MERGE! Day Two Reconvenes with Data Privacy Concerns and Domain Games.
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.
While Duke Speer shed light on functional SVG animation in his session, Bringing Your Site to Life, I opted to attend Alex Alexakis’ session on Digital Strategy Management and SEO: Salvage Sales by Design.
One of my favorite Day Two sessions was Kellie Peterson’s (from Automattic) session: Using WordPress Effective with Multiple Domains.
Kellie engagingly covered quite a few methods for how to effectively enable the use of multiple domains with WordPress, highlighting the following:
- Pros and Cons of CMSCommander, InfiniteWP, and ManageWP
- When to and Why/Why Not to Use Multisite
This presentation was spot on for both the technically inclined and challenged, simplifying and addressing the technical complexities of a somewhat gnarly topic.
If you’ve ever considered or desired to have one login to manage multiple domains using WordPress, Kellie’s session is a MUST-WATCH!
Rounding out the morning were the following three sessions:
- Embracing Saas: Duke Speer (Moderator), Gev Balyan, Justin, Davis, Robert Jacobi, Nikolay Neden, and Erik Suhonen
- Who Moved My Editor? Addressing Gutenberg Facts and Fears – Mike Demo
- Part III: Direct Advertisers or Parking – What is Better for my Domains – Christa Taylor (Moderator), Matthias Kaiser, Sam TSeng, and David Warmuz.
I concluded my morning by attending the Three Part Series final session about Direct Advertisers and Parking, with Christa Taylor moderating.
Two of the panelists were not present, so this session was a bit more interactive and laidback than previous sessions, Part I and Part II.
Kicking off the afternoon immediately after lunch, Jothan Frakes and Dr. Paul Vixie spoke in a session addressing Takedown vs. Staydown for Internet Identifiers: THE DNS RPZ Firewall Approach.
While I opted for a longer lunch, I did make it back in time for the following sessions:
- Crucial e-Commerce Trends That Impact Your Business – Erik Suhonen
- TOSI vs. GDPR vs. WHOIS Privacy – How is the Domain Investor Affected? Jothan Frakes (Moderator), Ari Goldberger, Gerald Levine, Stevan Lieberman, Zak Muscovitch, Jason and Schaeffer
With GDPR effective May 25th and impacting personal and company brands throughout the world, I opted to attend a very intriguing and, at times, tense discussion about how domain investors are affected by TOSI, GDPR, and WHOIS Privacy.
And while domain investors are greatly impacted by data privacy policies, domain investors could benefit from fewer calls and emails from spammers when registering and purchasing domain names.
Nevertheless, there were great minds in the room to debate until the cows came home, and some about the pros and cons of data privacy.
Immediately following this session was the very entertaining Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Sass, presenting Branding Lessons from Monster Movies to Domain Names.
Although I’ve previously heard and seen the presentation, Jeff added a new twist: a Domain Name Matching Game (see video below).
And speaking of games, Larry Fischer ended Day Two sessions bringing back an energetic game of “Registered or Not Registered” — a game where domain professionals and conference attendees say whether or not a random domain name (selected by Larry) is registered or available.
Although I did attend the cocktail, I opted for dinner with friends while many attendees ended the night networking at The Domain Conference’s Famous Welcome Cocktail sponsored by SitePlug, and Fabulous.com’s Hospitality Suite.
That’s all for now, and stay tuned for Day Three Recap! 😉
P.S. Don’t forget to review Sedo’s Crypto Auction ending September 20th, 12pm EST.
