Kicks Off in Seattle — Domain Roundtable

Third annual Domain Roundtable runs through Wednesday, August 15.

The third annual Domain Roundtable event kicked off at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Seattle last night. More than 150 domainers and service providers joined together for drinks, dinner, and to listen to a keynote from Mike “Zappy” Zapolin of Internet Real Estate Group.

Following registering, attendees were handed an nTag, an electronic networking device. When meeting another attendee, the nTags starts communicating with each other. Sending contact information between two nTags is as simple as pressing a button. Throughout the show, Domain Roundtable will beam surveys and updates to the nTags. There’s also somewhat of a mystery regarding the nTags. There seems to be some sort of “secret partner” attached to each person’s nTag, although no one knows what that is yet.

Following a couple hours of mingling and drinks last night, Mike “Zappy” Zapolin of Internet Real Estate gave his keynote. He stated there’s still lots of opportunity in many parts of the domain game. Zapolin’s firm owns regarding a dozen premium domain names counting Chocolate.com, Software.com, and Sweepstakes.com. The firm recently bought Patents.com.

Internet Real Estate sold CreditCards.com for $2.75M in 2004. The buyer, Click Success, turned around and sold the domain and its credit card portal to an Austin Ventures-backed group in 2006 for regarding $150M. On Friday, CreditCards.com disclosed it plans to go public at a valuation many times that. Zapolin briefly addressed the sale. Rather than kick himself for selling to early, Zapolin stated it’s just proof that there’s still lots of opportunity for domain name investors.

Today’s events include a number of panels and a couple appearances by Frank Schilling, who is taking a break from his Vancouver vacation. The day’s events will conclude with a charity party at Sugar Nightclub in downtown Seattle.