Answering Five Questions regarding TRAFFIC Vegas
Answering the prior week’s questions.
The prior week I posed five questions that would be answered at the TRAFFIC conference in Las Vegas. We now have the answers:
1. Is Latona’s ready for primetime? Unfortunately not. Although I’m not sure why it didn’t work, I know there were internet connectivity issues with the hotel. It also appears that the web application got slammed with traffic and couldn’t handle the load. I’m sure Rick Latona will fill us in when he knows.
This was unfortunate. Latona did a good job driving attention to the auction, and the room was packed when the auction began. But I give him credit for making the call to postpone the auction.
2. What were the ten worst UDRPs of 2010? It hasn’t been posted online at UDRPWallofShame.com yet, so I’ll write regarding it when that’s live. I explained to the audience why I thought OpenDental.com was the worst. But really, I also believe Versa.com was equally deserving.
3. Will a focus on networking pay off? I’m not fully qualified to answer this question. Thanks to a flight booking error, along with bad weather, I arrived following the initial two networking sessions. But I talked to a couple people who gave the networking sessions high marks. The crowd definitely seemed to gel throughout the conference.
4. Will Rick Latona’s team rise to the challenge? Let me break it down a little.
My big complaint is that it rained more in Vegas the week of TRAFFIC than it usually does all year. I guess Rick forgot to call in a favor on that 🙂 Seriously though, other than the airport backing up the rain went away by Thursday evening.
I personally got a lot out of the show from individual meetings, and enjoyed the parties. Attendance was light, mostly due to scheduling the conference immediately ahead of DOMAINfest. But I’ve been to smaller domain conferences in the past, and I do my best to take advantage of the size. It’s much easier to network at modest shows.
The auction snafu (see #1) put a damper on the conference’s momentum Friday, but within a couple hours most people had shrugged it off and were enjoying drinks at Gold in City Center.
I also commend Rick Silver for doing a good job leading sessions.
All-in-all I’d say a lot of effort was put into this conference, it had a lot of high points, was a lot of fun, and I suspect any kinks will be worked out quickly.
5. How will Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu handle sitting on the sidelines? I had a chance to briefly chat with both Rick and Howard. I suppose the biggest change was Howard, since he is usually charged with leading all of the sessions — a big undertaking. I chatted with Howard and his wife Barbara Friday evening at Gold, and they both seemed relaxed and were having a great time.
