Last year, Fairwinds Partners hosted its inaugural Beyond the Dot conference, and the company is hosting the conference again later this month. Beyond the Dot 2015 will be held on January 21 at the Newseum in Washington DC.
According to a press release published by Fairwinds Partners, here is how the conference is described:
“Beyond the Dot conferences join together innovative business leaders, experts, and policymakers to provide context and discuss how new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – extensions such as a .CITY or .BRAND that join .COM and .ORG – will impact the way we all communicate and do business online.”
Some of the conference speakers and panelists include the following people:
- Dr. James Fowler, Co-Author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
- Akram Atallah, President of the Global Domains Division at ICANN
- Debbie Cohn, Former Commissioner For Trademarks: USPTO
- Andrea Glorioso, Counselor (ICT & Digital Economy), Delegation of the European Union to the USA
- Bill Reinsch, President of the National Foreign Trade Council and a member of the U.S.-China Security Review Commission
- Sanjiv Sarwate, Principal Legal Counsel – Trademarks and Copyrights, Dell
- Brent London, Program Manager, Google
You can visit the Beyond the Dot website to see the conference agenda, which includes a list of speakers and panel topics. The ticket price to attend this one day event is $495.
I presume there will be quite a few people from the domain investment space in attendance. There will also presumably be registry operators in attendance, although I don’t see any listed as speakers or panelists on the event’s agenda. Interestingly, there were new gTLD registry representatives who spoke at last year’s event. Perhaps they will be added prior to the event, as I believe they can offer a unique perspective on the market, now that the new domain names have been available to the public for over a year.
If you are involved in the new gTLD space, Beyond the Dot 2015 is a conference you should consider attending, especially if you are in close proximity to Washington DC.
