 domain conference schedule draws to a close and a record number of conferences are on the schedule for 2010, I thought I’d give some general feedback on how to make conference programming better. This isn’t targeted at any particular show; it’s just some best practices I’ve picked up from attending many diverse conferences in the past ten years (from domains to intellectual property to health care technology).

1. Limit panels to three people, four tops. This doesn’t include the moderator. Any more and it’s hard to get a meaningful discussion.

2. Avoid “Sales Pitch Panels”. These are panels in which each panelist is given a lot of time at the beginning to make a presentation, usually about their company or product. Very little time is left for true discussion after they finish their sales pitches.

3. Try fireside chats. These are one-on-one chats with interesting/important people.

4. Educate your speakers. Let them know everything they need to prepare, at least several weeks in advance. They should know the detailed topic, whether they should bring a presentation, and how much time (if any) they’ll have for an intro about themselves or their company.

5. Let people pitch panels. Allow potential speakers to submit session topic proposals. Yes, they may have a business reason to lead a session, but you’ll get a lot of good ideas out of this.

6. Avoid hubris panels. These are panels thrown together by show organizers just so a few talkative people can hear themselves talk. Talk about a buzz kill.

7. Don’t oversell the programming. I’ve yet to attend a panel that has changed the world. I’ve attended lots that I’ve learned from. But even when I get a great idea from a session, a lot of other people don’t. So don’t suggest that any individual session will change everyone’s life. Instead, focus on putting together a well rounded, properly planned programming schedule.

8. Provide attendee lists. This has less to do with programming and more to do with networking. Let attendees opt-in to having their name and company affiliation listed on a pre-conference attendee list. Also hand out the list at the conference. This makes networking and setting up meetings in advance much easier. (Typically, these lists don’t include email addresses and rarely include phone numbers. If someone really wants to meet with someone, they can find their contact information through other means.)

I’m excited about next year’s conference schedule, including seeing what Rick Latona and team pull together for TRAFFIC. Now, off to AA.com to book some plane tickets…