It’s been 2 years since I last attended NamesCon out in Las Vegas at the Tropicana.

Fast forward two years, and tick tock goes the clock as we count the weeks, days, and hours until NamesCon 2020 arrives here in my backyard, the growing metropolis of Austin, Texas.

There is a bit of everything under the sun here in Austin — the college boomtown known for TRAFFIC, LONGHORNS, tech, music, festivals, food, and sprawling fun for days that covers every square inch of Downtown Austin, from one block to the next.

Nevertheless, 1,000+ persons, not including locals, will descend upon Austin to connect and re-connect at the world’s biggest domain economic forum: NamesCon Global.

While there is much to anticipate and look forward to during this jam-packed 4 days of everything domains and more, below are a few sessions I’m keen to attend and learn from:

When a personal or business brand ceases to exist, whatever the case may be, one of the most overlooked items is the very domain name in which the brand developed its digital presence.

Investing in domain names for more than a decade now, I, as well as other domain investors, often find one person’s or business’ domain trash to be quite the domain treasure. Why?

Millions of users took to social media — specifically Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger — today to wish friends and family a Happy Thanksgiving and share Thanksgiving photos only to be met with a Thanksgiving Day outage.

Discovering both #Facebook and #Instagram hashtags trending like no tomorrow via Twitter — Twitter not missing a beat and likely capitalizing on such a colossal outage, I couldn’t help but think of the many personal and business brands that solely use Facebook and/or Instagram as their digital presence.

If you’ve been around the domain industry two seconds or longer, then you’ve likely heard the name Rick Schwartz, also known as the DomainKing™.

He’s certainly not a new face to industry. A living legend, by many standards, not short on vision, stories, and facts/opinions about domain, business, and life in general, having held more than 30 jobs in a 5 year span.

It’s hard to believe a few years has passed since I wrote the tutorial about how to use Facebook’s Graph API 2.X to retrieve the count for a given URL’s likes, shares, and comments.

I was informed a few days ago that my seamless solution for displaying the total count for likes, shares, and comments is dead in the water and no longer works.

Well, I guess this means we’re all in the dark now since Facebook’s most recent API upgrade doesn’t allow for such desired functionality, right?

It’s not everyday I stumble upon a business or personal brand actively growing their business through the use of new top-level domains (new gTLDs).

When I do, I find most business or personal brands are simply experimenting with such domains with no sign of commitment or results.

However, I recently stumbled upon a LinkedIn post containing a video promoting an Energy Management Consultancy based here in Austin, Texas.

While still in its infancy, “emoji marketing” is gaining steam as each day passes, and a growing number of personal and corporate brands are adding emoji to their marketing toolbox and strategy.

From Hubspot to Visme to Neil Patel to “The Emoji Experts”, all of the aforementioned personal and corporate brands see no end to emoji marketing, having published their own emoji marketing guides, predictions and case studies.

As millennials $200 billion buying power grows, not including Gen Z’s influential buying power of $153 billion arriving to the market, emoji marketing is poised to reach unprecedented proportions of revenue for personal and corporate brands.

Not only are tech-related companies making good use of emoji to reach and serve more companies, but longstanding industries, such as the jewelry industry, are rolling up their sleeves and establishing their brands using emoji too.