Andy Sweet

Bang Bang Bang Bang, Vamanos Vamanos

I’ve had a song stuck in my head for three days.  I heard it on Sirius.  It’s by a band called Clutch.  I saw them live back in ’94 or ’95 opening for Marilyn Manson.  They’re still together and putting out great music.  Unfortunately, I can’t get the song stuck in my head from iTunes.  That’s torture.  Not being able to scratch an itch.

Here’s the video on YouTube. It’s called ‘Electric Worry’. Bang bang bang bang, vamanos vamanos.

TRAFFIC Conference

Been awhile since I’ve posted anything.  I’m a person of relatively few words, so taking the time to write out my thoughts in a detailed fashion is a laborious process for me.

Went to the TRAFFIC conference in NYC last week.  Awesome time.  I met so many great people.  I didn’t know anybody there when I arrived.  I sat down for breakfast by myself on the first day and was joined by Ron Jackson and his wife, Diana, of DNJournal fame and was later joined by Jeff Reynolds of AmericanFlags.com.  Jeff’s entrance into the world of domaining is fascinating.  I also got to meet Michael Gilmour (AKA Whizzbang).  Great guy with some excellent data.  It’s a little funny to meet these people whose blogs I read regularly.  Has a certain ‘celebrity’ type of aura.  It’s funny because here I used to work in the music business as a talent agent and I’d get to meet rock stars on a fairly regular basis and I was never particularly impressed.

I’ve been to the Search Engine Strategies conference numerous times.  I’ve been to the DMA conferences.  I’ve been to the Affiliate Summit conferences.  The TRAFFIC conference was the best yet for me.  And not because I was sitting in the room during the auction when we saw CreditCheck.com sell for $3 million and Seniors.com sell for $1.8 million.  It was interesting because what I saw was a room full of real opportunists.  A lot of people seem to think that opportunism is a bad thing.  Those are usually the people that didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.  A lot of the folks in this room were what I imagine the gold prospectors in 1840′s California or early Las Vegas would be like.  There were some people that were a little rough around the edges.  There were some people that had gotten very rich very fast and were having fun showing it off.  Most of these people were not your Ivy League, country club, old-money types.

But I definitely got the sense that the wave of evolution is under way.  The MBAs are moving in and taking over.  They smell the money and are going to take the domain game to the next level, which may not be a bad thing.  Domain development is the way to go.  I’m not sure how holders of large portfolios will be able to develop on that scale, but I’m sure somebody will figure it out.  (Marchex?)

I can’t wait for the next TRAFFIC conference.  I wasn’t in the auction this time.  I went for the learning and fully got my money’s worth.