I really enjoyed the DomainFest 2008 conference. I thought the program was well put together, a nice facility (although better weather would have been appreciated!), high quality networking events, mostly solid presentations and adequate vendor participation. I wanted to tack on some additional thoughts of the conference and industry to my Day 1 thoughts from a newbie blog post based on the sessions and interactions with the people from the industry.

• Lots of legal issues - between trademark issues, domain tasting, domain kiting, IDNs, domain stealing, etc. - there is a significant amount of risk still in the industry for those who don’t know what they are doing. Several panels addressed some of these topics as well as some consumer groups that are actively representing domainers interests to congress including the Internet Commerce Association (ICA).
• Political representation of domain industry interests in nascent and necesary. Due to the amount of money involved in the domain industry and the short runway of legal decisions and laws to base actions on, the need for industry representation in Washington DC is huge. Everyone should support the ICA.
• Many good domain names are available. Sitting through the SnapNames auction on Tues & Weds as well as looking forward to the Moniker auction at TRAFFIC, it is obvious that lots of good domain names have not been built into businesses and therefor are available for a transitive fee. I continue to believe that the best way to maximize the value of a domain is to build it out with a solid business model (doesn’t have to be cutting edge) and generate revenues.
• John Battelle is a really smart guy and a great speaker. I very much enjoyed John’s take on the domain industry given his long term involvement in the internet from a media standpoint. He made several points that I thought were compelling including:
  • The domain industry is a media industry. How do we better serve the viewers and advertisers with relevant media placements and messaging.
  • Creating captivating media is hard. Just monetizing through links is not enough, we need to figure out how to create captivating media on a large scale basis.
  • We have a long way to go. I thought it was funny that he pointed out the executional difference between the mission statement of Kevin Ham’s company, Reinvent Technology, with the output of one of his parked sites. Basically, Reinvent is focused on a new targeted media strategy and the site was a simple parked directory site. Again, we have a ways to go.
  • The real homepage of any site is the Search Engine Results page in which you show up. Your key messaging and context of your business starts in the consumers mind at this point. Great insight.
  • Consolidation is happening at a rapid rate, so choose partners well.

That’s all for now. Please leave a note or send us an email if you’d like to chat further.