Whew - its 2:10 am, and I’m finally home. We were stuck in the plan for roughly 2 hours due to excessive rain.

Overall - great show. I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot.

But - lets start off with the one negative (or I guess two).

I listened in one the UGC (user generated content) panel. It was a conversation - which I much prefer so that I don’t have to listen to implicit (and sometimes explicit) sales pitches.

So the participants were ZipLocal, Local.com, SuperPages.com, and YellowBot. Now - I don’t want to be the enemy here, but exactly why were ZipLocal or Local.com even on the panel? ZipLocal has had UGC content for roughly … oh, exactly one month today (Dec 1). Local.com has UGC … where?

Regardless - there was a lot of hyperbole on how great and fantastic UGC was. Listening you would imagine you put up UGC, take out your cigar, and puff away with your feet on your desk while people trip over themselves to flock to your website so that they can make you billions. There was very little ‘but to do it properly is tough.’

So when it came to question time - I stood up and essentially asked: “We hear a lot about how great and simple UGC is - lean back and the money will come in. But this seems rather naive - I would imagine there is some effort involved. How do you actually get users involved and participating?”

So what was meant as a question to all four was answered by PremierGuide. But it wasn’t really - I heard about aggregating content and you need to work with everyone. How does that answer my question? While the moderator moved on I wasn’t satisfied. I re-asked my question - that answer didn’t answer what I said, and I wanted something more meaty.

SuperPages.com came to the semi-rescue. She agreed that it was hard, that it was tough, that they try to lead users with suggestions to help participate. I was hoping for more meat - rewards, ‘promoting’ helpful users, pushing away unhelpful users, and so forth. Essentially temper all the exuberance that was bubbling around. At the same time - this was Q&A time, and I can understand and appreciate the response she did give.

And secondly - why weren’t we allowed to ask Marchex any questions? My question I was going to ask:

As a company, you were formed to acquire Yun Ye’s portfolio of domains. At that moment, you were essentially a domain company. So while you are you still part of the domaining community, you have pretty much morphed into a local-oriented site. What do you intend to do with non-geo domains? Are you going to stick with parking them, sell them off, or is there a plan for some other division inside Marchex to develop them? And if your plan isn’t to keep them parked, what will you be doing with non-US geodomains like Beijing.com?

I’m still confused about who Marchex thinks they are (at domain conferences they rarely mention ‘local’) - is this a semi-identity crisis in play here?

As people sometimes lose focus - of all the conferences I’ve attended, this was the most successful one I’ve ever been to. I’m already planning a booth for next years. Still - wanted to start with the flaws before getting into the good stuffs.