MERGE Orlando 2017

by jothan | Jul 14, 2017 | Domain News, Domain Shows, Speaking

Hello and Happy Summertime 2017!

I hope to see you at MERGE in October for an amazing group of shows all at one event. We have been planning and working hard to have an exceptional conference.

Those of you who have known me over the past 25+ years in the Domain Name business know me as someone who is a founder amazing conferences, such as the NamesCon conference, DOMAINfest Asia, DOMAINfest(s), Domain Roundtable, DotNXT, ICANN Marketplace Panels, and in-firm technology summits.

After the great folks at WHD acquired NamesCon/DOMAINfest, this conference guy wanted to keep founding, developing and producing award winning shows. It was a privilege to have founded NamesCon with industry veteran Richard Lau, and working with Jodi Chamberlain at the start (and later Terri Potratz and Shalom Johnson) was delightful.

Richard’s selfless work towards the important waterschool.org charity was something that I really have to express was a big catalyst for us starting the NamesCon, and I am grateful for the opportunity for us to have co-founded NamesCon. He and I had each built up a great balance of goodwill within our industry relationships, and it made a big difference with the way NamesCon was embraced. WaterNight (I was the opening DJ for here’s a link to my DJ Set, including a Prince tribute) Jothan Frakes DJ Set from h2oPM2017.

The great team(s) at WHD (and their parent company HEG, now GoDaddy) are all fantastic, and will continue to produce exceptional, large conferences with general topics and content, they have an ability and interest in now manifesting my ideas for international expansion of the NamesCon brand, and let me not ignore the amazing band formed of industry and entertainment titans called “The Lords of Uptime”. Berthil and Soeren are fantastic, professional people, and they have a content advisory group to help them navigate intricacies and nuances of content for the shows, and with Terri and Shalom’s help and the great team in Europe those conferences will thrive and hopefully grow in size.

One thing that I know, is that I do conferences. I will continue to do conferences, participate in the Domain Name Association, ICANN’s Universal Acceptance Steering Group, Mozilla’s Public Suffix List, and continue to be a consultant for registries and registrars, marketplaces, and security firms.

So… as it relates to conferences, one thing that I have discovered is that people who have like minds and take the time, cost and effort to participate at conferences WANT to have discussions about specific topics, and are open to listening to general sessions but really crave to meet birds of a feather and network with them.

Instead of attempting for the nTh time to create an industry focused event, I opted for something entirely different while “getting my conference on”. I think you will be delighted, and I invite you to join us while we build something special.

Over 33 years in the technology, entertainment, internet and development sectors, being careful to minimize screwing people over and maximize being emotionally intelligent about how I do my thing, I have built up great relationships within and outside of the domain name industry, legal community, ICANN, the entertainment idustry, and the developer community.

The team behind THE Domain Conference were among the many different conference organizers that have been after me to bring the midas touch and content curation to their event. After 14+ years of THE Domain Conference (and previously T.R.A.F.F.I.C.) across the globe,

Bringing all of these things together, ( MERGE! was conceived. It is a group of conferences all under one roof, including (absorbing) THE Domain Conference, CMS Summit, McGrady Domain Academy, Blockchain Roadshow, Allegravita’s China Bootcamp, and other events that will be under the same roof in October. There will be lots of networking opportunities and a chance to learn new things and meet new people.

The concept of “MERGE” is that all of these carefully curated and related technology gatherings have domain names within the venn diagram of the overlapping areas – so one will meet people that they have not met before, with some reasonable expectation that they have more in common than they would initially suspect.

The plan is you will meet new people and grow your skills, knowledge, and contact list – in a meaningful manner.

Please take time to register and join us for the event! The conference website is http://merge.show and the event once again is in Orlando Florida from October 14-18, 2017. Make certain to be there, and I hope to see you there!