Sinead Hernen reports on Internet World 2008 and Nadeem Azam on the Acorn Domains’ gathering, both held in central London last week.

Internet World 2008. Bottom-right picture shows Yagmur Guven and Dan Powell from CJ with Sinead Hernon from Azam Marketing (right)
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Internet World 2008 played host to over 300 exhibitors and 200 presentations, as thousands of visitors keen to increase their digital business knowledge and contacts headed from throughout the world to the most attended internet-related trade show of the year in the UK.

I was one of the aforementioned people, eager to leave my ‘red-brick’ shelter up north and travel down to the big smoke, excited to learn in particular what the next big thing in online marketing is going to be and meet up with my good colleagues Nadeem and Ather as well as make some new friends along the way.
 
The usual suspects were there on the day including Affiliate Future and Valueclick, although surprisingly, no sign of any other prominent affiliate networks. However, this gap was promptly filled by many new and up and coming players to the European affiliate arena such as Linkshare and Intela.
 
Internet World 2008 in London's Earl's Court. Nadeem Azam and Sinead Hernen from Azam Marketing are shown on the bottom left.
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Those that did put up their flags made sure they weren’t missed, with Affiliate Future outlining their idea of ‘Successful Affiliate Marketing in the World of Web 2.0’ to a full audience and CJ’s Dan Powell having his say in an expert panel discussion about ‘Monetising Web 2.0’ which was hosted by Avail Intelligence and Forrester Research.
 
After spending several hours walking around the stands and sitting in on a few seminars, I didn’t feel as though I was any closer to finding the holy grail of affiliate marketing but I did have the pleasure of making new acquaintances with the guys from Linkshare as well dropping in on a couple of old associate’s from my days at Littlewoods Shop Direct. I also had the fortune of meeting several very useful contacts. Definitely a case of being in the right place at the right time.
 
 
Acorn Domains London Gathering. Top Left: restaurant in Holborn. Top Right: Famous domainer Edwin. Bottom Left: representatives from Sedo. Bottom Right: Murray Newlands, Cleverat Director, with three representatives from Sedo UK and Germany
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The British domain industry held its biggest ever gathering at the ‘My Old Dutch’ restaurant in Holborn in London in an evening organised by Acorn Domains and Memorable Domains. There was a healthy mix of domainers who owned many of the most valuable domain names in the UK, those relatively new to the game, and representatives from various domain parking companies such as Sedo, Namedrive and Fabulous.
 
The meal consisted of traditional Dutch pancakes which were delicious but left me and most people rather bloated: they are about 40 cm in diameter! This was followed by drinks paid for by the sponsors.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the gathering which provided the chance to ‘talk shop’ with domainer friends and it was a thrill to see people such as Jonathan, our fantastic Sedo Account Rep., for the first time in the flesh. There are many sub-communities that come under the ‘online marketing’ fold and it is fascinating to see that, although they are all intertwined, each sibling has its own ways of operating, unique personalities and fears/excitement about the future.
 
Talking of which, I often get asked what the next domain TLD goldrush will be. My suggestion is to focus your crosshairs on .me domains which anybody will be able to apply for in a few days time. You may register the domain names through Godaddy who were selected by the government of Montenegro as one of the three partners to launch the TLD.

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Related:   Read All About It: Our 2020 Round-Up and 2021 Plans