Traffic ccTLD’s Amsterdam, My thoughts! (Part 1)

Well I have been back from the Amsterdam Traffic ccTLD’s Conference for one week now and I have been thinking about what to say about it on my blog.

I was going to give a detailed blow by blow description of the event but then I realized it was pretty pointless after reading Ron Jackson’s coverage of the event in his recent June 2009 cover  story at www.DNJournal.com.  The guy does such a great job it would be very very very hard to do it better.

So rather than just repeating what Ron covered so well I will just give some of my viewpoints and opinions of what I thought of the event.

First point is to again thank Mark Fulton from the Domain Blog www.DotSauce.com for passing on the ticket to me to for the event that he won from Rick Latona. If you have not been to Mark’s blog check it out as it is one of the best out there!

One of the main reasons myself and others go to these industry events / conferences is to meet people and network. The sessions are great most of the time and I always learn something, but what you learn from just having a chat over a drink with someone is so much more rewarding that I would go just for that reason alone.

Considering it was Rick’s first major event it was run very well with only a few teething problems that you can only learn from over time which I am sure they will. If I had to give it a score out of 10 for how the conference was run I would say it was about an 8.5 /10 which is very decent in my books.

But the devil is in the details and I have been spoiled in the past by some of the internet marketing events that I have attended in the past where the details really really matter! Even to the point where they will get the attending guests to fill in a quick survey at the end of the conference to get feedback on what the attendees did and did not like about the conference and what could be improved.

I thing this is an important step and I have done this myself at seminars that I have run through my own business at home. If you don’t ask you will never really know as most people are polite and even if they did not like something they may still say it was “fine”. However if you give them an anonymous opportunity to speak their mind they will be free to tell the truth about what they think.

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I came away from the conference with some new friends and business associates and thats what it is all about in my book. It was great to get to know people like Jeff Behrendt from www.InForum.in as we have chatted many many times online about Indian domains but this was the first time we had met. Jeff’s Indian domain name forum is the leader in regards to the Indian domain space and is well worth your time if you have any interest in the .CO.IN or .IN domain extension (a sleeping giant IMHO). I shared a hotel room with Jeff and we had some good laughs, he’s pretty funny for a Canadian LOL!

Another kindred spirit that I met at the conference was Edwin Hayward from www.MemorableDomains.co.uk. Edwin was one of the panelists at the conference and did a very fine job of covering the UK domain extension. I got talking with Edwin on the very first day of the conference and we seemed to get on well and had a great appreciation of the .CO.UK ccTLD of which Edwin is a leading authority on the subject. Some of the things I picked up from Edwin in the first few hours of meeting him were well worth the time and effort of getting from Perth to Amsterdam for the conference. I came home with a completely different view on my domains and what I would be doing with them in the future but more of that in an upcoming blog post!

Matt Asher was someone who I only got to know in the last few days of the trip but was a great guy with a very nice collection of names who is also from Canada. Mark own www.freebeer.com which is a name many males would appreciate! Matt is American by birth but moved North to Canada from the US and now calls it home.

All of the guys I have just mentioned and I spent the Friday morning after the conference checking out Amsterdam on foot and on a boat ride and had lunch at a very nice little restaurant to top it all off.

It was great catching up again with Elliot & Karen Silver (from www.elliotsblog.com) who I met in New York last year when I was travelling with my family and also meeting for the first time Ron & Diana Jackson & Rick Latona who have both been a guest on my Domain Names Podcast.

Well this is all for now, more to follow in Part 2 where I will discuss my upcoming project idea that I decided to work on from talking with people at Traffic ccTLD’s.************************************************************