Conferences & Tradeshows

Page Howe will be running a virtual domain industry conference called The Domain Show from July 23-25, 2020. The schedule outline has been published on the event website, and a partial list of speakers has also been shared by Page. It looks like there are some free tickets still available, although an early bird option is set to expire at the end of the day today.

If you are considering attending virtually, Page posted a video introduction sharing more information about the conference and explaining what he hopes people will be able to take away from attending and participating:

I would assume yes. Have not heard otherwise. I would expect we will hear about @NamesCon Europe first though.

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) April 21, 2020

In taking 2020 cancellations for granted, though perhaps a well organized internet event (with a sponsored domain by a registry) could be quite a hit.

— Ivan Rasskazov (@IvanRasskazov7) April 21, 2020

I was having a Twitter conversation about upcoming domain industry conferences, and I understand many events are likely in limbo – even those scheduled for 2021. Planning a conference takes quite a bit of time and can be quite expensive to reserve the space for conference rooms and venues. Predicting when it will be safe to travel – and if people will be willing to travel – is challenging if not impossible.

I reached out to NamesCon conference organizers to see if they have an update on the status of NamesCon Europe (scheduled for August in Budapest) and NamesCon 2021 tentatively scheduled for January. Once I receive an update, if there is one, I will be sure to share it.

I just received an email from the organizer of Nordic Domain Days 2020 announcing that this year’s event is postponed “until further notice.” NDD 2020 was originally scheduled to be held in Stockholm, Sweden September 7-8, 2020. This would have been the fifth anniversary of the domain industry event. The event was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Despite the fact that the NDD event isn’t scheduled for several months, I think it is the right call. We don’t really know when widespread quarantines and social distancing requests/requirements will be lifted, and it would be impractical to expect people to book travel plans for September at this point in time.

Here is the email I received from event organizers this morning:

Soeren von Varchmin, CEO of CloudFest and Namescon conferences, announced this morning that CloudFest 2020 has been canceled due to concerns about the Coronavirus. The event was scheduled to be held in Germany (Baden-Württemberg) from March 14-19, 2020. The announcement was made this morning via Twitter:

Life is a rollercoaster. Due to public health concerns related to the Coronavirus outbreak, we have made the difficult decision to cancel #cloudfest 2020. This is a sad and devastating day for our team/ community. More details and a FAQ for attendees at https://t.co/BisFoP7sB9

— Soeren von Varchmin (@svvarchmin) February 28, 2020