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NamesCon names con speakers

Kevin Murphy, January 7, 2019, 11:37:36 (UTC), Domain Services

With NamesCon’s swansong Las Vegas show just a few weeks away, its agenda and speaker list is well on the way to being finalized.
Organizers recently announced Bhavin Turakhia, Haseeb Tariq and Richard Lau as speakers.
Turakhia, founder of Radix and several registrars, is perhaps best-known for selling Media.net for $900 million and for being one of India’s richest entrepreneurs. His Monday keynote has the tagline “Insights and Inspiration”.
Tariq recently join Fox, but his bread-and-butter has been founding and selling tech startups and high-end domain names. He’s speaking on portfolio pricing strategies.
Overall, the agenda seems to be heavy on speakers from .GLOBAL and affiliated business intelligence service provider RegistryOffice, which are sponsoring the conference.
I won’t be attending, sadly, this year, but these other sessions caught my eye on the agenda:

  • Akram Atallah is part of a panel discussion on data analysis on Tuesday. I believe it’s his first speaking engagement since leaving ICANN’s top brass to become Donuts CEO in mid-November. He’s outnumbered by the .GLOBAL/RegistryOffice posse, so if he has anything interesting to say it may be lost in the sales pitches. Turakhia is also on the panel.
  • Andrew Allemann (Domain Name Wire), Elliot Noss (Tucows) and Zak Muscovitch (Internet Commerce Association) are spending an hour discussing the forthcoming .com price increases after lunch on Tuesday. With no Verisign rep on stage, I’m not sure how balanced the discussion will be, but all three men are engaging speakers and the session may be worth a look.
  • Sessions on emerging technologies include a discussion of Domain Connect with speakers from GoDaddy, WP Engine and Microsoft, and a solo talk on the intersection of blockchain and DNS fromm MMX CEO Toby Hall.
  • Allemann is also hosting a yet-to-be-announced panel of domainers who chose to invest in new gTLDs, entitled “What Were They Thinking?” which may be worth a look-see.

NamesCon runs from Sunday January 26 to Wednesday January 30. Standard ticket prices are $999 or $1,349 for the VIP treatment, though I believe discounts are still available for pre-orders.
It’s the conference’s final year at the cheap-and-cheerful Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas. The organization announced last year that NamesCon Global, its annual North American event, would be moving cities.
While many regular attendees seem to think somewhere warm would be preferable — Florida or California, perhaps — I’ve also heard whispers that a Canadian relocation has not been ruled out.
Canada. In January. Time to buy shares in manufacturers of tuques, perhaps?


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Comments (2)

  1. roy e messer says:

    Kate Buckley will steal the show as guest speaker.

  2. Mark Thorpe says:

    Canada, eh!
    Most likely it would be in Vancouver.

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