It’s been one week since I boarded a plane from Orlando heading back to good ole’ Austin, Texas.

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few thoughts and interactions from my MERGE! 2018 experience.

As the 2nd Annual MERGE! comes to a conclusion in it’s final day, there were many sessions, keynotes and connections to be had and made from Day One, Day Two and Day Three.

Conferences like MERGE! tend to move at a lightening speed in person while it can be perceived as a long time when seeing the outlay of time on paper.

Nevertheless, the final day of MERGE! kicked off with a pasties breakfast bar and keynote from Stefan Pretty, CEO Subbly.co, entitled “Bootstrappers do it better”.

Although many points were about about bootstrapping, one of the key takeaways from Stefan’s presentation was how bootstrappers should constantly ask the following 4 questions at every twist and turn in their journey:

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.

Day Two opened the doors to many more exhibitors as well as a CMS Summit Keynote from Robert Jacobi, Executive Vice President of Perfect Dashboard.

As with Day One of MERGE!, the day was filled with many sessions and networking opportunities.

From Slither.io to Clothes.io to CodePen.io to a growing list of personal and company brands, .io domains have become the darling domain of tech startups and domain investors.

The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for .io was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory before tech world dubbed it “input/output” domain for the next great tech idea.

There have been and are many tech startups using a .io domain to brand their digital presence.

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.

In today’s tech-driven world, it’s a given to establish a digital presence for one’s personal or company brand.

Now whether or not this digital presence uses a .com or non-.com domain name is an ongoing debate — one I shall refrain from addressing today somewhat.

While most may not agree on which domain extension should represent one’s digital presence — .com has long ruled the web for personal and company branding — ALL can agree upon a digital presence being a MUST HAVE some 30 years into the Internet journey.

And while the majority agree that a brand should have a single domain name, often overlooked is whether or not a brand should build a relevant domain portfolio beyond its primary domain name.