Some Thoughts About TRAFFIC Awards

Following the TRAFFIC conference awards, I had a brief discussion with a couple of friends about the voting process. The genesis  of the discussion was that some nominees reached out to friends, clients, and others to ask for their support for the awards.

I think this year’s TRAFFIC Award voting process was improved from prior years, and it seems to be a  fair way to conduct voting. Some people may have opined that  it doesn’t seem like a total industry award because you have to be on the TRAFFIC email list to nominate, but I believe anyone can sign up to be on the list. I think it’s smart to do it this way because it cuts down on fraud and lessens the chance that someone can stuff the ballot box. I think having a third party, Escrow.com in this case, review the votes (just like the Domainers Choice Awards used a third party service, too) was also a smart idea.

Some people may feel like industry awards are a type of popularity contest. To some extent, I agree with this. A lesser known but possibly more deserving nominee may not get the votes needed to win an award because people don’t know the person or their accomplishments. It might not be “fair,” but that is how things work. I would much prefer that people vote on award winners than have a committee select winners.

Ultimately, awards mean more to some people and companies than others. If an award is meaningful to someone (or will bring additional business), then why not let people know about the nomination and let them know you are interested in receiving the award? At the end of the day, I  think all of the award winners were very deserving. Yes, I think there are others who could have also won awards, but I am sure the nominees look at it as an honor to even be considered.

Here are the 2014 TRAFFIC Award winners:

  • Developer of the Year – Adam Dicker
  • Broker of the Year – Dave Evanson
  • Blogger of the Year – Michael Cyger
  • Most Promising New gTLD – .Club
  • Best New gTLD Marketing  – .Club
  • Best Overall Domain Solution – DomainNameSales.com
  • Sponsor of the Year – Uniregistry
  • Domainer of the Year – Adam Dicker
  • Bandit Berkens  Goodwill Ambassador Award – Richard Lau
  • Women in Domaining  – Ilze Kaulins-Plaskacz (a new award)
  • Hall of Fame – John Berryhill and Michael Cyger (Ren Warmuz received a special Domain Hall of Fame honor is his memory)

I will publish my TRAFFIC recap later on today to let you know some thoughts about last week’s conference.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

6 COMMENTS

  1. The biggest problem was that people had less than 4 days to send their votes and these 4 days did not include a Monday.
    I don’t understand why voting wasn’t open for at least a full week.

    And when you see a website dominated for “Blogger of the Year” instead of a person you know that something is wrong. hint hint

    • I agree with you @ ks.

      its worth getting award at namescon, when you have over 1000 attendees from all different vectors of internet. Traffic to me seems like family reunion, which is not a bad thing, if you like family reunions. It used to be real, when they used to break down over 1 million numbers, and auctions, but none of that anymore.

      anyhow, congrats to winners

  2. Put a list of all people who got domaining awards within last 5-10 years and you will see same people again and again. That leads to impression that “top” domaining community is just about 20+ people. How can this “industry” expect some respect from other sectors? Other question is – why other real domain investors don’t want to openly participate or be nominated? Answer is clear and easy – they don’t want to be part of this fiasco. Why? Don’t ask, just open your eyes…

    • I think the issue is that many successful people prefer to stay under the radar.

      “why other real domain investors don’t want to openly participate or be nominated”

      Many people don’t want/need any accolades. $$ is the only thing that matters.

  3. First, congrats again to all the winners.

    To clarify a point in Elliots post, Escrow.com did NOT count votes for Domainer’s Choice Awards. We hired a voting company totally removed from our industry who specializes in elections, Votenet.com

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