“A badge needs to survive the conference. Three days, hanging around your neck all day and possibly all night (or getting shoved in a pocket when you hit the bar). After those three days, the lanyard needs to be intact and the badge needs to look like when you picked it up. Remember, the badge is likely the only object you’re going to need and keep. It’s the physical and long-lasting artifact that represents the conference, and if, after a day of use the badge looks crumpled and worn, my thought is, “They don’t give a shit about their conference and my experience is an afterthought.”
Totally agree.
“As I’ve written, the defining moment for a conference is not seeing the people you know, it’s finding the unknown. What I want to remember on the flight home isn’t how a speaker slayed. It’s the reflection on the incredibly unlikely sequence of random events that I happened to meet a hero of mine at a party at a bar that I never planned to attend. A conference is full of thousands of these brief, unlikely moments of potential, and it’s your badge’s job to make sure that they have a chance to occur.”
“‘Cause we got a little ‘ole convoy
Rockin’ through the night
Yeah, we got a little ‘ole convoy
Ain’t she a beautiful sight
C’mon and join our Convoy
Ain’t nothin’ gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin’ convoy
‘Cross the USA
Convoy
Convoy” -Convoy- C.W. McCall
MetroList Services is the largest MLS provider, geographically, in the state of California. This year they organized a bus tour where they brought over 650 MetroList members to the NAR Expo in San Francisco. How did they do it? Well Rubber Ducky they organized themselves a convoy!
I can’t think of any other MLS provider that has come close to bringing this many of their members to a national (or state) event. You gotta hand it to Dave Howe and Bill Miller for making this happen. NAR should give these guys some sort of medal or something.
Check out this video they put together highlighting the trip:
Well I wasn’t the only one to call for the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) to face facts and shutdown HouseLogic.com. At NAR last week Dale Stinton made what I think was a very bold decision and declared “Our consumer website is Realtor.com”. While I was a bit colorful in my remarks about the site, Rob Hahnwent long, but Danny Frank of the Houston Association of REALTORS (HAR) deserves a lot of credit for bringing the issue to center stage.
Word on the street other factors were involved with this decsion too. One of the strongest was Michele Serro. Michelle was the founder of Doorsteps, recently acquired by MOVE, Inc. Before breaking out on her own Michele spent over 6 years at IDEO, a design company with clients like Apple. I’m told Michele and her team were tasked to come up with a plan to bring HouseLogic in to the fold. And it looks like NAR liked what she and her team came up with. Great to see MOVE firing on all cylinders.
I was thinking how fitting that NAR’s conference and expo is being held in San Francisco this week. Not only a hub for technology and innovation but San Francisco is a place where the ground literally shakes from time to time. And things in real estate are getting shaken up.
The combined market cap of Zillow and Trulia is about 3 billion dollars.
The Really Alliance has all but declared war on MLS providers (or not).
Is there anything solid that we can hold on to? What’s a poor vendor or MLS provider to do in such a unbalanced world? What’s the “new normal”?
I don’t have the answers but, I’m optimistic about the future, and San Francisco is as good a place to start to look for answers as anywhere. My search begins tomorrow. See you there.
What got lost in the brouhaha on the last day of CMLS 2013 was what an awesome conference it truly was.
My hats off to Greg Manship of Intermountain MLS and Jay Gordon of Willamette Valley MLS. They along with both their staff pulled off an incredible event. I should also thank Sarah and the CMLS BOD of directors. All of us were a little worried about holding the event in Boise, ID. Turns out we didn’t have to worry, Boise is awesome and everyone showed!
I’m told the attendance reached over 580 participants, which is huge! While the buzz on the last day was the most talked about it the overall event was fantastic. The side conversations and networking were as compelling as the sessions. And I think I had 2 hours worth of “10 Minute Martinis”.
The publicity around the broker panel along with the location (Huntington Beach, CA) should make next year’s conference break all records in attendance.
I took some pictures at the event you can check out here on the Vendor Alley Flickr Site. Enjoy!
I’m heading out today to Albuquerque to the RANM (REALTORS Associaiton of New Mexico) fall conference. I’ll be moderating a panel on Listing Syndication. My panelist include Curt Beardsley from MOVE, Sara Bonert from Zillow, John Whitney from ListHub and Jason Reinking from Homes.com.
Brad InmanThis week I rented a house in Monterey with my sister’s family. It’s an old house built in the early 1900s and is the perfect place for cousins to run around and explore. In between amazing golf, sea kayaking, eating, more eating, and artisanal tequila I thought I’d hammer out a few thoughts about Inman Connect last week.
Inman News
My first thought was about the Inman News brand itself. After a year of some turmoil it seemed that many people were concerned if the conference, along with the site itself would last. In my opinion those concerns are baseless. You can’t agrue that the reporting on Inman News with Paul Hagey and Andrea Brambila has greatly improved. Their in-depth reporting and analysis has been some of the best I’ve seen written. Laura Monroe is also doing a great job on the agent side. David Stein, new President and General Manager of Inman News has also done a good job of shoring up the ship. They have also brought back the Alice Myerhoff (yay!) to help with Sales. So all things considered you can say that Inman News is strong as ever. Which is a good thing, as an industry friend told me, “The industry needs Inman.”
Connect 2013 SF
We sponsored a hospitality suite so I spent most of my days having meetings with brokers, MLS peeps and other customers. I did get to see the dot loop and CAR session (more on that later) and I was on the “app store” panel for the MLS track. So I didn’t get to see all of the sessions I would have liked to. But after talking to a few people at the show they felt the content was some of the best in years. Sure the telepresence robots are a bit too futuristic but remember this is Inman Connect, we are to open our minds to buying houses at Starbucks and our faces on an iPad rolling down a hallway.
I also heard from many that the woman who co-moderated most of the sessions needed to turn it down a bit (and I’m not just talking her microphone level). As I sat on the “app store” panel, ably moderated by Dave Charon from MRIS (he should do more of this, he is good at it), an audience member ask about how to make MLS data more “transcendental”, that got more than a few smiles (and laughs) from everyone. I’ll have to put that on jargon watch.
dotloop vs. C.A.R.
The session with Austin Allison and Joel Singer was on everyone’s mind. Most had made room in their schedule to attend the session. It didn’t disappoint. If I had to declare a winner I would say it was a draw with a slight edge to Austin from dotloop. He did a masterful job of demonstrating the issue with props; a cassette tape, a boom box and an iPod. But he lost me when he went on a personal diatribe of all the “sacrifices” he made starting the company (nobody cares Austin). Joel from C.A.R. was mostly on the defensive, and seemed physically irritated by some the questions from the audience. I still think both sides have room to grow on this issue. I was buoyed by conversations I had with Marnie Blanco who recently joined dotloop. Marnie is a smart person, and I know she doesn’t make decisions lightly. I think dotloop would benefit greatly by her experience and reputation by being the main company spokesman at these types of events and in the press.
Et al…
Trulia held a great party with mixologists at the ready to prepare your favorite drink (or a drink you never heard of.). And of course the RE Technology party, located next door to the famous Mitchell Brother’s Theatre (in case our Uber driver said, you “wanted to pull an audible”) was at the ready with a live band (Did you hear that John Heithaus has left MRIS and now spliting his time between BuyerMLS and his record label? Whoa!), for anyone that wanted to get their groove on. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the ListHub party which is always a good time.
In summary
It’s a great time for real estate. The market is up, and lots of companies investing time and money in the space. It reminds me of a framed quote I saw on a real estate agent’s wall in her office. The quote read as follows:
“God please let there me another hot real estate market, and I promise not to blow all the money this time.”
Gregg, Troy and AmyCongrats to Clareity Store for winning the 2013 Inman Innovator Award for Most Innovative MLS or Real Estate Trade Association App, Tool or Vendor.
Russ Bergeron
MRED took home honors for Most Innovative MLS.
Pete Flint Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia was named 2013 Innovator of the year.
