Highlights from Austin Domainer Weekend — Pictures and

Snapshots from the first ever Austin Domainer Weekend.

This past Friday and Saturday we had our first ever Austin Domainer Weekend. My original idea was to have a domainer dinner in Austin. But I got lots of requests to host it on a football weekend, so I obliged.

We had regarding 30 people for Friday night’s activities and a somewhat smaller crowd for Saturday. Most people attended from Austin, with a few other Texans and even some visitors from California and Michigan.

The event kicked off Friday night at Iron Cactus restaurant on Austin’s famous 6th Street. The restaurant is known for its good margaritas and tequilas, and that certainly helped get things going for the night. The dinner was sponsored by Moniker/SnapNames as well as BigJumbo (which I work for).

Above: Sipping margaritas at Iron Cactus

Next we headed over the Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar courtesy of the fresh Aftermarket.com.

Above: Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar on 6th Street.

At midnight the night was still young but it was time to move on. Frankly, the rest of the night is somewhat of a blur. But I don’t think many people woke up early on Saturday.

That was OK though, since the football game got moved back from an original 1 pm start Saturday to a 7 pm kickoff. That gave everyone time to hang out in Austin on their own Saturday. Or sleep in as it may be.

The Texas Longhorns aren’t playing well this year. But the upshot was I was able to cobble together a block of tickets for Saturday night’s football game. Traverse Legal generously bought tickets for everyone attending the event, and we also got into the TicketCity.com tailgate with the tickets.

Above: Tailgating ahead of the Texas vs. Oklahoma State football game.

Traverse Legal founding attorney Enrico Schaefer does something neat for his kids when the turn 10: they can go on a trip anywhere they want. One of his sons became a fan of Texas Longhorns football when Enrico was working on a case in Austin. So he chose to come down for a football game for his trip. He showed up to the tailgate decked out with a pretty stellar body paint job. (Hopefully I’ll get a picture of it to post.)

Next we headed to the stadium for kick-off.

Above: 100,000 domainers showed up to the game. Ok, they weren’t all domainers.

Now recall that we were able to get a block of tickets to the sold out game since Texas isn’t playing well this year. And yeah, they didn’t play well again Saturday night. But it was still fun hanging out with fellow domainers watching football.

I’d like to thank everyone who attended. I’d also like to thank the firms that sponsored the event, making everything free for attendees. And a special thanks to Lisa Box of Moniker/SnapNames for helping me organize the event.