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The
last business session Tuesday (Jan. 31) was a
one-hour Sponsor Showcase in which
representatives from the top DOMAINfest Global
sponsors each had five minutes to talk about
their services. Then
it was off to the show's first official evening
social function, a Dinner Networking
Reception, sponsored by Sedo at Monsoon,
a nearby Balinese restaurant in Santa Monica.
Sedo CEO Tim Schumacher made his last
appearance in that capacity, telling the crowd
about the partnership
deal the SedoMLS and GoDaddy
announced this week. Tobias Flaitz took
over as Sedo's CEO today (Shumacher, one of the
three company co-founders, will continue to serve
on the Sedo Board). 
A
scene from Sedo's Opening Night Dinner
Networking Reception at Monsoon
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After Sedo's
event, PPX International hosted a
late night party at the Shangri-La
Hotel, a block south of the Fairmont
Miramar. As I mentioned in
yesterday's post, there were rumors going
into the party that InternetTraffic.com's
Vern Jurovich (one of the nicest
guys in this or any other industry) might
consent to having his hair shaved off in
an effort to raise funds for The
Water School. |
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DOMAINfest
guests jammed the Shangri-La to see
if that would happen and, in fact it did.
Not only did Vern lose his locks, he convinced
DomainAdvisors President Jeff
Gabriel to make the sacrifice too and
later in the evening, a third domainer
with an ultra big heart (and now an extremely
short haircut), Bill Lozada, faced
the guillotine for a good cause.
Unfortunately,
this all happened in the wee hours of this
morning, after I left the party, so I
don't yet have the "after"
photos to show you, though I'm told they
will be coming my way soon. Nor have I
seen any of our three new heroes around the hotel today (of course, they
could be in disguise - a local wig shop
reported a run on their inventory today).
At right you can see what Vern looked like
"before" his run-in with the
shears. It is not official yet, but I
heard over $30,000 was pledged to
the The Water School in support of their
sacrifice. |
Vern
Jurovich, InternetTraffic.com
before last night's
"haircut" |
In
my book that makes Vern, Jeff and Bill beautiful
(not that they weren't already) whether or not
their new hairstyle is in vogue. The money they
raised will actually help save lives. Each is a man among men. Before
Day Two of DOMAINfest Global got underway this
morning (Feb. 1), the Co-CEOs and Co-Presidents
of Oversee.net
(who organizes the annual conference), Debra
Domeyer and Scott Morrow, hosted a
Q&A breakfast for industry media
representatives. I'll have more on the ground
covered during that interesting session in our
full conference review article after DOMAINfest.
One bit of big news that was breaking while we
were with them was Oversee's
sale of Moniker.com and SnapNames.com
that was officially announced later in the
morning.
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Bill
Hunt, President
Black Azimuth Consulting |
In today's
first business session Black Azimuth
Consulting President Bill Hunt,
in a solo presentation, provided advice on
Analyzing Keywords to Find Revenue
Opportunities. Hunt discussed how
to use updated keyword research and
modeling techniques to compenstate for the
latest changes at Google, Bing and Yahoo.
The second
morning session featured a panel that
covered Advanced PPC Best Practices
and Campaign Management Tools. The
experts on the said offered tips that they
say could help you double your
conversions, lower your costs and save
time in the process.
Below:
Advanced PPC Panel
participants (left to right) were
moderator Dwayne Walker
(Oversee.net), Joanna Lord
(SEOmoz.org), Jeff Ferguson (CEO,
Fang Digital Marketing) and David
Rodnitzky (CEO, PPC Associates). |
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CEO
Tim Ash, SiteTuners |
After another
beautiful outdoor luncheon at the
Fairmont, the Wednesday afternoon schedule
began with Tim Ash, the author of Landing
Page Optimization, speaking about
- you guessed it - landing page
optimization - specifically Landing
Page Optimization Best Practices and
Conversion Tools. Ash offered
specific landng page adjustments that he
said will dramatically improve anyone's
conversions.
As I write
this, the final business session of day two, the highly anticipated Pitchfest
Contest, is just wrapping up. Ten
entrepreneurs pitched their business ideas
to a panel for four distinguished judges.
The judges wound up picking Elliot
Labreche of Akashic, a cloud
file storage startup as their winner based
on four criteria. The audience also had an
opportunity to vote and they wound up
picking a different winner, Babafoo,
described as a "Linked In" for
high school athletes. I'll have more
on the Pitchfest contest for you in
tomorrow's post |
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(including
photos of the winners), as well as photos
and highlights from tonight's big social
event, a Dinner Networking Party at
the Peterson Automotive Museum -
one of the world's best. |
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