As the founder of Nordic Domain Days, I’m thrilled to share that we’re rapidly approaching our milestone 10th-anniversary event in April 2025. This feels like the perfect moment to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve had and how far we’ve come.

The event, which originally saw the overwhelming majority of its audience come from its namesake region, has evolved into a global domain industry event with partners and attendees worldwide.  

And, while Nordic Domain Days will always be held in a Nordic country and pay homage to the region that allowed the event to flourish, we could not be more proud of what NDD has become. Every attendee and partner we have had over the years is part of why it's all possible. 

But, back to our history and a look at our numbers. 

The event was first hosted in 2015 as a part of the Swedish IT conference "Internetdagarna" (The Internet Days), which was (and still is) held yearly by "Internetstiftelsen" (The Internet Foundation), the registry for .se and registry backend for .nu.

However, that is not how things started, as the Nordic Domain Days was a continuation and evolution of the "Domain Name Track," which had been a part of the Internet Days since the late 90s. At the time, I collaborated with Cloud & Registrar System Provider Atomia and Registrar Name ISP as partners to bring the first event to life in its new form. 

The first event had 5 partners and 120 attendees in total, which was, in our humble opinion, a success, as the "Domain Name Track" had no partners and usually no more than 60-80 attendees. The attendees represented a total of 50 companies from 7 countries. Roughly 85% of them were from the Nordic region. 

Notable speakers included Uli Retzlaff (then at PIR, now at DENIC) and Paul Vixie (then Farsight Security, now Amazon Web Services). 

Since then, Nordic Domain Days has been hosted six more times, taking a two-year break from the pandemic. For each time hosted, the event has seen a growth at or above 20% in terms of in-person attendees, companies represented, and nationalities. 

In 2020, I left my job at the Internet Foundation to join my current employer, iQ, and Nordic Domain Days became a stand-alone event. With a first event having to be canceled due to the pandemic, the event was in for a rough patch, but we pulled through and was one of the first events out the door once travel restrictions started to lift. 

Fortunately, the domain name industry was ready for events and joined us like never before. The first stand-alone Nordic Domain Days saw the biggest growth in the event's history and gathered over 250 attendees in Stockholm. 

Since then, the NDD team has continued to iterate on our recipe for what makes a good Nordic Domain Days, and we are now faced with our 10th anniversary. We have come a long way, from 120 attendees from 7 countries in 2015 to more than 350 attendees of 55 nationalities from over 180 companies in 2024. 

In 2024, 35% of the audience represented a Registry, while 40% came from the Registrar side of the business. 31% hailed from the Nordic countries, and 41% from the rest of EMEA. North America contributed 19% of the audience and the APAC region brought the last 9%. 

We expect to reach our milestone and goal of 400 attendees in 2025, the size we envision for Nordic Domain Days going forward. 

NDD is not about profit. It's about bringing the global domain industry together in a comfortable and inclusive environment to build lasting relationships and further the cooperation and business of our industry. 

We will always continue to honor our region by hosting our events in one of the Nordic countries, having local industry representatives share their experiences on stage, and showing off local cuisine and culture. 

We have long since stopped being a conference only for the Nordic countries and started being a conference in the Nordic countries for the global domain name industry. 

Keeping our entire audience in a single room, including everyone in more or less each part of the event, without it feeling overcrowded, and without having people queue to get to where they want to go. More importantly, anyone in the audience should be able to strike up a conversation with anyone else they meet at Nordic Domain Days and find that they have a reason to keep talking. 

This is what we have come to, and this is where we intend to stay. The NDD team loves the domain name industry and all of its interested parties, and we will continue to organize this event for them.

For you!