HostingCon kicked off yesterday in San Diego, bringing together the web hosting industry and its many related service providers.

I arrived late in the morning and caught the last ten minutes of a talk from OpenSRS’ Adam Eisner titled “What do New TLDs Mean for your Hosting Business”. Some members of the audience wondered if their clients would want them to acquire their brand names for all the new TLDs, how they’ll manage the many so many registry contracts, and if there were any “home run” TLDs they should consider offering to their clients. You can see the slides here.

A number of domain name companies are attending and or exhibiting at the conference: Moniker, Dot.tk, Neustar, OpenSRS/Tucows, VeriSign, eNom, NameMedia, Afilias, LogicBoxes, and ResellerClub. I’m here representing Skenzo. The exhibit hall is open Tuesday and Wednesday.

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1. HostingCon Kicks Off in Austin
2. GeoDomain Expo Kicks Off in San Diego
3. HostingCon Opens Registration for 2011 Event

I spent last week in Mumbai at the Directi headquarters. It was great to sit down and work beside many of the people that I’ve only met over email and video conferences to date.

Experiencing Mumbai

I spent much of the time in the office and it was a fairly short trip. But I did get part of the “Mumbai experience”.

The first experience you have upon arriving in Mumbai is what locals call “driving”. I call it one big game of chicken. Seriously, driving in Mumbai makes New York City driving look like child’s play. The road is shared by cars, buses, trucks, autorickshaws, bicycles, people, handcarts, and occasional livestock. All with no lanes. And seemingly no rules. Red lights are merely a suggestion.

Yet through all the chaos traffic somehow works. I didn’t see a single accident while I was there.

The second experience is just living in such a mass of people. 20 million people are packed into the city. I rode past one of the main train stations at peak hour and thought our car was going to be lifted off the road by people. The trains are a site to see, too. There are no doors and people just hang out the side as it moves. I was dared to try to catch a ride on one. I declined.

The third experience is navigating the tourist shops. I walked into shops fully expecting to have to negotiate. But I wasn’t prepared for the intense cross selling. Seriously, these shop owners put the Go Daddy checkout process to shame. “You really should buy a rug to go with that Sari.” “Your wife would like this decorative elephant.”

Finally, I experienced real Indian food. Not Americanized Indian food. It puts local fare back home to shame.

Mumbai is unlike any city I’ve ever visited. A lot of it was good, like this view from my hotel on Juhu beach:

Oh yeah, and I think I’ve figured out the basic rules of cricket.

Inside the Directiplex

The Directiplex is a 1,500 seat building in the Andheri East area of Mumbai. It’s an impressive testament to Directi’s growth. The building houses all of the company’s businesses including ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, Skenzo, BigJumbo, and Media.net. (I primarily work with the latter three.)

It also houses the company’s new domain registrar BigRock. While I was in Mumbai, Directi co-founder Bhavin Turakhia showed off BigRock’s TV commercials to hundreds of employees. If you’re not from India you might not understand them, but judging from the crowd’s reaction they’ll make plenty of people laugh (and hopefully register domains).

Later this year the company will open up another building across town that can seat up to 800 people. Directi co-founder Divyank Turakhia gave me a sneak peak of the building, which has beautiful views across preserve land. When complete the building will include a bowling alley.

It’s all part of the company’s quest to attract good talent. The company has been successful so far, but there are still plenty of positions to fill.

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1. City of Mumbai Says It Hasn’t Authorized .Mumbai

Over the past several years I’ve been asked to join a number of established companies and startups. I’ve turned down these offers for various reasons. Until now.

Today I’m announcing that in the very near future, I am going to start working with the following businesses – Media.Net, Skenzo & BigJumbo. All three businesses are owned by the Directi Group (no introduction required) along with the Ashmore Group (a large UK based investment firm that manages $35+ Billion in funds).

What I’ll be Doing

I’ll be doing business development for Media.Net – this is a new contextual advertising business from Directi – where the product delivers the most relevant and engaging ads related to a web page (This is a non-domain business). The technology is able to uniquely blend contextual analysis with behavior data, audience profiling and past performance cues to substantially enhance value for both web publishers and advertisers. The Media.Net platform enables web publishers to generate higher eCPMs in a sustainable manner by ensuring high advertiser relevance.

I’ll also be doing business development for the domain parking companies – Skenzo and BigJumbo.

Why Directi?

Directi is one of the biggest success stories in the industry. Led by charismatic founders Divyank and Bhavin Turakhia, it has grown to over 600 employees across several continents. But numbers aside, Directi has a few characteristics that make it ideal for me:

1. Despite growing into a large company, it still has an entrepreneurial spirit – the company is always searching for the next great idea.

2. It is global – with clients in every continent – and offices in India, China, UAE, and Australia – the company is truly global. There are challenges to working with people on the other side of the world, but it’s also an important part of business. Those that can’t thrive while working across cultures will have limited opportunities in the business world.

3. The company is a partner to many in the industry – Despite being a competitor; Directi also has a number of partnership deals with major companies in the industry. More so than any other industry I’ve been involved with, the domain industry is full of competitors that are also partners.

That Directi is able to simultaneously compete and partner with so many in the industry, and recognize the bounds that this imposes, gives me hope that I will be able to continue running Domain Name Wire as it is today…

Domain Name Wire Will Not Change

My new role will not affect Domain Name Wire in any way. I will continue to own 100% of the Domain Name Wire websites and brands. I will continue to blog on the site as usual with no editorial oversight from any of Directi’s businesses.

I’m a realist, and I understand that DNW may face some challenges.

Some companies may understandably not wish to share as much advance information with me as they used to because of my new role. Yet for over five years I’ve been writing Domain Name Wire and handling ad sales for the site. Never during this time have I let dollar signs affect my writing. I trust that I’ve built up enough goodwill to manage this transition. My hope is that I’ll be able to continue my style and breadth of blogging in the future. There will be some challenges for sure, and I won’t be able to write about anything that I know about because of my role at the company. There will also be days that my blogging time is limited.

Domain Name Wire’s disclosure statement has been updated to reflect my role in Directi’s media businesses. Furthermore, any story I write that mentions a Directi product or company will include a disclosure.

Going Forward

Please email me if you have any questions. I’ll also be at TRAFFIC in Miami next week and welcome the opportunity to sit down with anyone and talk about this new role.

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Every year the organizers of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conference ask for nominations (and then a vote) to pick the best companies and people in the domain name industry. This year’s voting is due by Wednesday at 8 pm EDT. To participate, just make your selections from below and email to nominations@targetedtraffic.com.

Winners will be announced at next month’s TRAFFIC conference in South Beach.

Here are the nominees. You may vote for one per category, except for Hall of Fame where you can vote for two.

SPONSOR OF THE YEAR (Vote for 1)

.CO
DOMAINADVERTISING.COM
NAME DRIVE
PARKED
SKENZO

DOMAINER OF THE YEAR (VOTE FOR 1)

JAN BARTA
MIKE BERKENS
JUAN CALLE
STEVE CHEATHAM
LARRY FISCHER
ROB GRANT
MERLIN KAUFMAN
MORGAN LINTON
MIKE MANN
GREG MCNAIR
JERRY NOLTE
ILZE KAULINS-PLASKACS
ELLIOT SILVER
DIVYANK TURAKHIA
JOEL WILLIAMS

BEST OVERALL DOMAIN SOLUTION (VOTE FOR 1)

ABOVE
DOMAIN SPONSOR
EPIK
MONIKE R
SE DO
SKENZO
SMARTNAME

BEST NEW MONETIZING SOLUTION (VOTE FOR 1)

ABOVE
DEVHUB
ELEPHANT TRAFFIC
EPIK
LOCAL.COM
SKENZO
SMARTNAME
WHY PARK

DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR (VOTE FOR 1)

FRED MERCALDO
ROB GRANT
KEITH LEVENSON
ROB MONSTER
SHAUN PILFOLD
ELLIOT SILVER
TIA WOOD

THE “WE GET IT” AWARD (VOTE FOR 1)

BODOG & SLOTS.COM
LEXIS-NEXIS
MIKE MANN
NATIONAL A-1
OVERSTOCK
QUINSTREET
SWIFT RANK

BEST DOMAIN NEWS BLOG (VOTE FOR 1)

ANDREW ALLEMANN (DomainNameWire)
MIKE BERKENS (TheDomains)
DOMAINERSMAGAZINE.COM
RON JACKSON (DNJournal)
LARRY FISCHER
MORGAN LINTON
HOWARDNEU.COM (Declined)
RICK SCHWARTZ (Rick’s Blog) (Declined)
ELLIOT SILVER (Elliot’s Blog)

DOMAIN HALL OF FAME (VOTE FOR 2)

MONTE CAHN
GARY CHERNOFF
ROB GRANT
JEREMIAH JOHNSTON
AMMAR KUBBA
RICKLATONA
MICHAEL MANN
HOWARD NEU
JERRY NOLTE
MARC OSTROFSKY
ADAM STRONG
DIVYANK TURAKHIA

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2. Wednesday Night Domain News Bytes
3. Rick Schwartz Awarded Epik Pioneer Award

Bloomberg UTV has dedicated an entire 30 minute segment to profiling domain name company Directi and its founder Divyank Turakhia.

The segment features Turakhia and how he started Directi in his teens. The company went on to build some recognizable brands in the domain space, from registrar accreditation consulting company Logic Boxes to domain parking business Skenzo, not to mention one of the ten biggest domain name registrars in the world.

Directi now employees about 600 people, and Turakhia shares one of his biggest challenges scaling the business: people. That’s why his company (and he personally) spends so much time on human resources.

The video gives an inside look at Directi and Turakhia, including the many toys he plays with when he’s not sitting in front of his computer.

Rather than tell you about it, just hit play:

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1. Divyank Turakhia Gets the Press Treatment
2. Bloomberg Loses Domain Name Dispute

-In addition to owning Domain Name Wire, Andrew Allemann works with Directi’s media businesses — media.net, Skenzo, and DomainAdvertising. Directi has no ownership or control over the content on Domain Name Wire.

-Any articles that mention a Directi business posted after October, 2010 include a disclosure about this relationship.

-Domain Name Wire is a free publication subject to its terms of use.

-This site accepts paid advertising. Ads are clearly marked, and include graphics in the left and right column, text links in the right column, and the “Domain Services Profile” units at the end of posts.

-We previously used affiliate links when a company or product mentioned on the site had an affiliate program. This is no longer the case. Affiliate links generated from our automated system have been changed to non-affiliate links. However, some legacy affiliate links remain in old posts.

-The editor of Domain Name Wire is also a domain investor. He owns domain names, sells domain names, and uses many of the products and services mentioned on DNW first hand.

-Other authors and guest contributors are also typically involved in some facet of the domain industry.

-The editor and guest authors may own stock in domain name related companies that are written about on DNW. As of January 2010, the author owns stock in several domain name related companies and none of the holdings is greater than $5,000.

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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Domain Name Wire Radio. Find Domain Name Wire on the web at www.domainnamewire.com. Now here’s your host, Andrew Allemann.

ANDREW: Welcome to Domain Name Wire Radio. I am your host, Andrew Allemann. Before I introduce our guest today, I would like to remind you that you can download this podcast or read a transcript of this and any other DNW Radio Shows at www.domainnamewire.com/radio. I’d also like to thank our sponsor, Traverse Legal. You can find out more about Traverse Legal on the web at www.traverselegal.com.

Now on to the programming. You probably know today’s guest by his popular domain name sales newsletter and his live domain name auctions, but Rick Latona is picking up another big responsibility by running the popular T.R.A.F.F.I.C Domain Name Conferences. I invited Rick onto the show today to discuss what’s in store for the conference in 2010. Rick welcome to the show.

RICK: Thank you for having me.

ANDREW: So, Rick, why don’t we jump in? You know, I’m curious, obviously, Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu have been running the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Show for a while. When did you first start exploring the idea of kind of taking over the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show and why did it make sense for you?

RICK: Well I wouldn’t say that I’m taking over the T.R.A.F.F.I.C Show. Rick and Howard are still part of the business. What I have is a multi-faceted, multi-year licensing agreement. So Rick and Howard, for example, will still be doing one show a year and 2010 will be doing a show in South Beach, Miami Beach, for those of you who don’t that. And we talk regularly about the entire schedule of events. I talked to them four times last week. To answer your question, I wanted to do a show after I saw the show in Brisbane, Australia, that Fabulous.com had licensed. When I went there, I was introduced to probably something like 100 Australians that I never would have normally met, because they wouldn’t have traveled to the big U.S. shows, and I guess it was then that I realized that you have to get local to go global. So after doing that we licensed the show to be able to do an event in Amsterdam which we had done earlier this year in 2009, and after doing the show in Amsterdam and meeting all the tech people and Europeans that hadn’t normally come to the shows, the idea was solidified, I was able to build tighter bonds with both the sponsors and the attendees and ultimately I wanted to do it on a bigger scale.

ANDREW: So when I look at the 6 shows, right, in 2010, I noticed that many of them are outside the country which kind of jives with what you’re talking about. Do you expect a lot of the regular attendees that attend the U.S. shows to also attend the outside the U.S. shows or is it mostly that local or continental audience that you are shooting for there.

RICK: Well I suppose this is a continuation of my last answer. In Australia and in Amsterdam, about half the crowd was first time people. They had never even been to shows. So I had never seen them at a show in the States. The other half were the European and the Americans that go to all the shows, and frankly, if that is the way it remains then we will grow this industry at a brisker pace, because it’s all about bringing new people into the fold. I envision some of the European shows actually getting bigger attendance than the U.S. shows if not in 2010, in 2011. Europe has a large community and as much as Americans may not want to hear this, Europe’s economy is bigger than the United States. So the only other shows that we are adding in 2010 are Canada and Hong Kong, and Canada is hardly international. If you’re Canadian, and I’m not trying to dismiss your country, but Vancouver if I remember correctly is only 100 kilometers across the border. So in reality the only risky addition is Hong Kong, but Asia is such an up and coming fast growing market, it can’t be ignored.

ANDREW: Right and there are a lot of big domainers up in Vancouver as well.

RICK: Yeah, well I mean, between Young Ye, Kevin Ham, and Frank Schilling, I think that would all qualify as big, I suppose.

ANDREW: So what changes do you have in store for T.R.A.F.F.I.C? Obviously, you have some new fresh ideas. What do you hope to bring to it?

RICK: Well there won’t be major changes out of the gate; that’s a quick way to ruin a business is to acquire and then change the whole thing wholesale. It’s already a great show. I’d like to think I’d be continuing to make improvements because the show has always changed every year due to the changes in the industry and so it will be more of the same. Rick and Howard made changes and improvements every year and I’m just going to continue doing the same thing. We’re going internationally. We have opened our arms for a larger attendance. We’re making it slightly less exclusive, modifying the panels to make them more interesting and continuing on the path that has already made the show a great success.

ANDREW: Now, when a lot of people look at domain conferences — and there are certainly a lot of them — on the slate for 2010, they may look at T.R.A.F.F.I.C and think this is the most expensive show to attend which historically it has been. What are your thoughts on your expense of attending?

RICK: Well I’m really glad you asked me that question, because it’s not the most expensive show to attend, and it hasn’t been for some time. We have, the last couple of years, we have lowered and lowered the prices. I mean it certainly was in the beginning, but in Vegas our early bird price was lower than the price for Domain Fest, and I think that people that know me or do business with me know that if they want to come to the show, and they can’t afford to come to the show, or it’s just not in their budget, all they have to do is contact me. I’m not going to let a single customer get away. The important thing is that we have people there for the networking, and that we have people there for the auctions, and that we have people there for the test track which I’m sure you’re going to ask me about so I’ll wait to talk about it. So I’m much more concerned about having as many warm bodies in the room as possible than there probably previously was. So it’s not the most expensive show to go to is answer to the question.

ANDREW: Ok. Let’s talk about that test track. So this is something that Rick and Howard introduced at the last conference up in New York. Tell me a little bit more about that and what you have plans for on that as well.

RICK: Right. Well the test track is something that was modeled after the popular ABC television show Shark Tank. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s… I DVR every episode. If you are a business person, I mean, it’s the best entertainment on television. You can go to ABC.com/sharktank to actually download episodes for free, but what it is basically is entrepreneurs pitching a panel of investors business and then deals actually get made during the show. So Howard came up with the idea, hey why don’t we do that at a T.R.A.F.F.I.C event, and when Rick and Howard called me about it, I mean, they hadn’t even finished the sentence and I was sold on it. It’s such a brilliant thing, and I had everybody in New York telling me that they thought it was the most intellectually stimulating part of the show, because you have these entrepreneurs, they have these domains, they’re pitching their ideas, they’re asking for money, and then the panel picks it apart, tells them the good things, tells them the bad things. It’s such a focused event. It’s just educational, and what I’m going to be doing, because I kind of compare the test track in New York to the first auction at the Del Ray Beach, the first track of show in 2004. I don’t know if you were there, but we basically wrote down names on a white board. Everybody wrote down what they would pay for it underneath the name and it was so amateur hour, but over time and over the years, now you’ve got multiple companies…it’s a real business now and I want the same thing to happen with Test Tracks. What I’m focused on and what people will see in Las Vegas is a very hand picked selection of entrepreneurs with real businesses of real value being pitched to a group of real investors. So I have legitimate venture capitalists, legitimate, extremely wealthy high networth individuals who actually do angel investment deals and they look for angel investing opportunities and will be on the panel. My goal is for a deal to actually happen live for all to see. It’s going to be great.

ANDREW: Looking overall at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C shows and kind of from your experience, what do you think the number one reason is that people attend these shows?

RICK: Well I actually know the answer to that question, because last week we called 100 of our biggest customers and asked them to pick what their number one reason was and an overwhelming majority of them said the networking was their number one point. I was actually surprised that the lowest reason to attend the shows was the parties and that is a big expense for the shows, but it was networking and then followed by location, followed by auctions, then parties was way down the list. So if you go to www.targetedtraffic.com now…actually this morning we actually put the most recent schedule. It’s a three day event that we are going to do in Las Vegas, and what I’ve done is I have front loaded the first day the Thursday, January 21st with networking events. There’s going to be a ccTLDs thing in the morning while people are still showing up and then at 2 pm is going to be Networking Event 1 which is basically anybody who wants to can get on stage and give a 60 second elevator pitch about what they do, who they are. Then there’s going to be a break and then we’re going to do Networking Event 2 which will be speed networking which is going to be longer, better, more focused than previous speed networking events and then is the cocktails. My goal is for the first part of the show to try to make sure that everybody knows everybody in the beginning. That way on day 2 and day 3 they can actually talk about business together, because they have already met on day 1.

ANDREW: Yeah, that makes sense. I can imagine someone coming to a show that has never been before and you know if you or I are at the shows, we know lots of people, but if you come in and don’t know people that would be a great way to kick things off.

RICK: I have been…I’m a trade show guy which is one of the reasons I did this licensing agreement. I just like doing industry things, and even before I got in the domain business, and any other business I’ve ever been in, I’ve always went to the trade shows. Always ended up being an infrastructure thing, you know, like doing auctions and doing trade shows and being more in the infrastructure rather than the guy actually trading the names. It’s just kind of my personality. And one thing that I learned over 15 years going to trade shows is that each event, you may meet 100 people, but you start new real relationships with maybe 2, 3, 4 people and what happens is the more shows you go to the more those add up. So you have 3 people, then you have another 3 people, then another 3 people, and after 10 years you know 200 people really well, real strong relationships. And that’s what it’s all about.

ANDREW: Great. A lot of people talk about the domain shows and say, you know, they all have the same basic seminars. How are you going to make your seminars stand out?

RICK: We have spent a lot of time talking about that in our office, and what we’ve tried to do if you look at our schedule that’s on Targetedtraffic.com you will see that we have tried to focus the seminar on one particular issue. What I don’t want to happen is a panel of people just talking about the same shit they always talk about, or whatever they feel like talking about. So rather than saying, for example, that there is going to be a legal panel and having 3 domain lawyers just talk about anything they feel like talking about, what we’re going to be doing is from now on starting in Vegas and at all shows, the legal panels are going to be a review of WIPO cases and various legal cases that have happened since the previous show. So the panel they are going through the major cases and precedents that happened in the last couple of months. That will happen at each show and will be so focused and so educational they won’t be talking about anything else. And then, for example, when it comes to parking, you know, we’re going to have a panel in Vegas for a CPA as an alternative to PPC and we will have, of course, a panel about optimizing your domain portfolio, but it’s going to be with real world examples again. And one panel we’re going to be doing that I don’t know why I’ve never seen it at a show, because it’s such a fundamental part of being a domainer, but not all domainers do it, I mean heck, I’ve never really done it; it’s not been my thing, but have you ever even seen a panel on playing the drop market? Like how to analyze what domains to go after? What tools the masters’ use when trying to determine what to bid or how to know how much a domain will make before you own it, where to buy it, and what to bid? I’ve never even been to a panel on playing the drop market. So we’re going to be talking about that a lot too.

ANDREW: So is Skenzo back o nboard as the main sponsor next year?

RICK: Skenzo has actually signed on through 2011.

ANDREW: Wow, great.

RICK: Yeah, they’ve signed on for 2 years. One of the things that, because we’ve known for a few months that we were going to be running the shows for the next 5 years, so I told my team, I said, “well listen, I do not want to get into a situation where every day we are trying to figure out who our sponsors are, you know, who’s going to be a sponsor for the next show, you know, if we’re going to be doing a show every two months, I wanted to know exactly, if by the end of 2009, I could have all my sponsors covered, then I can spend the entire year of 2010 on making sure it’s actually a great show, and then I’m not chasing money the whole time.” So we contacted all the normal sponsors and said listen, we’ll give you a really good deal if you sponsor all six shows, because we don’t want them just to sponsor, so we’re not just collecting money, we want the support. We want to know that they’re going to be there and they’re going to have the people no matter what corner of the world it’s in. And we’ve gotten the vast majority of them to agree to it. We have another major company coming on the scene that’s going to be just second only to Skenzo, but I can’t tell you who it is because we’re in the final stages in negotiations, but we’ve had Parked.com, InterNetX, and euroDNS. Oh I hope I don’t forget anybody.

ANDREW: NameDrive.

RICK: Yeah, and we’ve had quite a few companies already sign on for the entire year.

ANDREW: Great, and you can see all of those sponsors, of course, on the Targetedtraffic.com website. So, finally, you know, you’re going to run this test track again where you’re quizzing entrepreneurs, just getting them up there to give their 30 – 60 second pitch. I’m going to give you a chance here to give me your pitch, not to give it to me, give it somebody who is thinking about coming to the show in Las Vegas, what would your pitch be to make the investment and come out?

RICK: Well I know that the biggest reason to come would be networking, and we are going to give you the best networking opportunities. We’re actually starting an ad campaign that will be going live in a couple of days and the banners that we have purchased everywhere, our entire campaign network wide is going to be who do you want to meet? We’re going to just let people type in a name of a person they want to meet and their email address, and I’m going to set the meetings up for them. All the biggest domain auctions that have ever happened since the very beginning of time have all been at Traffic events. Reason number 3, Vegas! Reason number 4 the Test Track isn’t to be missed. It’s actually going to be the “main event two”. So main event 1 is the auction and main event 2 is Test Track. It will be a fantastic show. I won’t let you down.

ANDREW: Great. That sounds like a pretty good guarantee there. Well, Rick, thanks so much for your time, and we’ll look forward to hearing more about the conference as we get closer, and of course, anyone who wants to learn more about registering for the conference, the hotel at the Hard Rock there in Vegas, can log on to www.targetedtraffic.com for more details. Thanks again, Rick.

RICK: Thank you for having me, Andrew.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening to Domain Name Wire Radio. Keep up to date on domain name news at www.domainnamewire.com.

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