DOMAINfest Global – Day One

DOMAINfest Global started-out fantastic today and the next two-days are sure to be a blast! The morning started-out with PITCHfest where successful entrepreneurs presented their ideas to a panel of some of the best and brightest minds in the industry. It was a great way to start the day and very interesting to see how other inspired people present their ideas!

Adam Epstein won the first round and accepted his award giving thanks to all the people that helped him achieve his dream! There is a second round coming-up so we’ll get to see even more entrepreneurs pitch their ideas.

Next Jeff Kupietzky gave a very inspirational speech about the show, the industry, and the challenges that we all face. He hit on a very poignant topic – the issue of scalability as Domainers become developers. As parking revenues decline Domainers  are looking more seriously at development as a means of monetization however getting fresh content makes scalability challenging.


If there is one theme for 2010 it’s development and I am more happy than ever that I started my business with development as our core focus – I guess that’s what I get for being a long-time SEO geek 🙂 I never understood parking and I still don’t – that being said I see a lot of parking companies looking to innovate dramatically and I can’t wait to see how these models change in the coming year.


The last seminar of the day was focused on gTLD’s and featured an interesting panel that shared some great information about gTLD’s and the potential marketing opportunities that present themselves as this space expands.


The day ended with the low and no reserve auction where some great names sold and a few good battles were had. A total of $150,950 in domain names were sold and almost 2/3rds of the domains met their reserve price!

Of course I did some great interviews today including one with Ron Sheridan who I’ve been waiting to meet for a long time! Stay-tuned for more updates on tomorrow’s events however I doubt I’ll get a post out tomorrow night as I’ll be having too much fun at the Getty Center! Once again no time to proof read – I’ve got Chef Patrick in Bruce Marler in my kitchen eating bagels talking to my girlfriend about Domaining…ah the adventures continue!

Oh I almost forgot – .CO threw an AWESOME party at the end of the night – as you probably know by now I’m a big .CO fan and I can’t wait for the launch!!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton