Helmuts
told us over 360 attendees from around
the world registered for this year's
Summit, an event that also moved into a spacious
new
venue - London's Business Design
Centre.
Above
& Below: Exterior and interior
shots of the two-level Business
Design Centre in London where Domain
Summit 2025 was held September
2 & 3. Every photo in this
article is courtesy of Jay
Shaw-Baker. We're firm
believers in the old adage that
"a picture is work a thousand
words" and Jay's excellent work
will show you how true that it.
Domain
Summit Founder Helmuts Meskonis
(at right above) and the conference's
outstanding Moderators, Tess Diaz
(at left above) and Charlotte Riedl
(below) kept the event's vastly
expanded agenda informative and on
track throughout its two-day run.
44
business sessions featuring nearly
50 speakers were presented over
the two-day Summit, providing
attendees with an astounding wealth of
information on virtually every topic relevant
to today's domain industry and how to
succeed in it. With the opening day
audience in their seats (above), the
big show got underway at 10am Tuesday,
Sept. 2 with an opening Keynote
address from Team
Internet CEO Michael Riedl (below).
Domain Summit ran on two tracks
this year - one on the Executive
Stage (where Michael appeared) and
the other on the Growth Stage.
To make things easier for you to
follow, we will start by running down
each day's sessions on the Executive
Stage in order, followed by notes on
every Growth Stage session from the
same day.
Below:
Another highly anticipated keynote at 10:35am,
brought Freename
Founder and CEO Davide
Vicini to the
Executive Stage. Davide discussed Freename's
commitment to user-centric models, community
engagement, and technological reciprocity
between traditional and decentralized
ecosystems, positioning Freename as a
leader in the evolving Web3 domain space. 
Above:
Next up at 11am was Filip Borcov,
the CEO of one of Domain Summit's new
Global Partners, Site.pro.
Since the company launched in 2014,
Site.Pro, has become a premier
white-label website builder,
providing services that have
revolutionized the web hosting
industry worldwide.
Below:
ICANN
was also well represented at Domain
Summit by Chris Mondini, VP for
Stakeholder Engagement & Managing
Director for Europe. Chris's 11:30am
presentation - The New gTLD Round: Updates & Strategic Insights
- gave attendees a peak into the next
round of new domain extensions coming
in 2026.
Above:
The afternoon sessions got off to a
great start with a Noon talk from InterNetX
CEO Elias Rendón Benger. AI was
among the timely topics Elias touched
on. In a recent interview Elias noted, "This technology is
transforming the domain industry, from
predictive analytics in domain
valuation to AI-driven security
measures. At InterNetX, we recognize
AI’s decisive role as a disruptive
trend and are making it part of our
DNA, compelling us to place it at
the forefront of our discussions and
explorations."
Below:
One the world's most successful domain
brokers, Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com)
was up next. Larry, who was
interviewed by Tess Diaz, has been
involved in many of the largest domain
sales of all time. He also has a
fascinating life story that
happens to be the subject of our
latest Cover
Story - How a $3,000 Domain Sale Kept Larry Fischer in The Game and Led to a Legendary Career Filled With Multi-Million Dollar Deals.
Above:
As I mentioned earlier, ICANN's next
round of new gTLDs is coming
next year which has generated a high
degree of interest in how one goes
about becoming the owner of their
own Top Level Domain. In this session, Domain Summit had the perfect
person to provide the details on that,
it.com
Domains CSO Joe Alagna,
who, along with it.com Domains
Founder Antony Insarov, literally
wrote the
book on the subject!
Below:
With Domain Summit being held in
London, another timely presentation
followed, a .UK Zone Report
provided by Kieren McCarthy
(Non-Executive Director, Nominet).
Above:
At 2pm, Benjamin Louis, CEO of Sparkling
provided advice on How to Be A "0 Abuse"
Registry.
Sparkling is the company responsible for
managing the .alsace geographic TLD
which represents the Alsace region in France.
In this role, he collaborates closely with
ICANN and AFNIC to ensure the successful
operation of the .alsace domain.
Below:
Next the hot top of New TLDs was looked at
from yet another angle thanks to Stuart
Fuller's presentation - Are you ready for the second gTLD application round? Stuart,
the CCO of Com Laude,
played a big role in the first round of the
new gTLD program in 2012, when he worked with
a number of global brands in creating dotBrand
strategies and use case scenarios.
Above:
At 3pm Lars Jensen, Founder and CEO of
ShortDot Registry
took the stage. Lars's company successfully
acquired and operates five new
TLDs, including .icu and .bond.
As a serial entrepreneur Lars has also
founded many other popular Internet
ventures, WebUnited
and Nicky.me
being examples of those.. With that background and
expertise his presentations are always
filled with actionable intelligence
that anyone who hears him speak can
benefit from.
Below:
At 3:30 attendees learned about Catch.club - how we do it different
in a presentation form Szilard Foldhazi,
Vice President of Operations and Product Development
for registrar NameSilo and Catch.club,
a promising new drop catching service
for domain investors.
Above:
At 4pm, entering the home stretch
for the first day on the Executive
Stage, the audience got some sound
advice from Dixon Jones,
Marketing Director of Majestic.com.
Majestic maps the web to bring
you the link Intelligence data
you need to dominate your market.
Established in 2004, Majestic is dedicated
to serving worldwide backlink data and
analysis.
Below:
The honor of anchoring the Executive
Stage leg of day one went to Munir
Badr, the Founder of both aeserver.com
and the Domain
Days Dubai conference.
Munir provided a MENA Region
Report. His session summary
noted "The MENA region isn’t
just a market; it’s a realm of untapped
possibilities and opportunities
that a very few have taken up so far.
Now, it is a ripe situation for this
region to prosper digitally and in an
unprecedented way. Just for example,
the .AE ccTLD landscape grew over
20% in the last year alone."
Above:
Throughout the day, attendees took the
opportunity to sit down at one of the
many tables in the Exhibit Hall to
compare notes, make new relationships
or build on existing ones.
Now that we've covered day one
(September 2) on the Executive
Stage,
let's rewind the clock to that
morning and run down what happened on
the Growth Stage.
It opened at
11am when David Barnett, a
Brand Protection Specialst at Stobbs,
covered how to guard against Domain
name use in brand infringements and
fraud. Next, Robert Prime
(MrPrime.com) provided an insightful session
on How to use a Domain, AI and
Marketing to develop a brand.
Above:
At 12 Noon, Sedo
Senior Domain Broker Dave Evanson
(at left), one of the best in the
business for the past 20 years, sat
down for an interview with fellow
industry veteran Frederick
(Freddy) Schiwek.
Dave shared some tips on how he rose
to the top of the brokerage game and
continues to produce big sales now,
like the $1 million deal for ZH.com
that he brokered in August.
In
the next session Andrew Kaye,
the CEO at Transpact.
com,
covered Ultra Low Cost
Convenient Escrow - Secure and easy
Payment. He was followed by Open-Xchange
Product Manager Michael Slusarz
who delved into Dovecot,
an Email backend with 200 million+
users and a 90% market share of IMAP
servers.
Above:
At 3pm it was Philippe Boos's
turn to take the stage and fill
attendees in on Domgate,
a domain registrar that offers 1,200
ccTLDs and provides a popular Brand
Protection Hub.
Below:
Meanwhile, networking continued
out on the Exhibit Hall floor
where Jochen
Kieler (Probe.net) is
listening intently in one of many
conversations going on there.
Back
on the Growth Stage, the sessions that
followed Philippe Booth featured Freddy
Schiwek (Hosting.de) with Pros
& Cons of Commercial and Self-Developed
Hosting & Domain Registration Platforms, Dmytro Kohmanyuk (Hostmaster UA) with a
.UA Zone Report and a
presentation about Freename and
WebUnited from Gherado Varani
(Head of Business Development, Freename). I
will have more about Gerhard in the upcoming
Wednesday (day 2) run down as he also hosted a
session that day.
The
Growth Stage train kept
rolling Tuesday with Chris Chaplow (Andalucia.com)
providing advice on Developing, monetizing and growing a website with the perfect geo domain
and Jonathan Dsouza (Siteplug)
detailing How Siteplug mastered
the art of monetizing misspelled
domains.
Above:
In the final day one session on the
Growth Stage September 2, Dreyfus
Founder and Managing Partner Nathalie
Dreyfus, in a perfect example of
Domain Summit's Euro centric focus,
discussed French domain names:
actualities, case law and strategy.
Below:
While most Domain Summit attended were
from Europe and the UK, others came
from all over the world, including
Jack Dai (at right) whose company,
DN.com,
had a vivid presence in the Exhibit
Hall.
Domain
Summit Day 2 (Wednesday, September 3,
2025)
Just
when you thought no stone was left
unturned, the sun came up
Wednesday morning and you realized
that was all just one day at
Domain Summit. Still one more very
full day left to go, so let's dive in.
Above:
The Executive Stage opened at 10:30am
Wednesday with a Keynote from Gandi
CEO Arnaud Franquinet. Gandi is a leading
French web company offering domain name
registration, hosting, email, and security
certificate services to both retail and B2B
customers. With an impressive €70 million
turnover - over 50% of which is
generated internationally - Gandi is
one of the strongest players in the global
internet services industry
Below:
Takayuki Ito, Regional Sales
Manager Europe for the GMO
Registry was in the spotlight
next. A lot of big things
have been happening at GMO (the administrator
of .shop and .tokyo) and
Takayuki brought attendees up to speed on what
that are doing now.
Above:
The flow of valuable information flows
swiftly at Domain Summit, so many shot
videos at compelling sessions so they
could fully absorb the advice once
back home.
Above:
At Noon Wednesday Raedene McGary
(VP, Registry Services, Tucows)
explained to attendees What you should expect from your TLD backend provider -
ICANN requirements and more.
Below:
Next, Seb de Lemos, CEO of
World Host Group (Hosting.com, Upmind and
more), took the stage to talk about
WHG's diverse range of services. The
global web hosting platform operating
over 25 brands and powers more
than 2 million websites for
680,000+ customers. With a team
of 750 across multiple continents,
WHG ranks among the largest privately
held hosting groups in Europe and
globally - particularly by brand count
and infrastructure reach in the SMB
and white-label segments.
Above:
At 1pm Kalin Karakehayov, CEO and Founder of
Seo.Domains,
was the featured speaker. Kalin's
company has a 120-member team
and holds around 60% of the
world’s supply of aged
domains. With over 100,000 domains
in stock, they’ve sold 29,000+
domains to customers in over 100
countries.
Below:
At 1:30, it was serial entrepreneur
Richard
Lau's turn. Over the past
20+ years Richard has had an
incredible string of successful ventures,
including his role as the original
Founder of NamesCon, followed
by Logo.com, Resume.com
and many others. Richard is also a
strong advocate for charitable causes.
Next
up at 2pm, Dr. Nigel Roberts presented
an enthralling talk titled The Hero's
Journey. Few go back in this business
as far as Nigel who founded Island Networks®
in 1996, the operator of the top-level
domains .GG (Guernsey) and .JE (Jersey), and
provider of domain name services to
registrants, registrars, registries, and
clients around the globe.
Below:
At 2:30 Vuksan Rajkovic (Head
of Sale at the .ME Registry)
provided a .ME Zone Report.
.ME is the country code top-level
domain (ccTLD) for Montenegro,
a small Mediterranean country with a
population of just over 600,000.
Recognized as the most personal
domain on the market, .ME is
globally available for registration
without restrictions.
Above:
Given the current tragic war situation in Ukraine,
there was an especially high interest
in seeing Andriy Khvetkevych's
triumphant business talk - Breaking Borders: NIC.UA’s Journey from Ukraine’s Leading Registrar to a Global
Powerhouse. Andriy is the
Founder of NicNames (a
company integrating blockchain and AI
into domain services) and Nic.ua
(Ukraine's leading domain registrar).
Below:
Domain Summit attracted an impressive
number of industry pioneers, including
one of the most widely-known of them
all, Monte Cahn. Probably
best known for his domain auction
powerhouse, RightOfTheDot.com
these days, Monte focused on another
of his ventures that he is especially
excited about in a talk about .HipHop:
Taking Over and Tuning Up a TLD
- bringing the final day on the
Executive Stage to a fitting
conclusion.
Now,
it's time to rewind the Day 2 clock to
get the lowdown on what happened
Wednesday on the Growth Stage.
It opened at 10am with Site.pro's Filip
Borcov's presenting a one-hour
course on How to do profitable
A/B testing with Hosting and Domains.
Two workshops followed, one from Majestic.com's
Dixon Jones and another on the hot
topic of Domain
Fractionalization from Freename
Head of Business Development Gherhardo
Varani (below).
Above:
At 12:30 Broker Talk
attracted a crowd and not
surprising with it being conduced by
two o the best - Sedo's
Mark "Mr. Premium" Ghoriafi (left)
and Above.com
General Manager Nathan Parker.
As of this writing, Mark has rung up
four of the 20 biggest publicly
reported domain
sales year to date.
Below:
After a 1pm talk about The Story of Realtime Register
fron CEO Berend van Dalfzen, Jim
Davies, Solicitor and Director at 360
Law, provided some useful
advice on How to manage (.co.uk)
a Domain Name Dispute. What to do when
things get too hot in the kitchen?
The
curtain came then down on the Growth Stage
with a very active Q&A Session with
Nominet Non-Executive Director candidate - Kieren
McCarthy. Soon after, Domain Summit
Founder Helmuts Meskonis bounded back
on the main stage to join Tess Diaz in
officially drawing the 2025 event to a close
and thanking everyone for coming - many from
very far away - to make this year's event such
a memorable one (below).
While it is time to
say goodbye to London (for now), it's
also time to say "See you soon, Nairobi!"
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