I wonder how often domain names are taught at the university level.

This thought was in the back of my mind as I developed and gave a guest lecture in the Fall of 2020 to students of Dr. Sara Steffes Hanses at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh on consulting. I have had the honor to present to her classes in the past to share my wisdom and lessons learned over the years as a consultant – and how I think as a consultant even when I work for a firm. Where this lecture was virtual, my plan was to deliver it with the same enthusiasm as I have in the past.

The class I gave the guest lecture to is part of a program called Interactive Web Management, or IWM. It is a unique hybrid of business, technology, marketing and journalism, and students in the IWM program get a well-rounded education and experience across all that encompasses a Web site today. Especially in today’s world of hyper-specialization I see this program as a great way to offer the big picture, and allow graduates to choose their specialty or specialties.

Timing for my class was around the first meeting students have with their “clients,” non-profit or university organizations for whom they will consult to, which is the basis of their semester work. As I have given this guest lecture before, there are many elements that are continued. That being said, I fully re-evaluate it based on my own experience and the marketplace since the last lecture.

This is also why I introduced “extras” a few years ago – topics that were not core to the lecture but related and important nonetheless. For one of my extras this time, I chose domain names. If you have read anything else I have written here at The Hot Iron, you know I work a lot with domain names and have opinions and advice on them. I decided to cover domain names as an “extra” as many may have some familiarity with them, but not all aspects.

Two slides were dedicated to domain names, as you can see from the presentation linked and embedded. Where the bullet points were brief, there was a lot of substance I spoke to. As an introduction, I reaffirmed likely to all what a domain name is and how you can use it. I also talked about the selection of a name, giving an example of how one friend and former client, Foresight Childproofing, came up with their primary domain name, ChildProofHome.com. I then concluded this with talking about the various top-level domains, or TLDs, available, and recommended people have a great experience with working with domain names at Name.com.

As the first slide focused on registering a new, available domain name, I could have stopped there and felt good about the knowledge I shared. However I decided to go deeper and explore with them the world of the domain name aftermarket – when a domain name you desire is already registered and is available for registration at a premium price from a broker. I feel if people know very little about domain names in general, they are completely clueless about the aftermarket. Here I described what it is, and shared stories of how I acquired domain names from the aftermarket for clients in the past. I also recommended they explore DomainMarket.com, a larger and reputable marketplace.

I have shared the slides to my guest lecture here for all to review and “leverage” for their own use on SlideShare, whether for work, academia or personal use.

Deconstructing Educating on Domain Names

There’s no time like the present for a teaching moment. As a guest lecturer, it is your role to contribute something unique to the class – whether it’s a unique topic or point-of-view. Bringing a heightened awareness of domain names to this class was my way of offering both. Did it resonate with the students? I can’t say for sure, as most had their cameras off.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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