2005 TRAFFIC Conference
Hello folks, welcome back to DomainMasters. That was great of Richard to join us tonight. He had a lot of great information and I look forward to having him back. I’m really excited, as well, to bring on our next guest, Howard Neu, from Neu Law, you can go see his site at neulaw.com, that’s neulaw.com.
Howard’s been practicing lawyer since 1968, he was the mayor and councilman of the City of North Miami, past president of the North Dade Bar Association, he has clients all over the world and takes care of their domain-related issues, and helped put together the very first domain specific gathering for domainers, which was called Traffic, in October, at the Marriott in Boynton Beach. And it was a great event, and him and Rick Schwartz did a great job, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Welcome on board, Howard.
Howard: Thank you, Monte, nice to be here.
Monte: Hey, great to have you. So you’re a man of many hats it looks like. You wore all kinds of hats.
Howard: Well, I have formal hats, informal hats, porkpies, baseball hats, and particularly Internet hats.
Monte: Yeah, it looks like it. It looks like it. So, how was it being the mayor of North Miami?
Howard: Oh, it was fun, and very rewarding. We were able to get a lot accomplished for the city back in the 80’s, and that’s kind of like ancient history, as a former life, but it actually was somewhat related to my getting involved in the internet.
Monte: That’s great, that’s great. Well, let’s role right in to some of the domain-related issues. What I’d like to do is kinda throw it at you--
Howard: Sure.
Monte: --about what happened, what was your personal experience, and what happened with Traffic, why it was so successful, and what’s to come in 2005 for the Traffic Conference.
Howard: Well, it was successful because everybody who did attend, both from the sponsors and the domainers were there to number one make money, number two to network, and number three to learn from each other. And because everybody was there to work and not to just have fun in the sun, which they could have had also, and some did, they were able to accomplish a great deal, and that’s what made it successful partially. The second thing that that made it successful was that the hotel did an outstanding job in working with Rick and I in putting it together and making sure that everybody got white glove service, the food was great, the service was great, the facilities were terrific, and it all came together on a first time basis fortunately to make money for everybody.
Monte: Yeah, definitely.
Howard: [Inaudible]
Monte: And you know what else you guys did a great job with was the chemistry of all the people that came together, it was not only did people meet for the first time that really did--you know, literally there’s been millions of dollars of transactions done between the people in that room and most of which have never met each other.
Howard: Well, chemistry was very important to Rick, certainly, because he felt and I certainly agreed, that without the chemistry you can have all the networking and meeting and everything that you want and you’re not gonna get anywhere, but because we did it by invitation only, and which we’re gonna do again this year, we knew that the people who were there to listen and the people that were there to learn were also the people there to [inaudible] and they had that certain, as you say, chemistry that helped them communicate with each other and everybody benefited from it.
Monte: Right, and you had the right sponsors, too, the people that serve that community. Of course, we were one of them, but you had DomainSponsor, you had Fabulous, you had a lot of the key players that really are involved with the domain industry and making people successful, in terms of monetizing their domain names and protecting their assets.
Howard: Well, DomainSponsor.com really stepped up to the plate and they said we want to be there and we want to do it, and they did, Ron Sheraton did a great job, as did Fabulous, as did you at Moniker, Overture came in at kind of the last minute, but they also were very involved, as Pool.com was and--
Monte: Yeah, Google was there and, you know--
Howard: Google [inaudible].
Monte: [Inaudible] bunch of people.
Howard: We were very fortunate that the sponsors saw the opportunity to interact with their users, with the people who they did business with, and they could do even bigger business with, and that worked out very well for everybody.
Monte: Yeah, definitely. And so what’s on the agenda for 2005 Traffic Conference, and what are we gonna be doing different and what’s gonna carry on as kind of the same?
Howard: Okay, well, the 2005 is gonna be in the same location, but we’re taking over the whole hotel, so our attendance will more than double.
Monte: Wow, that’s awesome.
Howard: I’m sorry?
Monte: I said that’s awesome.
Howard: Yeah, yeah, we’re really looking forward to having a really good attendance, everybody’s been really excited and it’s--even before we even got the place and the dates, everybody said, you know, count us in, count us in, because we want to be there, ‘cause they did so well at the last year. DomainSponsor’s already agreed to be our diamond sponsor, and we’re gonna have two platinum sponsors.
One big thing different this year is that we’re extending it a day, so instead of starting on Wednesday, we’re starting on Tuesday, October 18 th, and going through Saturday the 22 nd. And we hope to incorporate, just prior to the conference on Tuesday morning, the 18 th, a golf tournament, and we except to have a sponsor for that, as well.
Monte: Well, you know, in case you didn’t know, I hit the ball in the 50’s, the 60’s and 70’s, I don’t care what temperature it is.
Howard: Yeah, I was gonna say, is that golf or bowling.
[Laughter]
Monte: That’s an old joke
Howard: Yeah.
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