NamesCon concludes its run in Las Vegas.
NamesCon 2019 finishes today in Las Vegas with expert roundtables. This was the sixth and final installment of the conference at The Tropicana in Las Vegas. Next year the conference moves to Austin.
If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that no one will miss the Tropicana. It’s not exactly the crown jewel of Las Vegas.
As for this year’s conference, I feel like the enthusiasm level was up a bit from last year. Lots of optimism. We’ll see how that plays out in the year ahead.
On Tuesday I participated in two panels. In the first, I interviewed Blake Janover of Home.loans and Mike Kugler of Vacation.rentals about their experiences with their domains after paying $500k for them. While some of the questions were about new top level domains, this was also a chance to talk to two end-user buyers. They aren’t domain investors; they bought domains because they want to capitalize on the value of good domains.
The second panel was about .com price increases. Derek Newman did a great job moderating the panel, including asking questions back to people in the audience to add value to the panel. Elliot Noss has such a great historical perspective on .com and added a lot. Zak Muscovitch represented the Internet Commerce Association and domain owners’ interests. I talked a bit about the adversarial relationship that has popped up in the past months between Verisign and domain investors, including some of its biggest registrar customers. While Verisign has a duty to its shareholders to make as much as it can from .com, its sudden about-face on domain investors after spending 10+ years courting them and creating tools to help them buy more domains is startling. By the way, Verisign didn’t sponsor NamesCon this year after doing so in the past.
I interviewed lots of people at the conference for Monday’s podcast, so stay tuned for that.
Mary Jo Rohner says
I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to Austin. Maybe the Trop is not gorgeous but it is just a bed and nothing would have the excitement Vegas has to offer.
John says
Could not agree with you more. The only other location I would consider is NYC, even during cold weather, though preferably not. If I was feeling really adventurous, maybe Miami, though probably not. My first preference is Vegas all the way. And as you point out, it’s only a bed. If people were so upset about the venue, the #1 they are spoiled babies as far as I’m concerned, which does appear to be the case among some, and #2 just choose another hotel. Kind of reminds of when Frank S. wrote about his harrowing valley of suffering getting a hotel suite that was smaller than his palatial bedroom in the Cayman’s. Oh the humanity.
John says
And someone make sure Frank sees that. 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
John, when is the last time you went to Namescon?
John says
LOL. I haven’t, but I want to one of these days. And I wanted that “one of these days” to be more sooner than later. And I wasn’t ready this time, but I wanted it to be in Vegas when I did, so I’m disappointed about this change. But I would still consider the other two cities I mentioned. Mainly NYC really.
cybertonicFrançois says
Francois
Andrew Allemann says
I just find it funny that most people who have commented haven’t been to NamesCon (or at least lately). The safe bet was definitely to keep it in Las Vegas but at another hotel, or maybe move to L.A. But many conferences move around and a quality event will attract people from everywhere.
John says
Yeah I get it, I’ve never gone yet, but I’m not feeling that, Andrew. I am feeling what Mary Jo said, though. LA would be a maybe for me too, but not before NYC.
panel attendee says
To provide a little more detail on the dot-com price increase panel-
Zak made the critical point that Verisign does not own the .com name space, it is merely managing it, much as a superintendent manages an apartment building. The only entity entitled to set prices is the owner of this public resource, which is ICANN on behalf of the internet community.
If prices are to rise the funds should go to ICANN, which is critically short of funds, to fund critical investments in the growth and stability of the DNS.
Verisign is already overcharging to operate the .com database. Its $7.85 current charge is far higher than the range of $1- $4 that the CIRA executive said would be a reasonable cost, and far, far higher than the 50 cent range that Elliot mentioned other registry operators were charging to handle far smaller name spaces, that do not benefit from the huge economies of scale offered by .com.
Verisign appears to be envious of the new gTLD registries that can set their own prices. Elliot provided the historical background that the new gTLDs are brand new name spaces and that the new gTLD registries competing for the rights to those name spaces, sometimes paying tens of millions of dollars.
.com was a preexisting name space that Verisign was awarded the right to manage – not to plunder for its own benefit. Elliot also clarified the nature of Verisign’s monopoly. He said Verisign may not meet the definition of a monopoly in the domain space as a whole, but it has millions of monopolies over the .com domain names that serve as brand identities for much of the commercial internet. Elliot said that if as a result of Verisign’s monopoly over the Tucows.com domain name, for example, if Verisign was able to raise the annual renewal fee on Tucows.com to $10 million per year, that he might be forced to pay it. It is that monopoly power over the entrenched online brands of companies across the globe, that makes the claim that Verisign has no monopoly power so weak.
From the panel session it seemed clear that the price increase is an unjustified money grab by the company contracted to run the registry, taking advantage of the failure of both NTIA and the ICANN board to fulfill their responsibilities on behalf of the public at large.
John says
That guy Zak wrote a great article about that topic, well worth finding an reading the whole thing. I wish he wanted to pursue penalty for RDNH (NOT “loser pays”), but that article he wrote was really great. Should be “required reading,” the whole thing.
panel attendee says
This article?
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20181112_verisigns_attempt_to_increase_fees_unjustified_despite/
John says
Yeah that’s it. You’ve got to read the whole thing, not just an excerpt.
snoopy1267 says
Icann needs to find the courage to put it out to tender. It is Icann and government that are failing here, Verisign is just taking advantage of that weakness.
Moe says
” I interviewed Blake Janover of Home.loans and Mike Kugler of Vacation.rentals”
Looking forward to Austin 2020. By then all of the new gtlds will be long gone. May they all .RestInPeace.
Michael Kugler says
LOL
You missed the part where Blake said he has facilitated half a BILLION in loans through his hud.loans site.
Yeah, a real failure there.Never going to make it.
Ravi says
Looking forward to all the podcast episodes covering NamesCon events…
Thanks.
Francois says
I share what john says about Austin, and stil more for people who rarely/never travel, Vegas, New York or Los Angeles are way more appealing.
Vee says
Somebody should start another domain conference in Vegas and price it at 199 dollars for early birds and 299 dollars for others and have sponsors pay for free booze couple of nights and invite successful domainers to speak and people who have developed domains as successful business to speak and comp them the conference entrance and hotel room and flights.
With this they could get 500 people who want to go to Vegas especially if this was around the same time (before or after) Affiliate Summit and charge sponsors the same money Namescon has been charging.
Austin is a bad choice so there is a huge opportunity for somebody to start another domain conference in Vegas.
Who wants to fly to Austin from USA or from Europe?
Is Richard Lau under a non-compete agreement with Godaddy?
If not then he should start another domain conference in Vegas.
OR some other public and successful domainer should step up and start a Vegas domain conference in January around Affiliate Summit.
This is a million dollar opportunity.
Vee says
New TLD companies staff should be charged 999 dollars per person…
Vee says
Price at the door should be 499 dollars for domainers.