1000+ attendees, sponsors, exhibitors and everyone in between descended upon the domain industry’s largest conference — NamesCon Global: The Domain Economic Forum — debuting a change of venue  at the Omni Downtown Hotel in Austin, Texas.

From the newest of new to the oldest of old, anticipation and excitement built as the Keynote Hall filled to standing room only awaiting the commencement of 7th Annual Welcome Keynote.

Excitement and anticipation greatly build, and could be felt on this beautiful 70 degree day here in Austin, Texas, home of NamesCon 2020.

I ventured downtown after a late lunch meeting to take full advantage of pre-registration — securing my conference badge and additional details, and getting acclimated with conference layout.

Last week and into the weekend, I dove into researching and setting up a couple of hundred domains from my domain portfolio using Dan.com, formerly Undeveloped.com.

Most of my domain portfolio is listed via Afternic.com, generating a minimum of 2-3 monthly sales, roughly $2,700 average sale price.

While Afternic.com provides a rather large footprint and exposure to potential domain buyers, it commands 20 percent commissions for each domain sale transaction.

Enter Dan.com with 9 percent commissions for each domain sale transaction.

It’s been nearly 6 months since GoDaddy completed and launched an entire re-write of its Domain Investor App.

As a user of the previous version(s) of the app, I was pleased with the added functionality of two-factor authentication fix, notifications, estimated value of domain, and the additional details for domains, to name a few.

The app unfortunately lacked the critical component of searching for expired domains and adding each to favorites or a watch list.

However, this is no longer the case in the latest iOS app update (not certain if Android was updated too), as shared in my most recent video review of the app.

Almost a full decade since the “new gTLDs”, now simply referred to as gTLDs, have made their dubious debut in promising to offer exponentially more domain options than that of saturated legacy domain extensions — so some think.

While many arguments have been made for and against the release of gTLDs, there have been just as many cases made for and against investing and developing the same domain extensions.

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:

The domain industry can be quite an insular experience, especially if you don’t connect with others, attend meetups and conferences, or participate in online forums and blogs.

Then, the complexities of domain buying, selling, leasing, and development increase exponentially when adding in language barriers, time zone, cultural and socioeconomic differences.

It’s one thing to be a domain hobbyist, domain investor, domain developer, domain broker, or domain consultant within one’s own backyard, per se.

However, today’s podcast guest truly understands what it means to be a global domain investor in one of the world’s fastest growing major economy, India.