I can't believe that I'm doing this again. Yep, I'm sitting in the airline lounge while I await QF6 to Singapore and then onward to Melbourne. The lounge is packed and yet there isn't a sound as everyone stares completely wrapped at the TV while Spain and Russia battle it out in the Euro Cup.

Since leaving Paris I headed off to Luxembourg for a couple of days with the guys from EuroDNS and Domain Invest. Freddy, Marcus and Xavier are fantastic guys who combined have an incredible expertise in domains. It was only a few years ago that EuroDNS was a tiny little registrar and it now is a thriving business with multiple successful business units.

I spent a wonderful afternoon at Freddy's house overlooking a valley that the Moselle river ran through the middle. It was a relaxing day with great food and company. Katherine (Freddy's wife) was a wonderful host and spoilt us all rotten with her very tasty strawberry cake.

Incredibly the grand duke of Luxembourg decided to have his birthday while I was there so we headed into the city for dinner. After stopping at a bar I had a pleasant surprise when I found out that the girl behind the bar was Australian. I said to Marcus and Freddy that Australia was conquering the world one bar at a time :-) After all, if you control the alcohol you control the world!

The next day I headed off to Cologne to catch up with my friends at both NameDrive and Sedo. NameDrive was a fantastic place and had the chaotic frenzied feel of a start-up that's really going places.

Greg (CEO) related a story that when they first started no one had chairs as he said that they needed to "earn their seats" by getting results. Fantastic story and I couldn't help noticing that they all now have chairs so they must be doing something right. I really enjoyed my time with the team at NameDrive and have earned a new respect from me for their focus and efforts in what they are doing.

Sedo was a sharp contrast to NameDrive but nevertheless just as impressive in a different way. Since I'd last been to Cologne Sedo has more than doubled in size and have put in place an excellent account management team supported by top notch managers. Although it was a lot more corporate than NameDrive I couldn't help wonder whether a better organization for both companies could be formed by merging them together. It's probably just a pipe dream though. All I know is that I genuinely wish both Sedo and NameDrive every success.

So here I am......sitting in the Frankfurt lounge, answering emails and hoping that Russia will win the soccer so that they can play Germany on Sunday night.

Domainer meeting in Paris has finished and ICANN is in full swing but I find myself on the TGV fast train to Luxembourg. The day started with a group of domainers including Jay & Susan from Domain Intelligence (ie. TrafficZ), Dan from Fabulous, Roland from Domain News plus a few others getting together to head off to Versaille.

Versaille was an incredible statement to the height of opulence and extravagance from the bygone Kingly eras of France. There's nothing like priceless works of art, incredible furniture and gold to get your attention. The day was hot and after walking what seemed miles down into the lavish gardens Susan, Dan and I had the brilliant idea of hitching a ride back on a golf cart driven by a really helpful Versaille employee. He offered to take us back almost to the front gate as long as his boss didn't see, ahhhh France, you've just got to love it! We felt like the kings of old as we saw face after face longingly look after us as we sped past. After a nice relaxing lunch we headed back to the hotel where I picked up my bags, flagged down a taxi and headed to the TGV train station. This is what brings me to the here and now. It's really the first chance that I've had to really think about how Domainer Meeting went.

Other than a few minor delays at the beginning the event itself was really well run and congratulations should be extended to Melanie from EuroDNS and the rest of the team for their supreme efforts. Contrary to what some people believe it's not easy putting on a show with hundreds of international guests.

One of the challenges I often face at events like Domainer Meeting is getting a chance to experience some of the sessions. I often end up going from meeting to meeting doing some great business but missing out on some excellent content.

For example, I heard that Dan Warner's session on domain economics was outstanding. Dan spends days working through statistics and thinking about the domain industry and his insights are invaluable. I feel really fortunate to call Dan a great friend and there is nothing quite like sitting down with him and discussing domains over a nice bottle of wine. He would have to be one of the most generous guys I know with his time.

I also had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with Jothan Frakes and his wonderful wife Melissa. Like Dan, Jothan is an exceptional thinker and is happy to spend hours with you to share about his thoughts on domains. Spending time with Jothan is always a tremendous educational experience and his breadth of knowledge on ICANN related issues is just incredible. By the way, Jothan turned 40 in Paris so welcome to the 40+ club!

I also had the pleasure of getting to know both Michael and Sig from Parked.com. Both of them a great guys and a lot of fun! Michael was a part of the group that did a café crawl around Paris (you've just got to try that some time) and Michael joined Dan and I on our journey to Sacre Curr and La Defense (IT Museum).

Conferences are about people not events. Whenever I go to a conference I'm meeting with old friends, getting to know new ones and conducting a great deal of business in the process. If you plan on running a transactional business where you do one deal after another and keep on moving on then you really don't need relationships. On the other hand if you plan on building your business then I can think of no greater way to do so then by spending time with people and really getting to know them.

I keep on saying to my own business partners that there is no more important thing to do in the domain industry then to get to know other domain owners. It's just so much easier doing business with a friend that you can trust rather than a stranger. In th meantime if you attended the conference then I would encourage you to send an encouraging email to EuroDNS....they did a great job!

Tomorrow I'm off to Domainermeeting in Paris. It's another long flight but being from Australia you get pretty used to those! It will be great to catch up with all of my friends again and also get to know a lot of new European friends while I'm there.

In a year that's saturated with conferences it initially appeared that Domainermeeting was going to have a difficult time getting numbers and sponsors to support the event. This definitely is not the case! The domainer meeting website is filled with sponsors all wanting to get exposure to the European market. I haven't had a chance to catch up on the numbers of delegates but from all reports Domainermeeting appears to have gained a lot of support from Europe, USA and other international countries (such as Australia). I'm really looking forward to meeting every there!

Backing Domainermeeting right up against ICANN was a great idea as international travelers only had to extend their trip by a couple of days to take in both events. I'm sure that both EuroDNS and Domain Sponsor have pulled out all the stops to ensure that the event will be an outstanding success.

So what's on the agenda? As you would expect there is a welcome address by Xavier Buck from EuroDNS followed by Phil Corwin speaking on behalf of the ICA (Internet Commerce Association). The first morning covers new TLDs and ccTLDs and there should be an interesting session on the situation in European parking.

I'm particularly looking forward to Dan Warner's address at 1:45pm which will be covering the topic of Domain Economics.

It will be nice having a late start the following day after the Domain Sponsor party as it will give the panelists on at 9:45 (including yours truly) a chance to get our thoughts together on "building an online brand/domain". A couple of other sessions on the second day stand out for me. The first is the one on tax optimization (a subject close to all our hearts) and domain investing. The auction will then start at 2pm and run until 7pm.

All in all the agenda and the various speakers look really interesting and with the added difference of having a largely European perspective I'm sure that DomainerMeeting will be an outstanding success. After the event I'll write a blog on what I thought the highlights were. Until then I'd better go and pack!

I've just received a skype message from Dan Kimball of dnZoom. He's a great friend and one of the guys who are constantly trying to get me to move to Louisville, Kentucky. One of the really nice things about our industry is meeting great people like Dan and Sean (also from Louisville and dnZoom) who are both really genuine people who you can trust completely.

So what was the Skype message all about? He just let me know that Bido (of which dnZoom is a part) is launching its first auction this Wednesday. It's been a while coming but I'm sure that the wait will be well worth it.

Bido's auction system is pretty unique as they guarantee the price for a domain which effectively underpins its value. I'm sure that this alone will cause a few people to check through their lists to find any suitable names to sell.

Bido also only charges an 8% fee but the most unique aspect to their auction system is that they will be having independent experts valuing the domains up for sale. Anyone can apply to become an expert but I'm sure that they will be applying some sort of criteria to the process. After all, an expert needs to actually be an expert.

At the moment Bido plan on auctioning off one name per day seems a little light on. I would expect that policy to change pretty quickly as the business model gears up. The challenge that they will have will be to get enough experts to value domains as the volume of auctions increases.

There is one thing for sure, Bido is definitely a shot across the bow of existing auction companies. It will be interesting to see the competitive reaction from these companies to a domainer entering the marketplace with a fairly unique auction business model. All in all I think that it will be good for domain owners having another player in the market and I wish the Bido team all the best in their venture.

We had the Queen's birthday long weekend in Australia last weekend and my family and I went south east of Melbourne to Phillip Island with some friends. If you make it to TRAFFIC Downunder in November you'll have to make the trek down to Phillip Island and take in some of the Australian coast line.

We had a great time cooking, eating, drinking and playing games with the kids and each other. It was nice knowing that my domains were working hard for me even if I wasn't doing a thing . The joys of a domain induced passive income!

On Tuesday I had another flying lesson and after a brief time with my instructor he told me that I was ready to go solo into the training area (not just the circuits). I taxied down to the holding point, made my radio calls and was given permission by the tower for "take-off".

It was an awe inspiring site looking down the runway as the planes engine roared into life as I moved the throttle into the fully open position. At about 60 knots I rotated and was air born. It wasn't long until I'd reached 500 feet, turned off the fuel pump and kept climbing to 2,500 feet as I turned and headed to the training area.

Once my altitude was over 2,000 feet the air was pretty calm which made life a little easier for me. The first task was to practice stalls. There is nothing quite like cutting power and pointing the nose into the sky, hearing the stall warning go off and then the whole plane buffeting just prior to the nose dropping like a dead weight. It sure beats the heck out of a roller coaster! It's always nice to know that pushing the throttle fully open can pull you almost instantly out of the stall.

Another exciting maneuver is steep turns. After increasing the power a little I placed the Piper Warrior into a 60 degree turn and gently pulled back to ensure that it didn't end up in a spiral dive. The G-forces are a real surprise as the centrifugal force drags your arms down and you feel the blood rush towards your feet. It was a nice feeling leveling the wings once again.

All too soon I once again made the appropriate radio calls as I headed home and directed the plane straight in on runway 35 left. After doing a near perfect landing (don't happen that often yet) I taxied back to the parking area, jumped out of the plane and felt an intense sense of satisfaction! I'd done it!

Since taking up flying I've been amazed at the number of domain name owners that are also pilots. This caused me to think that there really must be something about a domain owner that causes them to go against the flow and do things that others don't do. After all, who in their wildest imagination would have thought that domaining would be profitable, and yet, here we are. In the meantime, I'd better get studying for my next test!

For the past few articles I've been using poker as the analogy to explore the options for parking companies when negotiating with Google. As we have seen the balancing act that Google has established between themselves and the parking companies is critical and it just so happens that the easiest solution on how to manage it is to ensure that there are a number of parking companies (players) at the table which are all roughly the same size.

This creates competition in the industry and will mean that Google's potentially biggest problem is continuously fighting for market share rather than wondering how to stop them from cheating at the game. You've only got to look at the creative ways in which some of the parking companies endeavour to migrate more traffic over to themselves to realize that the competitive round of market forces is alive and well. Google has managed a situation where it's better to fight with your neighbour rather than with the Giant in the corner.

The worst thing that could happen for Google is if all of the parking companies decided to stop trying for market share and joined forces.

From the poker game perspective this would mean that all the players get up and leave the table but decide to move all of their remaining chips over to the one remaining parking poker player and create mega-park. What's going to happen now?

The final player has resources to build an advertising exchange and explore other technologies, processes and innovations. This final player decides to play two tables rather than just the one.

Google and Yahoo don't particularly like this but the problem they face is that without this player there's no game and as we explored earlier that wasn't a good outcome for either of them. When they try and say that they only play exclusive games the remaining parking player can just say "no". After all, two games need to be played.

Consolidation is the big danger for Google. If there is consolidation of parking companies or massive domain portfolios then Google runs the risk of losing their market dominance. Google needs the traffic but mega-park has multiple options where they can monetize it. This is where I believe that many people will finally realise that the defining unique resource in the domain industry is traffic and NOT advertisers.

We've been exploring Google's role in the domain industry and have used the analogy of a poker game to gain further insight into how to beat Google at the informational game. The poker game consisting of parking companies and Google continues to unfold....

Now let's explore the extreme scenario where Google abuses their position and manage to win every hand that they play. It wouldn't be long before players started deserting the game to go elsewhere. The first weakness of "perfect information" is that the person with perfect information can't be seen to be abusing your position.

This means that when negotiating with Google the single most important item of leverage that needs to be gained is the item that allows a parking company to expose the abuse of "perfect information". A number of the parking companies have managed to negotiate audit rights into their agreements but strangely haven't acted upon those rights. My impression is that there is a fear that if they do activate the right then it will lead to a more difficult time in the next round of negotiations with Google.

One of the nice things about a game of poker is that no matter how much you know what the other guy has you don't know what will come out in the flop, turn and river. These community cards are like new technologies, business processes and ideas that periodically bubble to the surface and make a losing hand suddenly the winning hand a the table.

Once again, here's the challenge for Google. If you squeeze the parking companies too hard then they will bolt for another poker game. I think that Princess Leia in the movie Star Wars summarised it best when she said to Darth Vader and the Grand Moff Tarkin, "The more you squeeze the more star systems will slip from your grasp."

Google needs to keep the parking companies interested enough to keep on playing the game. The problem with keeping them interested enough is that you can potentially be funding a future competitor because no one likes playing a game where the other guy is cheating.....no matter how often they've been allowed to win. It's just not very fun any more.

After a brief sabbatical from writing for a few days I decided to continue the series on the domain industry and explore the concept of negotiating against someone that has perfect information. You can view the earlier articles in the domain industry series by clicking here.

As we have already explored Google has built its empire on the basis of data manipulation and being able to do this faster and better than the other guy. From this basis Google has extended their understanding of the online advertisers supply chain from the advertisement being placed right through to the conversion rates.

It really doesn't matter whether the traffic went via a domain, a Google property or a publishing partner. Everything is tracked and recorded each step of the way by the Google number crunching system.

I enjoy playing poker and it can be a good analogy that may expose some of the weaknesses in Google's informational armour. Let's imagine that Google is playing Texas Holdem with all of the parking companies.

Once all of the cards have been dealt the player representing Google calmly gets up and walks around the table looking at each players cards. All the other players are asked to hold up their hands so that the Google player can get a better look. This is similar to having the informational advantage that Google has carved out at the moment.

The information gained from this walk is invaluable but does it allow Google to win the poker game? After a couple of hands a few of the players get sick of being beaten due to the Google player's unfair advantage and decide to join another table. This happens to be the Yahoo table. This also means that there are less players around the poker table at which Google is playing.

The first challenge for Google is that just because you have perfect information doesn't mean that the other guy won't leave the game. In order for Google to maximize revenue they need to ensure that everyone wants to play poker with them.

If all of the parking companies decide to leave the poker game at the same time then Google's perfect information doesn't help them at all as there isn't a game being played anymore and Solitaire isn't very fun when compared to poker.