While attending the Associated Cities‘ GeoDomain Expo in San Francisco, Oracle World was happening across the street at the Moscone Center.
Our venue hotel had a lot of spillover crowd from the Oracle World conference, and so thre were mixed crowds socially. Mash-up a who’s who of alpha dog domainers and Oracle enthusiasts, developers and middleware providers, and it is interesting to see what happens.
Being a former valley dweller, and having done some migrations to the Oracle platform from other systems, I was at home discussing varying levels of technical development or bizdev with some of the attendees.
It was wild to see the look on people’s faces who are in the Oracle space when the light bulb came on over their head about the value of domains and direct navigation from a discussion with one of the many key speakers and panelists. It was like they saw
Ron Jackson, the editor of DNJournal.com, a respected friend and industry expert, was the lunch keynote speaker at the GeoDoman Expo, and he made a joke about seeing all the banners that said Oracle when he arrived making him feel respected and welcome until he realized what they were really there for.
I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Matt Bentley from Sedo about the opportunities beyond .com. We both came at the discussion from different angles, but were fairly in sync on the message. Dot Com is the Boardwalk and Park Place if you think of the world like a big game of Monopoly, but there are other neighborhoods that have their values, and those other neighborhoods will have value with hotels built on them.
 Anyway, the sessions were great, but what stood out most to me was the quality and caliber of the attendees. This was a room full of people who all got it, so the content was a bit more advanced, and the dialogs and hallway discussions were some of the most in-depth on some really interesting topics surrounding the industry.
I founded the Domain Roundtable conference and executive produced the first two, so I know a little something about these conferences, and I tip my hat to Patrick Carleton and Associated Cities on a fantastic show.  I will certainly attend these in the future and I encourage others to attend as well.Â
 Great Conference!
