Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

See you at Inman Connect

Looking forward to see many of you at Inman Connect in San Francisco next week. I get there tomorrow evening. I’m also participating in a few sessions.

Dan and I will be at the CEO Summit at the Four Season on Wednesday morning. I will be helping lead a discussion on CRM around 10:00am. So if you got an invite I’ll see you there.

The agenda is jammed pack with some pretty cool stuff, here’s a few things I wanted to highlight.

Wednesday, July 10th

Welcome Address: 1:30PM -Hilton Union Square
I try to never miss Brad Inman‘s Welcome Address that starts at 1:30PM at the Hilton. His talk is “Be Future Proof. Own Tomorrow.”

Face Off: Working Through the Gnarly Details of the Digital Transaction: 5:10PM -Hilton Union Square
Joel Singer of CAR and Austin Allison of dotloop go at it. Should be fun.

Cocktails@Connect: 5:30PM Hilton Union Square Grand Ballroom A
Never go big on the first night.

Thursday, July 11th

MLS Success Track

Lots of goodies here. I like them all.

I’ll be on the panel of “The MLS “App Store:” Vision or Delusion? at 2:20pm, Dave Charon from MRIS is moderating. Lots of good panelist including Mike Wurzer, Amy Geddes, Katie Wethman, and Chip McAvoy.

My company, W&R Studios, is also hosting private meetings at our hospitality suite at the Hilton (where we are giving away the best Gift Bags in the industry for all our meeting participants). We have a few open spots on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. So if you are a Broker looking to differentiate yourself or MLS provider looking for a way to generate non dues revenue, email me and we’ll schedule a time to hook up. greg [at] wrstudios [dot] com.

See you there!

MREDpalooza lives up to the hype.

I’ve been down on trade shows lately. Most of the time the organizations putting on an event don’t do a very good job. Poor attendance, or lack of traffic, etc. But Russ Bergeron and his crew at MRED showed us how its done.

We had our single best day for Cloud CMA Power Pack orders. I also spoke to a few other vendors and heard the “best day ever” comment more than a few times. The place was rocking for 7 hours straight. I probably left some money on the table by not having another person in the booth with me, it was that crazy.

But the biggest take away I had was how MRED just raised the bar on how I look at other events and where I’m going to spend my money in the future. We got a helluva bang for our buck at MREDpalooza. I can think of other events, I did last year, that had LESS than half (way less!) the attendance of MREDpalooza and cost me MORE money.

Those phone calls are going to start with something like “MRED had over 3,000 people attend their conference and I spent X, how many do you expect?”

MREDpalooza registrations approaching 5,000

This is going to be HUGE! 5,000 is a big ass number. Most tech conferences don’t get this many agents, and certainly no state association trade shows that I know of. Hell, most real estate franchisor shows would love this kind of response.

The biggest single sales day I’ve ever had as a vendor was at an event put on by Russ (remember the Pond in Anaheim?). No pressure!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to be a resource to other vendors to share what events gave you the best bang for your buck. Well MRED isn’t giving you a bang, they are giving you a BOOM!

Super excited about next week. Chicago here I come!

Did you hear?

I’ve been super busy and there has been a lot of news to catch up on. Here’s a few links to stories I think are worth checking out…

Bob Gottesman has been selected as RESOs new Executive Director, effective May 2013. Check out Matt Cohen’s Live Blog transcript to see this and all the RESO Spring Meeting news.

Todd Carpenter’s new site Realty Nex.us is fast becoming one of my favorite industy sites. He recently published a “Special Report” – “Why online consumers love Zillow and Trulia more than you.” It’s free and worth the read. I’ve also added the link to the my “Read This Now!” header.

Speaking of special reports Rob Hahn’s (aka The Notorious R.O.B.) has another report, “[PREMIUM] Move, Trulia, Zillow: Q1/2013 Report – The Narratives Take Shape”. You need to be a premium subscriber to access the content. I haven’t had a chance to read this one yet (you know you need to carve out a big of time for Rob), but his first two Premium reports were excellent.

And if you really need to get caught up on the MLS public facing website debate look further than Inman News for great content and discussion.

Ever heard of the Dymaxion House? How about a conveyor belt linen closet? Now you have.


[via SWISS-MISS]

NAR Midyear recap link pack

IMG_4290What a week. The meetings, the parties, the dinners, and the drama is over. Or has it just begun? Here are a few takeaways.

CMLX was a hit!

The Council of MLS'(CMLS) new certification program, CMLX, was held last Tuesday. I spoke to several who attended and the feedback was terrific. I know that a lot of people put a tredmendous amount of effort to get this thing off the ground so congrats to all of them for pulling off a successful program. You can find out more here.

Quote of the week:

Dale Stinton

“You can’t ever talk about a national MLS without getting into trouble. You can’t talk about the number of associations without getting in to trouble. You cant ever talk about professional standards without getting in to trouble,” Stinton warned. “What I’m here to say on behalf of leadership is we’re ready to get in trouble.”

When I read this quote the first time I had to quickly check VendorAlley.com to see if Dale had stolen the brass balls on the right. They’re still there.

The big news you didn’t hear about.

There was some HUGE news that didn’t break at the conference. I’m surprised that the secret was kept. More on this later in the week.

Unleash the hounds.

Was it confusing to anyone else to hear early in the week that people loudly applauded “taking back realtor.com” to then hear this past weekend NAR may let realtor.com “do more“.

BOD Policy

The real reason NAR included MLS public facing websites as a basic service.

This may be obvious to everyone else, but imagine if the NAR Executive Committee amendments stuck and MLS providers could no longer charge members or promote their public facing websites. What would that have meant for realtor.com? Isn’t that NAR’s “public facing website”? Or was that the final goal of big brokers all the time?

Real Estate is back! Lets party.

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My thanks to ListHub for throwing a great party. Cloud CMA was a co-sponsor and the party was off the hook!

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Speaking of parties…

It’s John Heithaus’ rock and roll fantasy, we just live in it! Once again John’s band got everyone’s groove on at the RETechnology party. Thanks to John and Victor for throwing another great event.

Attention your real estate tech conference has been hacked. RealTech SF 2013

reesio teamI got a call from Mark Thomas, CEO of Reesio, a new startup focused on the transaction management space. “I would like Vendor Alley to cover my real estate conference, if you do a write up I’ll give you a free pass to the show.” At first I was bit surprised he wasn’t asking me to exhibit (Cloud CMA). But, Mark didn’t know about Cloud CMA, he was just reaching out to real estate technology blogs for coverage. After learning more I told Mark that I also ran a real estate software company and thought it would be a good idea to exhibit. “Cool!” was his reply.

I was intrigued. Why would a vendor would host a conference? Sure many real estate vendors host a seminars, like the Max Pigman show at Realtor.com, but a conference with other vendors, speakers, the whole she-bang? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.

What Mark came to realize is that instead of coughing up a big check to Inman or someone else to become the “platinum sponsor”, if he put on the show himself, he could in effect control the event and become the platinum sponsor himself. In developer parlance, he “hacked” the whole notion of how and why you put on a real estate conference. Crazy? Crazy like a fox!

realtechsf13I’m told they sold 300 tickets, I think the average I heard was above $100 each. He had some great speakers including Paul Levine, COO of Trulia, Drew Uher of Homelight, and a “Start-Up Alley” with over 20 different new startups in the real estate tech space: Storefront, Cozy, Wigwamm, iManagerRent, GoREFI, just to name a few. Where the hell did they find these companies? I hadn’t heard of over half them. And some of them were super impressive!

Did I sell a lot of Cloud CMA? Not really. But I was super impressed by Mark and how he almost singlely handily put on a quality conference. And I was inspired by talking to some fresh new entreprenuers in the space.

Mark’s DIY work ethic was incredible and if he can bring that type of energy to Ressio, they might just have a shot.

T3 Summit recap

logoI went there expecting something different. The program promised Las Vegas, Stefan Swanepoel, “TED like” talks, and Inside the Actor Studios interviews. Hell, you had me at Vegas.

First things first, the event was held at The Ravella Hotel, which used to be a Ritz Carlton, at Lake Las Vegas. Which is a $50 to $60 dollar cab ride around 25 minutes from the strip. The event started at 6PM (which meant you had to eat dinner prior) with a introduction from Stefan and a 90 minute, 160 slide deck, from Darren Hardy (the publisher of Success Magazine). I heard mostly positive reviews of Darren’s talk but felt sorry for people who flew in from the East Coast. When the speech was over we were treated to a cash bar (Stefan felt is was important for the event not to be “commercialized”).

The next day started at 8am (now I felt sorry for West Coasters like myself) with a keynote from Stefan. I have to say I’m a big fan of Stefan. He truly cares about the industry. I always enjoy his Trend reports, and even read his book, Surviving your Serengeti“. I love his speaking style and enjoyed his keynote. He has a brilliant way of breaking down complicated concepts. I playfully tweeted that Stefan would make a perfect Bond Villain. With his accent, his penchant for talking about high tech devices, all his was missing was an ugly scar and a henchman to take over the world!

A couple highlights of the event were Stefan’s “Inside The Actor’s Studio” interviews. His first, and in my opinion the best, was an interview with Ron Peltier of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. The interview was very personal with pictures of him when he was younger and his family. It felt like you had a few round of drinks with Ron. At some points during the interview Ron even got a little emotional.

Like the real “TED talks” they were hit and miss. I enjoyed Rob Hahn’s “Black Swans or Real Estate” presentation, Jim Marks brought some energy to the stage but my favorite was from Curt Beardsley, when he started with a reading from a Ray Bradbury book and somehow tied it all together with real estate.

The panels were also mixed with some good feedback and stuff we had heard before.

By far the weakest part of the event was the emcee. While I’m sure the women is a nice person in real life, she was awful. To me a good emcee should be likable, funny, keep the audience engaged, and keep things rolling. Sadly, that person was not on stage, I saw a lot of eye rolling from the audience members.

Stefan wrapped up the event with an interview of Logan Kugler, a self described “space entrepreneur”. Since I’m a bit of a space geek I just loved it. A great mix of youth, enthusiasm, and inspiration.

So I expected something different from the T3 Summit and I got it. It being Stefan’s first event of this type, they still have some rough edges to work out. But overall I thought the event was good. I think this type of inspirational, deeper thinking type event has a great niche. With Stefan’s leadership I look forward to their next iteration.

Reesio puts on a show

reesio-logo-5648354179ec9f4cce32c4ea8b1795eaLater this month I will be attending and my company W&R Studios will also be exhibiting Cloud CMA at a conference put on by new real estate software company, Reesio. Reesio is a startup less than a year old. They are in the crowded space of transaction management. They felt a good plan get the word out was to put on a conference. The conference is called RealTech SF 2013. Here’s what Mark Thomas, Co-Founder and CEO of Reesio has to say about the event.

“As part of the journey that we as founders of Reesio have gone through with our company, one thing that we’ve noticed is how difficult it can be for real estate professionals to easily find out about new technologies that exist out there to make their jobs easier. In addition, there’s a tremendous dearth of publicity around real estate technology in general, despite the fact that real estate can be one of the more painful processes of any industry. We have 2 main goals that we’re trying to accomplish by hosting and putting together RealTech SF 2013:

1) To educate and highlight to real estate professionals the latest and greatest technology initiatives currently going on within the space that can help them grow/manage their business and enhance their careers.

2) To bring more awareness about real estate technology as a whole to people outside of the industry, and to show that the products that companies are currently working on are solving truly painful experiences that people are currently having to go through.”

The show is only $25 to attend, so pretty reasonable for an agent. The speakers seem to be a mix of industry vendors and brokers. I like the hustle approach Reesio is putting forward, plus Spring in San Francisco? I’m in!

Cloud CMA joins MREDpalooza

MRED-Logo1Cloud CMA Part of MREDpalooza June Madness
REALTOR Associations Also Step Up To Support Major Real Estate Tech Expo

“The buzz on MREDpalooza has been incredible, and with good reason,” said Greg Robertson, Co-founder of W &R Studios. “You’ve got a great location, hosted by the one of the largest MLS providers in the country. I can’t wait to see the show Russ and his team will put together.”

My prediction is that the attendance at MREDpalooza will be HUGE. The single best day I’ve ever had, in regard to software sign ups, was an event put on by Russ. My expectations could not be higher. Please don’t sign up for this event. I don’t want any competition.

MREDpalooza!

“MREDpalooza is coming Tuesday, June 18, 2013! This is MRED’s vendor expo, with thousands of MRED real estate professionals descending upon the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois (right by O’Hare Airport). Our customers will be coming out to meet YOU and learn about YOUR product offerings, in an entertaining and exciting atmosphere that will include just the right mix of learning and fun. We are getting great feedback and strong interest from a number of industry stalwarts already. Make sure you are a part of one of the biggest happenings of 2013, along with many other vendors and associations who will be spending the day with us and our MRED real estate professionals.”

Anything MRED does is always top notch. Count me in.

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