NamesCon Day Three Breaks Out Bidding Paddles!
Quick Summary of Contents
NamesCon has concluded with yet another successful year as I type this recap of Day Three (more to come).
If you’ve missed Day’s One and Two Recaps, then please click below to explore my NamesCon experience:
 Day One of NamesCon 2018 in the Books |
Day Two at NamesCon: Domaining to the Future. |
It’s the start of Day Three of NamesCon, the halfway point. In a city that never sleeps, I find myself a few steps slow.
So much so that I missed most of the Christian Domainers Breakfast, which was very well attended and one of the things I wanted to most take part in.
Thanks to .Bible registry, DigitalTown and Epic.com for their generosity to host the breakfast, so that Christian domainers and domainers in general could attend and fellowship with one another.
It wasn’t long though before my phone buzzed, reminding me it was time to meet with fellow domain investor, Aishwin Vikhona, at the ICA Business Hub.
One of the cool and productive things about NamesCon is that they’ve created spaces, both open and private meeting rooms, to work and meet.
From Aishwin’s book, Sell Domains Fast, to assessing and reviewing a handful of domains within his growing portfolio, he and I made the best of the opportunity and short time we had before the next sessions started.
What impressed me most was that Aishwin traveled from India to be in attendance at NamesCon 2018. Talk about committed to seeing his domaining vision come to pass!
In addition, Aishwin didn’t go home empty handed as he was the lucky winner for the NameJet Auction (more on that in a moment), winning a Nintendo With game.
Leaving the ICA Business Hub, I rushed to see if I could catch the tail end of the Keynote Hall’s keynote, Domain Name Industry Drivers by Verisign’s Scott Schnell, but discovered it had ended.
However, everyone I spoke with or questioned about the session spoke very highly of the information shared and expressed by Scott pertaining to the resurgence of .net values amongst a sea of new gTLDs.
Nevertheless, I remained seated in Keynote Hall, recalibrating my self-created agenda versus the NamesCon agenda. 🤔
There are a number of sessions, panels, workshops and fireside chats to attend during Day Three (I attended bolded selections):
Sessions
- Lessons Learned from Operating the Most Valuable Portfolio in the World – Paul Nicks
- Negotiation Strategies in Business – Daliah Saper
Panels
- UDRP Reform and the Worst Decisions in 2017 – Zak Muscovitch, Bob Mountain, Nat Cohen, and Daniel Law
- Domain Search Tools – Tony Kim, Margot Bushnaq, and Joe Alagna
- Mastering Aftermarket Appraisals – George Hong, David Clements, Drew Rosener and Brian Kleiner
Workshops
- Impact of Cultural Diversity on Domaining – Jay Paudyal
- Blockchain Domain Names: Hands-On – Mano Samy
Although hard to choose between it and the cultural diversity workshop, one of my most anticipated sessions of the day was GoDaddy’s Paul Nicks‘ presentation: Lessons Learned from Operating the Most Valuable Portfolio in the World.
There certainly wasn’t a seat to spare, or an item to miss jotting down or capturing for review later.
Paul shared invaluable insight how GoDaddy operates NameFind while giving domain portfolio owners objective, yet valuable advice for building a profitable portfolio.
It wasn’t long before this stellar session ended, and the lunch bell rang. But before I rushed off to lunch, I captured a few moments of the Domain Search Tools panel — discussing the past, present, and “future of domain name search technology”.
I say a only few moments because my phone buzzed with yet another reminder to meet and catch up a bit with Andrew Allemann for lunch.
Yes, it’s unfortunate, but I missed attending the VIP Executive Q&A interview with Haseeb Rabbani from BlockGeeks, moderated once more by Braden Pollock.
The lunch hour came and went like blinking one’s eye. On my way to kickoff the second half of NamesCon Day Three, I bumped into another familiar face and domaining personality you’ll likely recognize: Frank Schilling.
Nevertheless, I arrived back at packed out Keynote Hall to discover a very engaging fireside chat with Drew Rosener and Jen Sale, moderated by Richard Lau: #cryptodomaining: Crypto Meets Domaining.
Although numbers were redacted from their latest cryptodomaining experiences, both Jen and Drew shared great insight for how to traverse the waters at the intersection of where crypto and domaining meet.
So much so, there was one moment Drew had the entire room on the edge of our seats as Richard probed about a deal Drew recently completed.
And in only a way that Drew Rosener delivers, he hesitated… *wait for it*… and sucked the air out of the room with a gentle, yet toying “I’m not telling”. C’mon Drew! 😂
Nevertheless, this chat ended just in time for Startup Alley (think open bar for happy hour while talking with startups). After Drew’s shenanigans and toying of emotions, we all needed a drink, even if only water. 😜
As for me, I passed on Startup Alley in favor of attending a very lively Mastering Aftermarket Appraisals session, moderated by Derek Newman.
Once again, Drew was back in action, and with a few other friends this time around: George Hong, David Clements, and Brian Kleiner.
This session touched on a number of topics of how to accurately appraise and evaluate domain names to sell or purchase.
Things got interesting when an impromptu game of “How much is it worth?” was played with attendees supplying domains from their portfolio for the panel to give their best guess.
There were quite a few names supplied from attendees. Some were graciously told to drop names like Nasty.Vegas, while names like Quiver.com, Abyss.com, and a few 3 character .com domains had the panel salivating for further discussion.
And of course, this session went a bit longer as attendees jumped at the chance to get their treasure and trash (in some cases) appraised and evaluated.
That said, I missed the Escrow.com Masters of Domain Awards, but thank goodness Elliot Silver covered it! 😉
But the main attraction of Day Three at NamesCon was no other than the annual RightOfTheDot/NamesCon Premium Domain Auction, hosted by RightOfTheDot and NameJet.
It was a packed house in the Keynote Hall, and many online viewers and participants awaiting their chance at a list of 135 lots in live auction.
Out of the gates, bidding was all over the place, both in the room and online, for a number of domain types.
At the time of this writing and as reported by TheDomains.com, 82 out of 135 lots were sold with Great.com leading and purchase closing at $900K!
For more information on the auctioned domains, remaining domains, and general auction information, read Raymond Hackney’s latest report.
As Day Three at NamesCon comes to an end, I’m beyond tired (but that’s all good!). But before I could go and hibernate in the hotel room for hours on end, I had one last commitment: dinner with .WS Registry, Emoji Empires, and fellow emoji domain investors.
Dinner was held at the same place Andrew Allemann and I had lunch earlier in the day: Robert Irvine’s Public House.
It was a good evening of food, stories, laughter, and thoughts and ideas for where things might be a year from now with emoji domains and various aspects of life for each of us.
In fact, it was a year ago at NamesCon 2017 that emoji domains blasted off with Matan Israeli and Mike Cyger discussing emoji domains in the Exhibition Hall. What a difference a year makes!
It’ll certainly be interesting to see where things head in the future, especially when it come times to take the NamesCon 2019 picture.
Speaking of NamesCon 2019, I’m hoping that you’re making plans to be there. I can count on you to be there, right?
That question will be answered in time. But right now, I’m calling it an end to Day Three of NamesCon, counting sheep until I arise for the finale. 😉
Thanks and that’s all for now!
