DomainFest Global 2012

DomainFest Global in Santa Monica, Jan 31 through Feb 2, brought together entrepreneurs, service providers, and many other industry participants for a few days of advice, collaboration, and some serious moves toward social good.

On Tuesday evening, Sedo sponsored a wonderful banquet evening at Monsoon restaurant with live music. Tim Schumacher, CEO of Sedo, invited Robert Epstone of Sole Men, a Non-profit organization whose purpose is to help homeless children around the world by providing education and medical care. Robert has been going barefoot in solidarity with homeless children in Indonesia until he raises his goal of $1,000,000 for the children. He explained to DotGreen that he has been barefoot for over a year and is still far from his goal. However, he did announce that his partner Rotary Club would match his donation if he could raise $500,000. $300 contributed to his fund that night would send and keep a child in a four-year high school. DotGreen joined others from the domain community, filling one of the many $300 slots that night, each corresponding to a photo representing a child on Epstone’s barometer sign.

Panel and keynote highlights included the first panel session around new gTLDs held on Tuesday morning with Mason Cole, Ken Hansen, Juan Diego Calle, and Michele Jourdan. The discussion addressed new opportunities with coming 2012 gTLDs, and predictions about consumer interaction with new gTLDs. Wednesday’s agenda included an informative presentation on landing page optimization with Tim Ash.

Thursday, attendees were treated to a Keynote Fireside Chat with Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter, who shared stories of Twitter’s beginning and his views on the evolution of social media. He emphasized the increasing importance of technology and innovation in a globally connected world. He also identified, as a key future metric for success, taking into account the positive impact a business can make on the world, so that businesses themselves become change agents. Stone’s most recent venture, The Obvious Corporation, does just that, with a mission statement to “develop systems that help people work together to improve the world”. Stone has a history of environmental consciousness, getting involved with WildCare alongside his wife Livia, and co-founding the Biz & Livia Stone Foundation, with the mission of advancing education and bringing nature into the classroom.

DomainFest Global is put on annually by Oversee.net. Gold Sponsors included .CO, DomainSponsor, Moniker / SnapNames, LookSmart, and Sedo. DotGreen’s friend and back-end service provider, Neustar, was a Silver Sponsor.

Attendees from DotGreen enjoyed speaking and participating at the event, and particularly hearing from members of the community about green business ideas and future .green ventures.