Domain Market in Poland

As you probably heard – Rick Latona teams up with Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu to organize TRAFFIC conferences in 2010 and beyond. This includes not only European TRAFFIC editions but also those in US and Asia.

First of all, I think this is a very wise move – both for the founders of TRAFFIC and Rick Latona. Rick has been very active in domain business in recent months and did a lot of good work by developing this market in such a tough times (especially in US). TRAFFIC will give him additional boost and exclusivity for live domain auctions at the conference.

On the other hand Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu will benefit from Rick’s help, ccTLD market experience and his business skills. The synergy is quite obvious to me.

This new Trio will not only help themselves but they will also help THE DOMAIN INDUSTRY by spreading the news all around the world. We need something big to tell the world what domains are about and why they are so valuable. But WE NEED CHANGES. TRAFFIC is a great domain show but as the world evolves, TRAFFIC has to change as well. And will change – as we already heard from Rick, Howard and Rick.

So how will the new TRAFFIC look like?

Here are some facts and some hopes from my side:

- more domainers and attendees from outside the domain industry

- cheaper tickets that will help to achieve what I wrote above

- new locations of TRAFFIC like Hong Kong, Toronto and Europe

- themed conferences – targeted to the local audience

- new faces at panels (more speakers from outside the US)

- better auction inventory (more high quality ccTLDs in Europe – for example)

- even more networking opportunities (including special dedicated sessions)

Please add your suggestions, so Rick, Howard and Rick can make TRAFFIC domain conference even better. We all will benefit.

TRAFFIC in 2010

Here’s where and when TRAFFIC will be organized in 2010: Las Vegas (January/February), Amsterdam (March/April), Toronto (May/June), Reykjavik (July/August), South Florida (September/October), Hong Kong (November/December).

I believe that Reykjavik will be replaced with some other place (organizers asked to give comments about this location). Barcelona, St Petersburg, Prague and Rome are also taken into consideration.

From my side, I would propose Warsaw as well. This is 2 million, growing business city, capitol of 38 million country. Poland is well known for its strong .pl domain secondary market. You can also read about MeetDomainers conference that was held in October 2008 in Cracow (Polish version of Prague on DNJournal.com to learn more about Polish domain market.

I keep my fingers crossed, good luck to Rick, Howard and Rick with the NEW TRAFFIC!

Daniel Dryzek

I was pretty surprised, when I went to Registration & Pricing area dedicated to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York 2009 show. The prices of TRAFFIC went down! Now I also see that I got email from Rick with new pricing details.

You probably remember recent message from Rick Schwartz titled: “The Future of TRAFFIC” – it was about pricing and activities included in the show. Rick asked if he should lower the attendance fee but lower number of meals, drinks etc. in the same time. The answer seems to be YES.

You can get your tickets for $895 and only $199 for spouse pass, which is really LOW I have to admit. The early bird prices are valid until June 30th or 100 tickets sold. I only hope that the value of TRAFFIC itself will not go down despite the price drop. TRAFFIC was my first big domain conference (after DomainChannel in London few weeks before TRAFFIC conference in Las Vegas in 2007) and I had learned A LOT at each of the shows. The last one was quite different from the others, because it was mainly dedicated to ccTLDs. I will post more about TRAFFIC ccTLDs in Amsterdam soon.

Good luck Rick and Howard with increasing attendance at TRAFFIC! It was a very good decision to lower the prices and I hope to see the New York show in 2009 similar to the one in 2007. The more people at the conference – the more business going on and more things happening