NamesCon Global 2020 is in the books. I had been wanting to visit Austin for quite some time, and the NamesCon conference was the perfect reason to make the trip. Beyond the conference, I thought Austin was an interesting city with great food.
It was easy and pretty cheap for me to fly to Austin non-stop from Boston, and although I stayed in the Omni Hotel, there were quite a few other options for different budgets. In speaking with other attendees, the trip was a bit more difficult for other people – some of whom had to take 3 flights to get there. Attendance was down quite a bit from prior years. Some might say that had to do with the coronavirus, but I believe that is only partially true to a small extent. I would imagine much of the decline in attendance has to do with the conference location, but that is just speculation.
Upon departing the conference on Friday night, I did not hear anyone mention the 2021 NamesCon Global conference location. I am sure it will be held, but I am not sure the location has been decided yet. I imagine choosing a location well in advance is of utmost importance, so I presume the decision on location will be made in the next few weeks.
With that said, I am curious where readers would like to see the 2021 NamesCon Global conference held. For the sake of narrowing things down a bit, I would imagine it is safe to assume the conference will be held over the same January weekend, in a somewhat warm weather locale, and will most likely be held in the US. I could be wrong on one or all of those counts, but that is just an educated guess
If I were in charge of choosing a location for NamesCon, here are my top 5 choices in alphabetical order:
- Atlanta
- Las Vegas
- Miami
- Phoenix
- Santa Monica
If you could choose a location for NamesCon 2021, what city would you choose?
Miami (around 8h flight for most of Europe)
Mar-a-Lago of course.
Mar-a-Lago isn’t close to Miami though.
Well, I guess relatively close, but it’s a good 90 minute drive without traffic.
You’re right, I meant the Doral.
New Orleans!
One of my favorite cities in the US.
I would love to go to New Orleans. I was initially making a top 10 list and it was one of the top 8 (along with San Diego and Los Angeles) but I couldn’t really choose 2 others I knew well enough that would make sense so I narrowed down to top 5.
Fantastic suggestion Kate! New Orleans is an absolutely wonderful city.
@Kate Buckley… New Orleans would be awesome. I was honestly hoping it would be in Austin again. Has there been word of changing venue again?
Not that I know about, but I would have thought that would have been announced if already confirmed. For all I know, it might be in Austin next year.
EAST COAST enough west coast bias
1 – Las Vegas
2 – Santa Monica
3 – New Orleans
Elliot, arent you based Massachusetts? kind of assumed you were, being a Red Sox fan. This Yankee fan would drive 5 hours to to go Boston or better yet, let’s compromise at Philadelphia, NJ is the home of Domain Capital, trying here 🙂
Miami
Miami @ Fountainebleau would be amazing. Rick had the show there
Yeah, have nice memories of that hotel.
Spent quite a bit of time wandering around the hotel and area with Lonnie Borck.
Hamburg ( Germany 🇩🇪 )
It’s namescon global right ?
I presume the NamesCon Europe conference will be the only Europe based NamesCon.
Los Angeles
Santa Monica
Las Vegas
Feel free to choose your own cities – no need to select the ones I chose unless you want to do that.
Sorry about that 🙂 i feel very strongly about this, east is abandoned, i figured you of all people would put one east coast state. What about Delaware? Kidding! — Las Vegas i never visited the OG Vegas conference, always heard it was a blast.
Delaware is home to CSC Global and is the incorporation capital of the United States. In addition to their new headquarters building, they also just purchased and are outfitting an older building adjacent the Wilmington Amtrak station. It would be great to do an inside tour of CSC…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEZ3ZyJY3gY
Rumor has Arizona due to GD HQ & owning NC
Santa Monica – it’s a single flight for Asia, Europe and Australia
Corona wouldnt have impacted ticket sales, only attendance, both were down on last year.
NC clearly recognised the change in market/requirement, with some of the domain association stuff, and the panels were good ( but the sessions were very same-y)
It was worth attending for the people, but that could be accomplished by organising socials in various locations.
This was the 2nd year it would have been cheaper to book at the last minute ( for tickets – last year sponsors started giving them free right before which was a pain having paid 600$ ). And the last minute change of dates hurt some of us who had to rebook.
Overall it was good, the NC team did an amazing job, it was light on big organised events, but plenty of smaller gatherings, but the change from Vegas and the change from small domainer focus was noticed.
Here are my thoughts and recommendations in order:
1) Austin again so then we can try a location for a couple of years in a row.
2) Santa Monica and in particular the Fairmont Miramar hotel so that we can bring it back to its roots! NamesCon owns DomainFest so there’s no conflict there.
3) Scottsdale so we can all gather at the hometown of GoDaddy. I for one would love to participate in a tour of their HQ offices. Never been!
If outside of USA, Dubai will be perfect, Expo2020 is also running at the same time.
If USA = Vegas Baby!
Denver, Nashville, Chicago, New Orleans
Austin / Omni was OK, I would go back, but I’d definitely prefer somewhere warmer…
The Omni hotel room quality was severely lacking for the nightly price. I have stayed in countless nicer rooms for less than half the price. The best part of the Omni was the lobby/bar area that everyone passed through, and became a great gathering place to talk domains late into the night.
My top 3 picks for next year, in order, would be:
1) Miami (somewhere in South Beach)
2) Santa Monica (at Fairmont Miramar)
3) San Diego
Among those I spoke to there seemed to be a consensus that Austin was preferred over Vegas. I would not mind if it was in Austin again, being my city, but also understand travel was somewhat more difficult for some than others. Austin airport has been expanding and opened a new terminal last year, so it’s possible they will be taking flights from more locations in the future.
If it were a choice of other cities for me I would likely most prefer Miami, Santa Monica, Phoenix, San Diego, and runner up New Orleans.
One thing I think was especially nice and not to be overlooked, was having an entire hotel booked out for the conference, meaning everyone there on the floor, lobby, lounge and other areas were exclusively attendees and not other guests, which I believe made mingling, meeting and networking very easy. It seemed more intimate than what I remember from being at the Tropicana.
Scottsdale. Perfect weather and yes, home of GoDaddy.
Atlanta,GA is my #1 preferred choice! Thanks for asking Elliot,
Miami, Tampa, Ft Myers, New Orleans, Scottsdale, San Diego, NYC, Philly, maybe BOS down the road. Like Richard’s idea of a GoDaddy office tour to make it even more educational. I say no on Vegas and am luke warm on repeating in Austin. The scooters (while annoying to locals) were a plus, though.
Also, I think attendees should be allowed to list their domains perhaps 100 per entry fee. I think the selective filtering of domains into auction material is suspect.
The app should Also reflect auction activity and having the auctions that spill over into Feb post conference is anti climatic IMHO. I felt the app was innovative in 2018, but found it difficult to connect to people in 2020. Also what is the added value over LinkedIn.
While some folks use the conference as a mini vacation to get away from the computers, others are overbooked and think a 4-day conference (3 work, 1 play) is too long IMHO. Other conferences I go to seem perfect for 2 days.
Sorry to ramble beyond the city topic, but just sayin.
Ps Agree the flights 3 months out from BOS were cheap…
New Orleans-Fun,Fun,Fun
Miami-Extended stay!
San Francisco – The “heart” of inovation
easy access to more corp. buyers too.
Bill Gates house- Get him on the phone!
Warren Buffet guest speaker 🙂
Phoenix- Great weather
Bill,
Auction selection, good topic.!
Also, not a fan of post auction.
Cheers
Jag- great idea! Schedule/locate in relation to similar event
Cheers
Miami 🙂
NYC
Playboy Mansion, that is how I ended my last and final domain conference about 10 years ago partying with Ron Jeremy and friends that night:-) The “old days were great” but now I am a dad and don’t travel anymore.
Vegas. It is convenient and familiar for most USA attendees – has many hotels; direct flights. Consistency is also easier for everyone. Just my .02.
Vegas.
Atlanta or Scottsdale/Phoenix.
To Bill, I really like the idea of people being able to list their domains for sale during the conference. However, I think the event should be for at least three days. Two days is not enough time to have a well-rounded program schedule or to meet, mingle and visit with other attendees. Also, attendance could be affected by people deciding it’s not worth flying across or mostly across the country for a two day conference.