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NamesCon Europe cancelled — “pandemics suck”

Kevin Murphy, March 17, 2021, Domain Services

The year’s NamesCon Europe conference has been cancelled.

The organizers said today that the 2021 event, which had been due to take place in Budapest this June, will not go ahead due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic:

Since Hungary still has a high rate of COVID infections and in-person gatherings are not allowed, we cannot produce NamesCon Europe in Budapest in July. Nobody can predict when things will improve and our recent NamesCon survey showed a high reluctance to travel, so planning this intimate in-person gathering didn’t make sense. Pandemics suck.

Unlike ICANN 71, which was last week rescheduled from The Hague to Zoom, NamesCon is not moving to the bespoke online platform it used last year.

Organizers said that they’re not setting a new date yet, but there appears to be the possibility of other online events in future.

Hungary currently ranks 4th-worst in terms of deaths per capita, according to Statista, sandwiched between the UK and Italy, two of the earliest and hardest-hit countries.

It’s currently seeing more daily cases and deaths than the UK in absolute numbers, despite having less than a sixth of the population.

Three-letter .net leads as NamesCon charity auction raises €4,150 for Kenyan school

Kevin Murphy, June 8, 2018, Domain Sales

A domain auction at NamesCon Europe raised €4,150 for charity today.
A total of 22 domains were sold, each of which had been donated by a conference attendee.
The top sale was bbe.net, which went for €650, followed by xvs.net, which fetched €500.
The three-letter jjh.org went for €150, which some said was a bargain.
Also selling were smartphone.global and caring.global for €450 and €400 respectively.
The auction was organized by Shaun Wilkinson, COO of domain broker Nidoma, who wants to raise a total of €6,500 during NamesCon for the Hope Children’s Centre, which is trying to finish building a secondary school in Kenya.
Anyone wishing to help the charity reach its target can donate online here.

Atallah encourages domainers to get involved in ICANN

Kevin Murphy, June 7, 2018, Domain Policy

ICANN Global Domains Division chief Akram Atallah today encouraged domain investors to participate more in the ICANN community.
“Domain investors’ voices need to be heard in ICANN,” he said during brief remarks opening NamesCon Europe here in Valencia this morning.
“Your voices are as important as everyone else’s and should be heard,” he said.
He noted to the largely European crowd here that ICANN has a public meeting coming up in Barcelona toward the end of the year.
The call came within the context of comments that focused almost exclusively on GDPR and Whois.
Atallah said that the absence of Whois would make it difficult to track down bad guys and harder for the average person to ensure that the information they get online comes from a reputable source.
“Not everything on the internet is true,” he said, to an faux-incredulous “WHAT?!?” from a member of the audience. “You need to know who is behind this information.”
He said that ICANN hopes to keep Whois as transparent as possible, and played up the fact that most community members are now in agreement that a tiered access system seems like the best way forward, which he called a “major shift from 12 months ago, when the community could not agree on anything”.
He added that now that the Article 29 Working Party has been replaced by the European Data Protection Board, it could help ICANN figure out how to proceed on GDPR compliance efforts.
“I think we’ll get more clarity,” he said.
Disclosure: I’m at NamesCon on my own dime, but with a complementary complemintary complimentary press pass.

Can’t get enough GDPR? Come to my NamesCon panel

Kevin Murphy, June 4, 2018, Domain Services

NamesCon Europe is being held in Valencia, Spain, this week, the first time the NamesCon branding has been applied to the old Domaining Europe show.
Starting Thursday, it’s a two-day conference — or three if you count the social events planned for Saturday — with a varied agenda focused on domain investors.
The keynote will be given by Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division, on a so-far unspecified topic.
There will be about 20 sessions in total, organized in a single track and covering topics such as valuation, monetization, drop-catching, web development and legal issues facing domainers.
Expect speakers from the likes of Donuts, Sedo, the new gTLDs .club and .global, and a bunch of companies I’ve never heard of (a fact I hope to rectify).
Staff from NamesCon owner GoDaddy also have a decent presence among the speakers.
Domaining Europe was sold to NamesCon earlier this year and there’s going to be a short “handover ceremony” at the end of the show, followed by a performance by a band whose lineup feature the conference’s new CEO.
I’ll be hosting a panel comprising Blacknight CEO Michele Neylon and German lawyer Thomas Rickert on the General Data Protection Regulation on Thursday just before lunch.
If you no longer wish me to tell you this, please click here. But if, as a domainer, you feel there are important GDPR issues that should be discussed at the session, feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.
As usual with shows like this, a big part of the value is in the networking, and there’s plenty of opportunities for socializing scheduled, including a “Disco Party!” slated to end at 5am.
NamesCon Europe tickets are still available, priced now at €786.50 ($922).
Disclosure: I’m paying my own way to the show but have a complimentary press pass.