With Day One and Day Two of MERGE! long gone, I had the pleasure of kicking off Day Three moderating the Domain Name Solutions for Blockchain Challenges panel which consisted of Jothan Frakes, Jebidiah Burnett, Toby Hall, Dave Evanson, and Jodee Rich.

It’s hard to believe a year has passed since MERGE! burst onto the scene in its inaugural debut.

Many attendees have converged to meet in Orlando, Florida this year at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista – Disney Springs Area to pick up where we left off last year discussing an array of digital principles — Domains, Hosting, Digital Search, CMS, Cryptocurrency, IP, Blockchain, eCommerce and Security.

It’s now weeks before the 2nd Annual MERGE! Conference — a digital asset conference event gathering a number of different conferences under a single roof and with a common access pass.

As a new conference bursting onto the domain conference scene in its inaugural debut last year, I wasn’t sure what to expect although I had attended insightful events, DNHouston and DNSeattle, leading up to it.

Little did I realize, MERGE! was perfect “next” event and stepping stone to have attended. I encourage all to consider attending MERGE! this year — especially domain investors — based on the following 5 reasons:

If you are prepping to attend NameSummit — A Digital Branding Conference covering geo-domain names, SEO, social media and marketing trends, then you’ll want to make sure check the dates and the updated agenda.

It appears NameSummit NYC has opted to favor cooler fall climate over the scorching summer heat, moving the event from early August to November.

If you woke up and guessed July 17th was World Emoji Day, then you’re off to a good start. If not, then no worries because life goes on — likely not one bit impacted.

Last year’s World Emoji Day brought us an anthem song as well as Codemoji.com — an amazing online tool aiming to simplify the complexities and fundamentals of coding for kids using emoji. Yes, coding with emoji! How amazing is that!?

Coming off the conclusion of Emojicon BK 2018, this year’s World Emoji Day builds on previous years delivering emoji events and product releases.

About a month or so ago, it was brought to my attention by Page Howe that a conference dedicated to “all things emoji” would occur in New York just days before World Emoji Day.

A bit more sleuthing and I uncovered what looks to be a 2-year old conference certainly flying stealth under the radar.

If you’ve not heard about the shot around the world known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and all it impacts, then where have you been?

GDPR is now less than a month away (May 25, 2018), and has greatly impacted a number of entities, both personal and business, worldwide, especially domain registrars.

What is looming in growing uncertainty is how ICANN will respond accordingly to the impact of GDPR on Whois services — which are used by a number of registries, registrars, domain investors and the general public to conduct business on a daily.