I tried making a comment on his post but the captcha image seems not to be working so I’ll make it here.
I think Bob Bemis is correct in that if RESO, doesn’t deliver MLS providers will find another way.
But I disagree that it won’t be a vendor solution. Creating a standard where apps can be released nationwide thru multiple MLS providers at once is a huge incentive.
I’ve heard of several vendor iniatives towards this (a la an API) and I hope that some of these will be made more public at CMLS. [Crossing my fingers and toes!]
CMLS is just a couple days away so I thought I would put together a quick check list for those of you attending:
1. Check out http://CouncilofMLS.com. It’s the official website of CMLS and has been recently updated with new content. Plans are to have the discussions at CMLS conference to be continued at the website afterwards.
2. iPad. While I’m still carrying my laptop I’m finding my iPad to be indespensible when attending conferences of this type. It always on, easy to carry, allows me to check my e-mail, as well as an impromptu demo device.
3. If your rocking your iPad than having a Verizon MiFi or something similar is a must. Hotel internet connections in meeting rooms are notoriously flakey. Plus you have the costs of in-room internet access. Trust me, its worth it.
I’m not sure my liver will be able to handled this…
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CMLS 2010 – THE Multiple Listing Service Conference of the Year
LISLE (August 19, 2010) – When the Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS) scheduled its annual conference for this fall, they had no idea how big a conference it would turn out to be.
A little background first. Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) is this year’s host, and CMLS 2010 is being held at the Westin River North in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Whether it is the attraction of a great city, the central US location, or the number of hot issues in the industry today, registration and sponsor/exhibitor participation has gone through the roof! This will be the largest attended multiple listing service organization conference of the year, and the largest CMLS conference ever.
CMLS 2010 will be held Wednesday, September 29th through Friday, October 1st. Registrations are still being taken, and additional hotel rooms have been blocked. Sponsors and exhibitors stepped up so early that by the end of July all the available slots had been filled.
Headlining the event will be noted speakers such as futurist and prolific real estate trends author Stefan Swanepoel, technology evangelist Brian Boero of 100watt Consulting and Rob Hahn aka blogger extraordinaire Notorious R.O.B. Interspersed throughout the conference will be interactive panels and cutting edge information sharing sure to make the trip to Chicago well worth anybody’s time.
Those interested in more information about CMLS 2010, including registration, are directed to www.cmls2010.com, or please contact Gayle at 630-955-2768.
Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS) is the premier forum and resource for Multiple Listing Service associations.
Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) is a real estate data aggregator and distributor that provides the largest multiple listing service in the country (by listing volume) to over 40,000 customers, with property information encompassing northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana.
I’m still buzzing from Inman’s Connect Conference last week. I’ve got a lot of take aways that I’ll be writing about but, I did want to comment on a common thread I heard from a lot of vendors. The conversation goes something like this…
Me: How did you like the conference this year?
V: Great, but I didn’t get to see hardly any of the sessions.
Me: Why?
V: Too damn busy with all the meetings I booked!
This doesn’t mean nobody attended the sessions. Quite the contrary, every time I tried get in to the General Session it was standing room only.
It seems to me that Inman has turned the corner and has become more than an industry “networking event”, and now is a great place to meet and clients and get some business done.
This trend is far from new, but what many vendors are beginning to realize is that it’s far easier to conduct business at an event like Inman Connect than it is at NAR Midyear. I’ve written about this before, but it seems like NAR puts up so many barriers to vendors to actually conduct business at their events. For example: You must have a booth to get a Suite, if you want a Suite in the hotel or a good booth location you have to have spent money with NAR for the past 20 years or so. And if you don’t follow these rules you’ll get thrown out of the hotel/event.
Will there be a day when vendors stop playing NAR’s “reindeer games” and take their ball somewhere else to play?
Is July the new May? Is San Francisco the new Washington D.C.? Only time will tell.
If you look up Fiasco in Wikipedia you get this result:
“In English the word fiasco means an absolute, abject or utterly humiliating failure”
Anyway you slice it calREDD was a true fiasco. But you just know that the California Association of REALTORS (C.A.R.) is going to spin this whole mess in to “this was our plan all along.” So put on your tin foil hats to protect yourselves from the C.A.R. reality distortion field.
Here’s some questions I’d like answered.
1. Where’s the 3 million dollars? I bet you its almost all been spent. And how many agents did they get to sign up? Maybe 1,000. Do the math.
2. Which begs another question. How much more money are they going to ask for? Remember the saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” Shame on you C.A.R. board of directors if you give these clowns any more money.
3. Who responsible for this mess? Is somebody going to get fired? They should. Or are they gonna to throw their vendor under the bus? My guess is these C.A.R. douche bags are so chicken-shit that their MLS vendor will get the blame and everyone else gets to keep their job.
4. Who is going to control this new calREDD/MRMLS entity? I’m curious how many seats does the 1,000 calREDD users equate to? Waaaaaaay too many is my guess.
The man who would be king.
Art Carter aka "King Arthur"
In the King Arthur legend a young boy pulled a sword out of a stone and the village knew that he was the true king. In our story Art Carter aka, “King Arthur” is going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to make this new combined entity (calREDD/MRMLS) a success.
I’ve seen Art do some magic before. He just has to make sure this time that the rabbit doesn’t eat all his “CARETS“. If you get my meaning.
Prediction:
A good friend once told me that the only reason California is one state (instead of Northern Callifornia and Southern California) is water rights. So here’s my prediction.
The “merger” will go down as expected, C.A.R. will spin some story to save face. King Arthur will go after SoCalMLS, and possibly a few others in Southern California and have some success. But the state-wide MLS train will stop there. Beyond any existing contracts, no significant Northern California MLS providers will sign up for this new entity (maybe a few tiny associations looking for a subsidy). One off-shoot is that CARETS may expand, which would be good for C.A.R. members. That’s it. Fin.
Now, if I close my eyes and don’t make a sound, I can hear Russ laughing all the way from Chicago. : )
So good luck King Arthur. And stay classy C.A.R., stay classy.
UPDATE:
Check out this FAQ. It confirms calREDD has blown through 2.5M and wants 750K more. Classic!
CMLS has been in the news a lot lately. They issued a letter to NAR concerning the ability for MLS providers to require photos and also published a report called:
CMLS commissioned The WAV Group to put the report together. I had many people reference the report to me when I was out in D.C. But for those few of you who have not checked it out it’s worth a look.
The report doesn’t recommend, but provides a good comparison of RPR, CoreLogic, Move, and iMapp and their offerings to MLS providers/brokers. One of the interesting things about RPR is they have become somewhat of a “market maker” for legitimate MLS data. In the past any such deals were consider verboten, now the playing field is wide open. Not quite sure if this was really part of the plan.
Just click the title above to get the report, it’s free!
The first concept of this blog was more of a place where real estate vendors could go to rate trade shows, conferences and events. I was sick and tired of paying “sponsorship fees” and high exhibitor rates and being treated like shit once they had my money and I set up my booth. I’m sure you all know the drill, no marketing, no booth traffic, means no sales.
My thought was that if all the real estate vendors got together and rated each trade show then we would take back the power and assocaitions and other industry organizations that put on trade shows would want to have a high rating to get vendors to come back next year.
Instead Vendor Alley became the “TMZ of real estate”. Oh well.
Brian Wharton, Business Development for ARMLS
Last week I exhibited in ARMLS‘ “Technopalooza“, despite the cheesy name the event was FANTASTIC. I’ll admit when I first spoke to ARMLS’ head of business development, Brian Wharton, I was skeptical. The conference was held in Glendale, miles away from Phoenix and Scottsdale, and I didn’t see any “big name” speakers. But we were launching Cloud CMA in the ARMLS market and I needed an event to get something started. So I came prepared for a sleepy trade show. Then something magical happen. The Realtors came in droves! We ended up having great booth traffic and as a result I almost ran out of Cloud CMA order forms. (a good problem to have!)
So until I create another site that rates trade shows let me give my thanks and 4 STARS to ARMLS’ “Technopalooza“!
Something tells me that they are going to have a lot more vendors next year.
Dan Woolley is moderating the ConnectTech Workshop again this year at Inman Connect SF. The agenda has been set so now he’s reaching out to the real estate tech community and looking for speakers.
To find out more details see Dan’s blog: Tzetze Fly
