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NamesCon to bid adieu to The Tropicana

by — Uncategorized 10 Comments

2019 will be the last year for NamesCon at The Tropicana in Las Vegas.

If you enjoy The Tropicana Hotel’s mysterious “resort fee”, smokey atmosphere, horrible room service and aging rooms, I have bad news for you: NamesCon is leaving the venue.

The conference has decided to pack its bags and move to another venue after the January 2019 show.

And while many will push for a familiar city such as Los Angeles or Miami, I’d like to propose splitting the difference and holding it in Austin.

Here are some reasons NamesCon 2020 should take place in Austin:

  • While Austin was once a sleepy college town, the metro area now has over 2 million people. It also has the tallest residential tower west of the Mississippi.
  • It’s in the Central time zone, so people from the coasts don’t have to deal with a three hour time difference.
  • Our average high temperature for late July January is in the low 60s.
  • Austin’s trendiest mixed-use project is called The Domain, so we could hold a domain name conference at The Domain.
  • We have the world’s best barbecue and great vegan food, so both Scott Ross and Jeff Sass can be happy.
  • You can fly direct from Frankfurt and London.
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Miss any NamesCon sessions? Check out the Trends Report.

by — Services 3 Comments

Report summarizes keynote events from NamesCon 2018.

Didn’t make it to Vegas last month for NamesCon? Or did you go but weren’t able to spend much time in the sessions?

NamesCon has published a guide that summarizes the keynote sessions that took place during the event. It can be downloaded for free at NamesCon.com.

In addition to featuring two awesome people on the cover, you’ll get summaries of:

  • My interview with David Ellefson, co-founder and bassist of Megadeth
  • Jonathan David Lewis’ talk about building a resilient brand
  • How DNS and blockchain overlap
  • Lisa Box’s presentation about Gen Z
  • Haseeb Rabbani’s blockchain presentation
  • Jackson Elsegood’s payment automation discussion
  • Verisign VP Scott Schnell discussing trends
  • Paul Nick’s presentation about lessons learned managing a big domain portfolio
  • Daliah Saper talking about negotiation
  • Discussion about crypto-related domain names
  • The closing roundtable

Again, I think it’s worth downloading just for the cover, but it has great content, too.

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That’s ‘Super’! Deal could make NamesCon auction ‘Great’

by — Domain Sales 4 Comments

Super.com sale would push auction over $2.5 million in sales.

The NamesCon extended auction ends today, and a big domain has met its reserve.

A bidder has met the reserve with a $1.2 million bid for Super.com. The bidder alias is evstratov, which does not bring up any results when I search for it plus NameJet on Google. A bid at this price requires bidder verification, and it’s possible we are looking at an end user here.

The big sale in the live auction was Great.com for $900,000, so superlatives are definitely in fashion.

The next highest domain to meet its reserve is KeyFobs.com for $6,000. There are a lot of high bids between KeyFobs.com and Super.com, but many of them are far off from their reserves.

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NamesCon recap with 15 interviews – DNW Podcast #172

by — Podcasts 1 Comment

I caught up with 15 domain industry pros at NamesCon last week. Here’s what they had to say.

dnw-podcast NamesCon took place in Las Vegas last week, attracting hundreds of domain investors, registrars, registries and other domain name junkies. For this week’s podcast we’ll talk with 15 people at the conference: Page Howe (domain investor), Sandeep Ramchandani (Radix), Steven Kaziyev (domain investor, NameSummit), Ari Goldberger (ESQwire.com), George Hong (GUTA.com), Jeff Sass (.Club), Jackson Elsegood (Escrow.com), Ray King (Top Level Design), Eric Thoni (Emoji Empires), Marc McCutcheon (Internet.bs), Brandon Abbey (Payoneer Escrow), Anthony Beltran (101Domain), Christian Voss (Sedo), Kevin Kopas (.icu) and Todd Han (Dynadot).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:28 — 21.2MB) | Embed

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Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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Back from NamesCon — here’s my take

by — Uncategorized 9 Comments

My thoughts on NamesCon 2018.

I arrived home in Austin yesterday after NamesCon and I’m officially in rest-your-voice mode. My fingers can still type, though, so here are my thoughts:

I gave a recap after a couple days and said China was dead. Of course, that was a bit of an overstatement. George Hong of Guta.com saw me shortly after I posted that and gave me his thoughts. They will be in Monday’s podcast. The reality is that China is still investing, they are just investing in the good stuff. No more 7-8 digit domain names…

The highlight for me was interviewing Megadeth co-founder David Ellefson in person. If you missed the interview, you can listen to my previous interview with Ellefson on the DNW Podcast. I think a lot of people were surprised by the talk.

Andrew Allemann (left) and David Ellefson. Photo courtesy NamesCon.

Internet Commerce Association’s annual dinner was much better than last year. The venue wasn’t as swank, but it was bigger, the food was great, you could sit down to eat and you could actually hear people. Kudos…

Where’s GoDaddy? If you didn’t know that GoDaddy was the parent company of the conference, you wouldn’t have figured it out by being there. The company had a slightly bigger presence than in previous years but the NamesCon team did a great job keeping it arms-length. That’s how it should be…

Having a brunch during the closing session Wednesday was genius. The session was packed and wouldn’t have been otherwise. NamesCon should consider doing that for other sessions…

The Tropicana was marginally better than in prior years thanks to a new restaurant (and another one coming soon). Yes, the rooms aren’t great and the filtration system at the hotel is pathetic, but I’ve learned to accept The Trop for what it is. Just don’t try to order room service…

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