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London Domain Summit starts tomorrow
The second London Domain Summit is to kick off tomorrow, August 22, with a two-day agenda blending domain investor and local domain policy themes.
The conference, at the Hilton London Metropole, is being organized by founder Helmuts Meskonis, who also owns two popular domainer forums: DNForum and AcornDomains.
Registration is available on the door and currently costs £50 for the two days.
It’s a single-track agenda, so nobody’s going to have to choose between sessions they find interesting.
I will be attending.
On the policy side of things, the highlights are a Q&A with Nominet director Kieren McCarthy, who was elected by members last year following hustings at the inaugural Summit, and a separate session with the UK government’s representative to ICANN, Nigel Hickson.
Two of this year’s three Nominet director candidates — Steven Wright and Thomas Rickert — will debate during the final session of the conference on Wednesday. The third, rejected candidate, Jim Davies, may well be in the audience. Andrew Bennett of Netistrar moderates.
There’s also going to be a panel on “Web3” domains — presumably meaning blockchain-based alt-roots — hosted by sponsor Freename.io.
A few sessions are set to focus on opportunities in other regions — namely the Middle East, Africa and China.
The domainer-oriented sessions cover the usual topics of monetization and premium sales with speakers from the likes of Sedo, CentralNic, BrandForce and IT.com. Not exactly my wheelhouse, but there’s nothing on the agenda that looks uninteresting and I anticipate checking out most sessions.
That said, if any fellow attendees fancy a hallway chat or a coffee or want to smash my face in or whatever, feel free to collar a fatter, grayer, shagged-out version of whatever photos you’ve previously seen of me, or slide into my DMs.
UPDATE — this post was updated August 24 to correct the number of candidates in this year’s Nominet election. Apologies to David Thornton, the candidate I neglected to mention, who did not participate.
AcornDomains bought by conference organizer
The UK-focused domainer forum AcornDomains has been bought by the company that runs the fledgling London Domain Summit.
Domainer Helmuts Meskonis said he’s bought the site via his companies, Helmuts Limited and No Stress Limited, which also runs hosting company HostMaria.
Meskonis said he’s bringing on two more moderators — current community members — to “help ensure that the forum continues to be a friendly and safe place for everyone.”
He also hinted that prices for advertising and the optional premium membership fee may be going up.
Since he announced the deal on the forum on Saturday, feedback from users has been generally positive.
Meskonis is founder of the London Domain Summit, which held its inaugural event — a low-key affair at a restaurant — last year. He’s planning to run a second event this August.
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