WOW! Domain conferences are some of the best places to meet other domainers and to gain inside secrets to the domaining industry. Most conferences are worth every penny.
Since we're moving the focus of our portfolio from parking to developed, we recently attended Affiliate Summit in NYC. We only wanted the exhibit floor passes so our conference cost was $99 each. Let me tell you....WORTH EVERY CENT! Our plan of action was to get a map of the exhibit floor to see who was there and write down domains that would be associated with each affiliate that was of interest to us. Using this method we were able to make the most of our time there and make as many related contacts as possible without wasting anyone's time. Earlier this year we attended SES with the same plan but also attended the sessions. A bit pricey in my opinion, but very valuable information.
We also recently attended Meet Domainers. This is the first of these conferences we've been to and it's a great opportunity to meet domainers from other countries....especially those that focus on cctld's. I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak on one of the panels and I have to say, the attendees hit us with some good questions. I can only hope the answers we gave were sufficient enough.
Luckily enough my brother lives in the UK just outside of London so we managed to get in some vacation time during our journey. It's nice to take time off, but the pain is the emails keep coming with most being time sensitive. So it's imperative to know that you'll have an internet connection and at least an hour or 2 per day to give timely responses.
And yes....conference fatigue hits everyone. It's a blast....but a lot of work at the same time.
Next stop for us will be Epik's conference in Seattle (I've never gotten to tour Seattle so am really looking forward to this trip). Then DNCruise in October (I've never been on a cruise....so this should be a blast).
Year to date we've attended:
DomainFest Global
Domainer Mardi Gras
SES
DomainFest Ft. Lauderdale
Affiliate Summit East
Meet Domainers
Epik's conference
DNCruise
That's a lot of traveling and a lot of shows in 1 year.
And guess what....we're already starting to plan for 2011.
Maybe we could save a lot of time and trouble and just do all conferences at an airport. LOL!