The Domain Economic Forum: Call for Submissions

NamesCon Global is the largest annual domain-industry conference, attracting professionals from around the world. What began as an investor-centric gathering has developed into the central event for everything domain-related, from channel providers and software vendors to domain investors and end-customers. The move from Las Vegas also a reinvention of sorts: we’re coming to Austin to establish the Domain Economic Forum, taking a broader and deeper look at the ecosystem in which we work and strive to innovate.

While we’re proud of how we partner with our sponsors to create deep and actionable experiences at NamesCon Global, we’re taking that much further going forward by crowdsourcing submissions for some of our sessions. This is a very particular crowd, of course, with deep expertise across various aspects of this complex industry on both sides of the dot and beyond. That’s why this year’s theme is 360 Degrees Around the Dot.

These stats suggest a vivid ecosystem, including all services to create, deliver, buy, sell, analyze, secure, and manage domains—this is the Domain Economy, and it is very large indeed, and continued success in this ecosystem requires as deep an understanding of its moving parts as possible. We are looking for submissions in the following three clusters:

We’re seeking session ideas that will help a broader audience to understand the size and scope of the domain industry as a whole, and specifically in the secondary market—and the opportunities that lie within.

We’re glad to have some meaningful insights into the domaining world from sources such as the Verisign brief, ntldstats.com, and go-to blogs like Domain Name Wire and DNJournal. However, several parts of the ecosystem are not quantified—at least not yet. We are particularly interested in content that can provide market size insights on the secondary-market, where most transactions are not reported. Help us unlock the data and opportunities.

This year, we will talk a lot about the domain market’s central threat of indirect competition—alternative online presences through marketplaces and social media. End users and small businesses are consistently wooed into developing their online identities through popular social media platforms, at e-commerce points of sale, or emerging platforms. Let us know how you can contribute to the conversation about how the domain name ecosystem can compete against social media.

We also want to explore the future of identity management, as well as next-generation DNS services as a driver for the domain industry. How will the further evolution of IoT or the implementation of DNS over HTTPS affect the domain name economy? Now is your time to contribute answers to that conversation.

We want to have as many buyers as possible at the Domain Economic Forum, and this means a diversity of needs and use cases. We’re looking for buyers from various backgrounds and industries to talk about the experience buying domains from investors; as well as how they approach brand protection. Let’s learn more about real-life buying behavior, budgeting, and other factors that make or break a deal.

Please note that we’re not looking for pitches of specific products or solutions. We want to see an industry overview, surfacing potential large-scale opportunities over the next decade. Successful submissions will round out our current program: between us, let’s lay the groundwork for even more meaningful and actionable content for 2020.

Whether you’re thinking macro or micro, NamesCon Global is your chance to set the agenda the domaining industry as a whole. So where do you fit in? Where do you want to go? Join us in Austin. Help guide the industry forward, and let’s go 360 degrees around the dot.