I just received a note from Oversee.net announcing that the keynote speaker for the one day DomainFest conference in New York City on August 18th will be David Mason, an AOL Senior Vice President. David Mason works with the AOL Content Platform, and he joined the company when AOL acquired StudioNow, which he co-founded in 2007 and developed into the world’s largest web-based video creation platform. In addition, Mason started the company that turned into Buy.com. You can read Mason’s Linkedin profile for more information.
There are going to be somewhere around 150 people (give or take) at the conference next month, which will be held at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. The event is scheduled to run from 10:30am to 10:30pm.
To register for the event, visit DomainFest.com, where you can also see the full agenda and list of speakers and sessions. The cost of registration is just $175, and it includes a full lunch and a dinner networking party. If you live in the New York City area, you should consider attending this conference.
AOL…AOL…AOL… oh ya ok I remember them. Haven’t heard that name in 15 years.
No offense against Mason, but is a no-name senior VP at a had been company really best for ANY conference in NYC? I can understand if he is on the panel, but a keynote is supposed to draw people into the conference.. something to make us excited to go.
2 possible explanations.
The organizers are on a shoe-string budget. Anyone who accepts the job as keynote is simply doing this to pad the resume and get larger speaking engagements. I doubt someone as successful as Mason is doing this for the money.
The other explanation is quite simply that nobody wanted the job. That’s much more concerning to me. If Domainfest can’t sway a top exec at Godaddy or an advertising guy like Donny Deutsch, how relevant should domain conferences be to people who are NOT domainers?
Something needs to change quickly, or this industry will never be taken seriously.
@ Rick
I disagree about the speaker. It’s a one day event, and I didn’t even think about a keynote speaker. I am going because I want to meet with colleagues. I will probably skip the keynote and meet outside the conference area during his speech. Nothing against him, but there’s a lot of people to see and not much time.
AOL is big into the auto generating content business like Demand Media. Check out their Love.com. The big brands are realizing they can get away with a lot in the search engines because of their size and trust. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on domains and content generation.
Not to mention AOL also owns Advertising.com and has been litigious lately coming after Ad.com and Advertise.com for trademark infringement.
If I weren’t on the other side of the country, I’d be at the show.
Very good points as usual Elliott 🙂
I will be there. I figured it would be an excellent opportunity to observe and learn a few things while flying relatively under the radar.
I wonder how much cash these ISPs generate from traffic
from typos, etc. 🙂
AOL runs Seed.com and StudioNow.com – both are content generators – which is a big need in the domain industry. Develop the real estate…AOL might be able to help, they employee thousands of writers and videographers.
Only the ignorant think AOL is only an ISP. They’re huge when it comes to content – over 100M UV/mo on their network
Since GoDaddy basically “owns” the powers-that-be at ICANN, we have NO interest in listening to one of their executives blather on.
@terrell
80% of AOL’s content is original content and not auto generated compared to Yahoo and, as you mentioned, Demand Media which is at about 10%.
If you guys haven’t seen Seed.com or Studio Now you should check it out. Amazing content, especially Studio Now, for cheap.