DomainFest to hold one-day event this June

DomainFest is heading to Bulgaria for a special one-day conference a little over a month from now.
NamesCon, which now owns the DomainFest brand, plans to hold the event June 3 at the Kempinski Hotel Marinela in Sofia.
It will be sandwiched between the fifth annual DomainForum — June 1-2 in Varna and Ruse — and EuroDIG — and internet governance conference June 4-5 also at the Kempinski.
The focus of the event appears to be very much on the domain investment side of the industry.
Tickets for DomainFest will be €125 ($140) on the door, but can be acquired for the early-bird price of €49 until the end of April (that is, today). Dinner costs another €40.
DomainForum, as ever, will be free to attend.
The schedule, which has not yet been finalized, can be found here. Tickets for DomainFest and DomainForum can be obtained here.
DI may attend.

NamesCon 2015 bigger, longer and more popular

NamesCon 2015 is due to kick of in Las Vegas this coming weekend with about 50% more attendees that its inaugural outing last year.
Organizers tell me that so far roughly 750 people (not including press and staff) have registered to attend the conference, which is taking place for the second year at the Tropicana hotel. That’s up from the roughly 525 registered a week before the 2014 event.
Some are expecting the final turnout to top 800.
Registrations were boosted as 2014 came to a close by the announcement that NamesCon had acquired the rights to use the longstanding DomainFest brand and domain to promote its own show.
The show is due to run from Sunday, January 11 to Wednesday, January 14, a day longer than the year-ago event.
NamesCon is a bit of a strange beast, catering heavily to domainers but with also a strong series of sessions aimed at digital brand managers and the intellectual property side of the industry.
Where else could you see sessions called “Workshop: I’m Getting Sued – What Do I Do Now?” and “Making the Most of Your .BRAND and the Evolving Internet” running side by side?
For domainers, a highlight of the week may be the live domain auction, which is being run by Right Of The Dot and SnapNames from January 13 from 1630 until 1930 local time.
There are 350 names going to auction, in an eclectic mix of legacy and new gTLDs.
Currently, slightly more than half of the 23 names with bids are new gTLD domains, though their asking prices are a lot lower than the .coms on the list — most seeing bids in the $250 range compared to a top .com bid fo $51,000 for agree.com.
Domains that do not sell during the live event will carry over to an extended auction that ends February 5.
TLD Registry, which runs a couple of Chinese-script new gTLDs, has a strong presence at NamesCon too, sponsoring a day-long session on the Chinese domain market on the Sunday.
Keynote speakers during the conference proper include Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division, as well as executives from Go Daddy, Donuts, Uniregistry and others.
DI will be in attendance. I’ve agreed to do a presentation on DI PRO and industry metrics on Sunday, probably sharing the stage with another tools vendor, on Sunday, but the exact time and location have yet to be confirmed.
Conference passes are still available for $799 from the NamesCon web site. Registration on the door goes up to $849. For context, that’s still less than half the price you’d paid to go to TRAFFIC.

DomainFest to return in March

The DomainFest conference has confirmed its return for 2014.
The ninth annual show in the series is going back to the name DomainFest, having dabbled with a change to WebFest.
Organizers say the conference is “is dedicated to bridging the gap between domain name industry, online advertising, affiliates, social media and mobile.”
The agenda is split into three tracks: mobile, monetization and “gTLDs and registrars”, which seems to have a heavy focus on new gTLDs.
It will be held at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles from March 31 to April 2.
Prices for early bird registration are currently $695, with a $30 booking fee, rising to $995 on February 14 and then to $1,495 on the door.

Twitter co-founder to headline DOMAINfest

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is to keynote the 2012 DOMAINfest Global conference, organizer Oversee.net has just announced.
It sounds rather like his speech will focus on the “inspirational story” angle, rather like Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons’ keynote at the 2011 show.
According to the agenda, Stone will “share his thoughts on Twitter’s future and the evolving world of social media”.
Judging by the other speakers and panelists lined up, it’s an SEO-heavy agenda, but there will be a workshop entitled “Everything You Need to Know about New TLDs”.
For the new gTLDs panel, so far only Neustar’s Ken Hansen is listed as a confirmed speaker. I don’t expect that state of affairs to last long.
The show will be held at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, California, from January 31 to February 2 next year. Prices start at $1,195 if registering before December 31.

Salesforce.com pays over $1.5m for data.com

Salesforce.com has bought the domain name data.com for “an amount that significantly exceeds the $1.5 million reserve”, according to Oversee.net.
The domain had been due to be auctioned during the company’s DOMAINFest in Barcelona tomorrow, but was taken out of contention early with the private sale.
While Oversee did not disclose the buyer or final sales price, the Whois record already shows Salesforce.com as the new owner. It was previously owned by United Business Media.
Oversee said the deal brings its year-to-date sales to $11 million.

Gossip: No booth babes for domainers

Eight interesting things collected from interesting web sites:

• No booth babes? No magicians? No speakers? No Powerpoint malfunctions? What the hell kind of tech conference is DOMAINFest Europe? At least the beer will be cheap.
• Speaking of Prague, you can add UDRP to (continue reading)