Got back home earlier in the AM today, got some sleep, now slowly will get back to my day to day activities again. For us at RMG, the TRAFFIC show, as any of the past domain shows, was a success.
The question is how come it is so for us and not always is for others? What makes it work for us and what makes it a failure for others? Why would we NEVER have a problem with TRAFFIC pricing and complain about pricing? What do we SEE that others don’t?
Including the DNZoom folks, RMG team at TRAFFIC this time around was eight. Think of costs, you are not only talking about show tickets but also about flights, hotel rooms, food, and entertainment. Not a cheap proposition to say the least. How can it all be justified? In one word: Value.
The next natural question then is: What is value?
“A measure of those qualities that determine merit, desirability, usefulness, or importance.”
During the show, as I’m there to conduct business, I tend not to attend sessions. This time around it was a bad decision as reportedly, Dr. Kevin Ham of Reinvent Technology, a friend and a business associate, gave a “standing Ovation” heart to heart talk, completely unexpected. Lesson learned – next time, I will pay attention to the schedule a little closer.
Back to value, sometimes it is expected, and sometimes, as in the case above, it is not. As I’m negotiating some deals with our domain name portfolio the question of value comes up often. In my eyes, quantifying value has to do with the seen and unseen forces of nature, it can never be fully quantified. How then do we measure value? How do we quantify value? The answer to it, sometimes we cannot. Life has a funny way to reward us with gifts long after we forget about details which then may have been considered a disappointment, but as they often say “looking back at things…”, they were not.
The “value question” is bigger then this post, it is thicker then a book. In the simplest form of it, it is ROI. You pay X and you make a greater number, Y. The more complex form of value is not to judge ROI in only dollars and cents, but judge ROI in the bigger picture. Monetary ROI is still part of the equation, but not the only part. Other parts may include positioning/alignment, brand value, introductions, unique access to opportunities, karma, the unexpected, and others.
The bottom line we all have different ways to understand and judge value. Value isn’t a one dimensional proposition. After all is considered, it comes down to your gut feeling: Do you FEEL it? Not to say you will always judge value correctly, but if you are smart enough, if you pay attention to details, you will learn with time what works for you, what doesn’t.
Source: Posted on The Conceptualist by Sahar Sahid — Reprinted with permission — February 27, 2008
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