DOMAINfest 2008 gets underway today in Hollywood, California. Our own Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domains, made the trip (and escaped the frigid cold that descended over Toronto this weekend). We’ll be sure to get Bill’s thoughts on the conference when he gets back.

If you are taking in the event yourself, we have one last reminder about a panel discussion that Bill will be participating in. That session, “Branding for Gold, Balancing Hype and Reality,” is happening Tuesday at 11:30 A.M. (PST) in Salon 6. Bill and friends will be sharing their knowledge and experience in the domain industry.

Also of note is the SnapNames Live Auctions taking place this week. SnapNames has made the auction catalog available for download. You can get all the details over at the SnapNames Live site. If you’re planning on participating, you’ll want to get the software installed in your browser and get yourself all set up so you won’t miss out on any buying opportunities. The first half of the two-day auction gets underway at 4:00 P.M. PST on Tuesday, January 22.

DOMAINfest 2008 kicks off one week from today in Hollywood, California. For the uninitiated, there are a couple of major domain-related conferences each year – DOMAINfest being one of them, and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. being the other.

DOMAINfest bills itself as “a global event built to bring together the largest audience of domainers in a central location for an intense three days of learning, networking, and fun. Great domain industry minds will come together to share knowledge and build new ideas and explore new avenues to keep our progress going. Look forward to big speakers, big topics, and big fun!”

One of those ‘domain industry minds’ is Tucows’ own Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domains Portfolio. Bill will be attending DOMAINfest, and will be a part of a panel discussion titled, “Branding for Gold, Balancing Hype and Reality.” Joining Bill will be David Sams, Mike “Zappy” Zapolin, and Andy Miller. That panel discussion will be held on January 22nd at 11:30pm PST for those planning to attend.

Bill tells me that he’s looking forward to a pair of SnapNames Live Auctions taking place on January 22nd and 23rd. For those who haven’t seen or heard a live domain name auction before, Adam Eisner, Product Manager, Domains, Tucows sat down with Joey deVilla last summer and recounted his experiences at T.R.A.F.F.I.C including the live auction held there. Here’s a link to that interview in MP3 format.

Bill has a good deal of enthusiasm about domains and the domain industry and I’m confident that we’ll see a report or two from him both from DOMAINfest and from the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in February.

Some useful links:

• DOMAINfest website
• SnapNames Auction website
• T.R.A.F.F.I.C. website

I’m Craig Cluett, the Director of the Business Development team at Tucows. I’ve been with the company for three months and am proud of the energy and enthusiasm we show for our resellers and services.

On Saturday, I was part of a team from Tucows that went to to London as sponsors of the LINX59 Meeting. As one of the world’s largest and longest established Internet exchanges, LINX is a who’s who of London’s ISPs, network providers and operators. We really appreciated the warm welcome we received from the LINX group and their members.

LINX’s John Souter (CEO) and Grahame Davies (Chairman) have a lot to be proud of. The forums they offer their members are top-shelf, extremely well run and thoroughly organized. Hats off to Jeremy Orbell, Neana Singh, Jennifer Atherton, and the rest of the good folks of LINX.

The topics covered during the two day event were chosen by the members and were for the members. The end result was good discussion and greater understanding between everyone. Our very own Kim Phelan started off the two days of discussion with a brief overview of Tucows and how we go to market with our 8,500+ partners (1,000 of which are in the UK) in our key offerings of wholesale domain names and hosted email.

Adam Eisner, while not subbing in as Kim’s personal photographer (at the request of the communication team back home in the “colonies”), was kept busy chatting with the 100 plus members in attendance.

Part of the magic of the LINX forum is the special attention put into the significant networking opportunities across a number of venues (a.k.a. pubs) where the discussions get lively and great strides towards shared understanding are made. All in all, it was a productive couple of days for everyone and Tucows will be looking into becoming a member of one of the world’s largest and longest established Internet exchanges.

Cheers to all our new friends at LINX!

Update: As promised, a few pictures from the LINX meeting.

Once again, Tucows will be present at this fall’s ISPCON, which bills itself as “The Internet Industry Event”. It takes place from Tuesday, October 16 through Thursday, October 18 at San Jose McEnery Convention Center, in San Jose, California.

Ken Schafer, our VP of Marketing and Product Development, will be making a presentation titled 30 Rapid-fire Website Wins, Guaranteed, which comes with this guarantee: If at the end of the session, you don’t feel you have at least five techniques that will improve YOUR site, Ken will personally assess your site and give you five ways to improve it!

We’ll also have a booth on the exhibit floor where we’ll be talking about what’s new in domains, demonstrating our hosted email service and Platypus billing system and handing out swag including our beloved Squishy Cows.

If you’d like to meet us, there’s a way to do it free: ISPCON “Exhibits and Events” passes are available for free until August 31. This pass gives you access to:

• The exhibit hall admittance
• All keynote sessions
• Networking functions
• Vendor-sponsored education sessions

After August 31st, these passes will cost $50. If you want a free “Exhibits and Events” pass, go to ISPCON’s registration page and sign up now!

Back in June, we told you about the panel discussion our CEO Elliot Noss participated in at Supernova 2007 entitled “Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy?”

Here's the abstract for the session:

“Could hidden practices ‚Äî some legitimate and some criminal ‚Äî be the real economic backbone of the Web? Max Levchin (Slide), Andrea Matwyshyn (Wharton), Elliot Noss (Tucows), and Ellen Siminoff (Efficient Frontier) reveal the scope of search optimization, widgets, domaining, phishing, zombie nets, and other under-appreciated aspects of the Internet economy.”

The video of that discussion is now online at the Supernova blog “Conversation Hub”, and under the terms of their Creative Commons license, we've mirrored the content here:

Tucows will be at HostingCon 2007, which takes place next week in Chicago from Monday, July 23rd to Wednesday, July 25th at Navy Pier. HostingCon bills itself as “the largest gathering of hosted services professionals in the world” and for more details about the conference, check our their conference program.

We'll be making our presence known there — just keep an eye out for…

Our Booth

We'll have a booth in the exhibitors' hall — booth 817, which is right beside the networking lounge. Feel free to come chat with us about our new Email Service, Premium Domains and other upcoming things from Tucows.

You can look for booth 817 on the official HostingCon map or use our slightly customized one below to find us:

Our Session: Rethinking Domain Name Search

On Wednesday, July 25th, from 3:30 – 4:15 p.m. in room 109, Product Manager for Domains Adam Eisner will be making his presentation, Rethinking Domain Name Search.

Here's the description of his presentation:

With the rise of the domain name aftermarket, many expired names never return to the public for repurchase. This, combined with the fact most web hosting companies don't provide an effective domain name search feature on their website, results in many lost sales opportunities for domain names, web hosting, email and more.

This session will show web hosts how to “re-think” their website's domain name search strategy in response to market developments like better name suggestion technology, fewer available names, and the rise of the domain name aftermarket. The strategies outlined and demonstrated will help web hosts obtain tangible improvements in their domain name and web hosting sales.

Topics covered will include:

• How to improve sales by improving your existing domain name search process (using tangible examples)
• Maximizing the number of relevant results provided using name suggestion technology
• Using domain name aftermarket to ensure customers receive the most relevant domain name availability results possible

Come on out and say hello!

Our President and CEO, Elliot Noss is at Supernova 2007 in San
Francisco this week. Yesterday, he participated in a panel discussion
titled “Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy?” along
with Ge Jin, Max Levchin, Andrea Matwyshyn and Ellen Siminoff.

Reaction to the discussion is starting to appear around the web:

The Supernova Conversation Hub has a great set of session notes to give
you a flavour of what was discussed. Read
about it here.

Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls also attended the session and shared
some thoughts on his blog.

We'll keep an eye out for anything else that might continue the conversation started at Supernova 2007.

photo:  Supernova 2007 uploaded by JasonDeFillippo

It's always good to see Doc Searls, and I'm glad I had the chance to hang out with him at the recent ISPCON Fall 2006 conference. He's been a friend of Tucows since he first met us as ISPCON years ago, and he's been up to Toronto for a number of visits since then, the most recent one being last year's Christmas holiday party. In fact, it was a blogger get-together that he had during his visit in early 2003 that led to my getting a job here.

Doc's long time friendship with Tucows and Elliot is probably why their ISPCON opening keynote, Internet Service: The Fifth Utility? was more like a listening in on a casual conversation than attending a panel discussion. In their hour-long chat, Doc and Elliot talked about the internet not as a bonus service offered by telcos, but as a utility on par with things like roads, water, waste treatment and electricity. I attended this keynote and made a recording of their chat, which you can hear by downloading the podcast below.

We'd like to express our thanks to Jon Price, Denise Miller and the rest of the people behind ISPCON Fall 2006 for putting on a great conference, and to Doc for driving up to San Jose to take part in the keynote.