Some good points brought up, some are too broad and in my opinion not easily to bring about.
Here would be my first thing, I have had these conversations with friends regarding information and blogging in domaining.
Domaining is not that interesting, it's not, when someone makes a big sale people love it and people get really excited when they make their own sales. Setting landers and getting called a low life bottom feeder when doing outbound is not that fun.
But there is only so many times people can say at a conference,
Dot com is king
New gtld's have an uphill batte, ( in private they say, they are trash)
The registry reps saying the opposite how they are the future
List your names with a buy it now to increase your sales rate
Parking is dead, so develop, that's like saying for most oh you own the hospital real estate, well you should also go to medical school to benefit from all angles.
Only so many times you can auction off good names for great reserves or great domains for hope I get lucky once in a lifetime prices.
Who are these end users you speak of?
I kid, but seriously, an end user is potentially every person on the planet. Other people don't care enough about domain names to drop $1,000 or $2,000 to attend a conference. If I am the CMO at a Fortune 500 you don't think I know that if our name is Orange Tech it would be great to own Orange.com?
What if a bunch of "end users" start saying "you are all a bunch of squatters that create nothing and the government should have put an end to you years ago" or "Oh so that's what you paid for that name? I am not paying 1,000 times that so please stop emailing me."
Only in domaining do people believe no one else gets domain names, the conversations I have read for 20 years basically all go something like, These companies are stupid, they pay $10,000 a month for rent but won't buy my domain name for $50,000" or "Companies need to wake up I emailed Microsoft and they just don't get it, to which their friend say "Bro they own over 70,000 domain names, they understand domain names.
The live auction is looked at as who wants to be a millionaire? Or could be called who wants to waste a lot of people's time with outrageous reserves?
The auction could switch it up and say, this year no reserve, you list it it will sell no bids just under the reserve to feign interest, no nothing just names selling.
Now look before anyone owning a premium name yells, "You think I am auctioning off my prize LL.com for no reserve? FU!"
No and I wouldn't, that's why the auction should switch it up and make it all no reserve, people are paying 25% commission, let's put on a show.
FREE
The conferences are never going to be free, Rick is not putting on his meet up for free, (nor should he in my opinion) he is not looking to make money but he ain't saying, "y'all come to Asheville and I will show you some Southern hospitality" I remember I got a text when Rick added a couple activities sponsored by GoDaddy and the person was like why isn't everything free? Because GoDaddy not going to make that big in an investment, where three people told me they are only going to get facetime with Rick and hopefully shake Mike Berkens' hand. GoDaddy knows everyone there already a client, why would we pay for the whole meet up?
For a sponsor they will pay some money at a conference but the juice would never be worth the squeeze to pay for the whole thing.
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@biggie said people can always start their own, but it's a big job. One most don't want.