March was an extremely event-full month for the XYZ Team. Our travels and initiatives spanned 3 continents and landed us some great coverage at one of the most recognized festivals in the world. See what we were up to last month in our March event recap!
Early in March, we had the pleasure of sponsoring ANova Hacks held at the University of California, Berkeley. ANova Hacks is a student-run hackathon that brings together high school students from across the Bay area for a 10-hour coding event.
Not only is ANova Hacks a programming competition, but it features workshops throughout the day to teach students how to code. In fact, several participants had no prior coding experience, but still turned in completed projects at the end of the day. You know the XYZ movement is in full-force when the next generation is building their first-ever website with a .xyz domain instead of a .com! We couldn’t be more proud of ANova Hacks mission, and we’re glad each participant was able to come away from the experience with a .xyz domain, XYZ swag, and invaluable coding skills. We look forward to sponsoring their next event!
Next up was ICANN 58, where our Global Director, Shayan Rostam, headed off to Copenhagen, Denmark to meet with our registrar partners about upcoming marketing initiatives and to share some big news. We can’t say anything publicly yet, but if your registrar didn’t have a chance to meet with XYZ at ICANN, be sure to contact us ASAP – you’ll definitely want to hear this!
The standout event of March was by far the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas. This was our 3rd time in attendance, and this year the #XYZsquad did it bigger and better than ever before!
If you were at SXSW, chances are you ran into the #XYZsquad parkouring, breakdancing, and taking thousands of pictures with attendees throughout the streets of Austin. You probably also saw our infamous 3D glasses in the crowds, with people checking out the XYZ 3D Lab on their phones. In fact, the #XYZsquad was such a hit that they were covered by Fox 7 Austin, Spectrum Reach’s Kernel, Comcast, and the official SXSW and Bravo Network Snapchat accounts. They were even the main highlight of our Scavenger Hunt! The #XYZsquad has now become a mainstay of SXSW, and they are already gearing up for next year! Be sure to check out the full blog post here.
SXSW wasn’t the last that we saw of the #XYZsquad in March. Shortly afterward, the #XYZsquad was off across the ocean to Wuxi, China to participate in the Wuxi Marathon.
The Wuxi Marathon consisted of 30,000 runners and attracted over 170,000 spectators from all over the world. The #XYZsquad participated in the event, running the entire 42km (26 miles), all while raising awareness for .xyz in China. We want to tip our hats to all the runners at the event, and congratulate everyone who participated for their perseverance. Check out our full write up about the marathon here.
Despite our global popularity, we like to stay involved in the local tech scene throughout Los Angeles, which is why we attended the TechX & Expo in Studio City, CA.
TechX brought together local tech startups and businesses to showcase their products and services. It was a great opportunity to learn about the newest technologies coming out of our backyard, and also encourage them to share their ideas with the world on their very own .xyz website. Thanks for having us TechX!
After an incredibly busy March, Team XYZ wrapped up the month by hosting an event of our own – The SoCal Domainers & Cybersecurity Professionals meetup!
This was our third time hosting the event, and it’s something we now look forward to hosting at least once a year. This was the first meetup to also host local leaders from the cybersecurity industry, which meant we could not only talk about domains, but also share some the proactive measures XYZ is taking to mitigate abuse. We always enjoy catching up with old friends, and we’re so glad we could make new ones too! We hope everyone had as great of a time as we did.
The XYZ Team was all over the world in March, but as always, we are already planning our itineraries for next month! Are you attending an event that you think that #XYZsquad should be at? Let us know on Twitter @XYZ!
XYZ is proud to share about the many incredible members that make up the XYZ community! We encourage you to do your own research before using the products and services of the websites we feature. The information about products and services contained in this blog post does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by XYZ.
