So here I am once again at thirty thousand feet winging my way across the Pacific Ocean to a domain conference in the USA. You would think that I would be sick of the fifteen hour flights by now and you would be right. All international flights from Australia are typically an endurance affair but then again it’s the price you have to pay for living in such a magnificent country.
One of the really nice parts of this flight is that I’m on one of the new A380 aircraft. They are the world’s largest passenger aircraft and like a brand new car this plane has a typically “new” smell which is a refreshing change from the normal old 747-400s that I normally fly.
Courtesy of seatguru.com (put on to me by Jothan Frakes) I’m sitting in seat 71D. It’s brilliant, as there is no seat in front of me so I can really stretch my legs out. What’s even better is the fact that I’m on a row by myself.....it’ll be nice stretching out later on and catching a few zzzzz.Enough of the travel, what am I expecting from DomainFest? I’m really excited about the domain industry this year and I think that DomainFest will be an outstanding event as it’s the third one run by the highly competent team at Oversee.net.
I already have about 20 meetings lined up with domainers, parking companies and other suppliers to the domain industry. One of the great things about domain conferences like DomainFest is the fact that everyone who is anyone is in one place at the same time making it possible to cover a lot of ground with a lot of people really quickly.
I had a friend ask me why I go to all of the different conferences. After all, isn’t the Internet supposed to reduce the need for travel? I answered him by first of all agreeing with him that the Internet is a fantastic medium for establishing and maintaining long-distance relationships but there is just nothing like sitting in a bar with a drink talking face to face with another person.
In a world of high speed networks, skype, instant messaging and video conferencing you would think that getting together physically would become irrelevant. Not so. I find that shaking another person’s hand and sharing a drink is what makes business fun and ultimately more profitable.
So what do I hope to get out of DomainFest? I’m attending DomainFest to sell some of my premium generic domains, buy other domains, meet with domainers for optimising their domains via ParkLogic, solidify closer relationships with parking companies, gain material for Whizzbangsblog and do a whole lot of learning! I think that in this industry once you think that you know everything it won’t be long until your business takes a downturn.
On the learning front I’m really looking forward to hearing Steve Wozniak’s take on the domain industry. I hope that he does his homework on what domaining is all about rather than just give is standard speech. It will also be really interesting to hear what Hal Baily from Google has to say about what Google is doing in this space. I would also like to catch up with the Yahoo team to what changes they may be seeing for the industry. All great inputs and it means that it’s going to be a really busy few days!
Source: Posted on WhizzBangsBlog by Michael Gilmour -- Reprinted with permission -- January 27, 2009 Michael Gilmour