Conferences are great places for sharing and finding new ideas. New trends and technologies are displayed and discussed. This is a great way to get inspiration for generic domain names and these days you don’t even have to attend the conference.
Conference agendas
Conference agendas are published on the internet well in advance of the actual conference. Some just list the titles while others give a one or two line description. These are great to look for key words or phrases. Here is an example:
Energy Efficiency for Commercial Buildings
4th to 5th February ‘09
London, UK
THE AGENDA
Throughout the 2 days you will have the opportunity to hear from your industry peers and discover the hottest developments in energy efficient commercial buildings :
•Developing an Effective Energy Strategy
•Reducing Electricity Consumption While Maintaining Productivity
•Evaluating Innovative Ways to Increase ROI in Shorter Time-Scale
•Effectively Measuring Carbon Footprint and Monitoring Energy Use
•Innovative Solutions and Best Practices in Reducing Energy Consumption
•Analysing How Cutting-Edge Technologies Can Radically Reduce Energy Consumption
•The Future – Understanding the UK’s Medium to Long-Term Energy Plan and Corporate Synergies
“Energy Strategy”, “Carbon footprint”, “Energy use”, “Energy consumption” and “Energy plan” are examples of key generic phrases from this agenda.
Conference abstracts
Conference abstracts are sometimes available for free. My favorite is when they are available through searching a database. Again using our Energy example, I can search for “Carbon*” where * is a wild card. This should return all phrases with “Carbon” in them. By seeding the search with a term you are interested in, you can maximize the chances of returning an interesting phrase.
Extracting terms
I usually extract the terms to Excel. I have a sheet for each topic I am interested in and so again using the example of “Energy”, I seed with the word and then look for words to combine with it. This way you can build up a list of terms and make various combinations.
Conference materials
Do not forget to look through any conference materials that are being distributed if you are going to attend. Also many conferences have a vendors section. A look through the vendor list and description can also give you ideas. With so many conferences covering a universe of topics, there are an amazing number of possibilities.
As always only invest what you can afford to lose.
