Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Zillow/Retsly announce judges for upcoming “zip.code” hackathon

ff_hackathons_f-2I’m very excited to be selected as a judge at Retsly’s “zip.code” hackathon this weekend!

For those of you who don’t know Retsly is a software company acquired by Zillow Group last year. They have created “Listing and Public Data” APIs.

zip.code

“Embracing the power of the Retsly Listings and Public Data APIs, zip.code 2015 aims to bring together the most creative and tireless hackers for a weekend of furious, sweaty, real estate innovation.”

Up to 300 developers will participate. Many of them from companies like Lyft, Uber, Microsoft, ModCloth, OpenDoor and schools like Stanford, Berkeley and SFSU.

The panel of judges also include Realogy CEO, Alex Perriello, Lynette Keyowski from OMREB and Brad Griffith, CEO of Gametime.

I’m looking forward to see what types of products and services the developers come up with. Should be a fun weekend!

Pro Tips: Anatomy of a trade show – 2015 N.A.R. Annual Conference San Diego

I get asked a lot whether or not it make sense to have a big booth at the N.A.R. Annual conference or any trade show for that matter.

First off I think the biggest mistake most vendors make is they don’t do anything to help drive traffic to their booth. They basically just show up with some swag and hope agents will pay attention to them. So, here are some simple tips to help you increase your ROI.

1. You need to have a hook.

In previous years I’ve had celebrities like Fabio and Richard Simmons at our booth. Agents loved them. But your hook doesn’t need to be celebrity. Sometimes you need to get creative. This year we are doing a ping pong themed event. We are challenging all agents to beat our CFO, Karl Ziegler, at ping pong to win free subscriptions to our software. Here’s a video that we put together.


2. Ted Turner is credited with the phrase, “Early to bed, early to rise, in-between…advertise!”. You gotta promote your hook. In our case we are doing a lot of social media (#BEATKARL). Plus we sent out postcards to all N.A.R. Annual attendees.

karl postcard

We are also cross matching that mailing list against our email database and following up with an email campaign to those same attendees.

If you can afford it, signage at the event can also help you draw attention to your booth.

***True story, I actually met Ted Turner once and asked him if he said the above phrase. He quipped back to me, “Well son, i would say, work like hell, and advertise!”***

3. Have a goal.
You need your sales team to have a goal. 400 signups? 100 solid leads. Something to keep their eye on the prize and motivated.

If anybody else has any other tips I’m sure everyone would love to hear them in the comments. Have a great show!

CRMLS wins “Most Innovative MLS” award from Inman Inman. Celeste Starchild from ListHub also honored.

Congrats to Art Carter and the rest of the CRMLS team for winning this year’s Inman 2015 Innovator Award winner for “Most innovative MLS”. Inman news cited “has been clawing away at getting local MLS organizations to participate in its shareable database of listings, which will expedite innovation.” I think what made the difference for CRMLS was the well crafted messaging, videos and social media around their #ItsMyBiz campaign.

Also happy to see Celeste Starchild being recognized as one of the “four women who have shown leadership in the constant pursuit of innovation. Susan Daimler from Zillow, Chelsea Goyer from Redfin, and Dottie Herman from Douglas Elliman Real Estate. I’d like to see this list kept going and expanded next year, there are many others deserving to be recognized.

MREDpaloza part deux

MRED 2015

I just wanted to say thanks to Rebecca Jensen and the staff at MRED for putting on a great show this week. They had some big shoes to fill based on the last time they did the event and I have to say, MREDpaloza was off the hook fantastic!!

It was a “who’s who” of industry peeps. We had a ton of REALTORS visit our booth and attend our sessions. Sales were great and MRED members are some of the biggest fans of Cloud CMA in the industry! Thanks again!

Join me at Midyear next week!

NAR_midyear_logo_hp2014_conventionLooking forward to catching up with everyone next week. I want to highlight a few events that I’ll be attending/participating in.

Tuesday

CMLS BRINGS IT TO THE TABLE WORKSHOP : CERTIFIED
May 12, 8 a.m. ?12:45 p.m.

The City Club of Washington
555 13th Street, NW
Columbia Square
Washington, DC 20004

Registration ends today, so hurry and register if you haven’t already. It includes lunch people, get on this!

Wednesday

MLS Association Executives Session
May 13, 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

I just spoke to Chris Carillo and they have a strong session planned. They have asked me to moderate a panel on Syndication (what else?) at this session. My esteemed panelists include the Cameron Paine, the Jim Harrison and Matt Consalvo. Should be fun so get there early for a good seat.

Thursday

We (W&R Studios) are co-sponsoring the ListHub Party (Cirque du Mystique)
May 14, 8:00PM to 1:00am

Maimasion
3401 Water Street NW
Washington, DC 20007

Also I’ve got a few slots left open for meetings about Cloud CMA and our newest product Cloud Streams. Katie and I would love to give you a demo and show you the latest. Just contact Katie at the link below:

katie@wr-studios.com

See you there!!

Syndication Shitstorm

FMFU

Yesterday MOVE slapped the newly formed Zillow Group with the news that as of next week they won’t be providing listing to Trulia any longer. This seemed to be in response to Zillow’s earlier rebuke of continuing the ListHub agreement past the contract date.

Now it appears that Zillow is seeking a restraining order to keep listings flowing to Zillow.

Oy Vey!

A few observations:

Welcome to the team!
Tough first week for Paul Levine, newly appointed president of Trulia.

The Velvet Glove
I’m going to start calling Celeste Starchild, “the velvet glove”, because she always seems to be delivering the bad (good?) news, but tries to downplay the consquences.

Shit Sandwich
And going back to Zillow’s earlier refusal to re-sign with ListHub, can you really blame them? ListHub was basically forcing them to use a data feed their very own company won’t use on its own site (realtor.com). Zillow take is that ListHub was was serving them a shit sandwich, telling them to eat, and that they better like it.

Lobby bars
Good thing the Clareity’s MLS Executive Workshop next week is serving great popcorn, because the show has just begun!

ICNY: It’s on like Donkey Kong!

UPDATE:

So far my flight hasn’t canceled. Fingers crossed. Hope to see everyone tonight in New York!

On my way!!

Don’t miss this!

I was lucky enough to be included on David Charron’s panel, “Does Big Data Make Us Stupid?” at Inman Connect NYC next week.

The panel is set to start on Thursday at 2:35PM. John Heithaus from RBI, and Matthew Shadbolt from the New York Times are also panelists. Which leads me to believe they wanted some comic relief by inviting me to join all these big brains on stage!

panel inman nyc

David is moderating all panels on the MLS Track at Inman Connect NYC this year again. All of them are not to miss. I hope he and Inman keep this going, David does a great job of preparing and keeping things interesting.

One that also stands out to me is David’s interview with new CMLS CEO, Denee Evans, on “How I Plan to Build on the Success of CMLS” This session is right before mine at 2:00pm.
inman panel denee

See you there!!

Rupert Murdoch to keynote at Inman Connect NYC

Whoa….

Swanepoel’s “Power 200” list includes many MLS execs and vendors.

logoStephan Swanepoel just released his list of “the most powerful people in residential real estate 2014/15”. Dubbed the “Power 200” the list includes many MLS executives, consultants and vendors in real estate.

Bob Hale, David Charon, Art Carter, Jim Harrison, Merri Jo Cowen, Tom Phillips, Kathy Condon, Teresa King Kinney, and Kipp Cooper made the list under (Organized Real Estate).

Denee Evans, new CEO of CMLS, also made the list.

A few industry consultants and publishers made the list as well under the “Thought Leader” category: Brad Inman, Marilyn and Victor Lund, Gregg Larson, Brian Boero, Marc Davison, Ann Bailey, Brian Larson and Lani and Benn Rosales.

The list also includes many vendors, such as Andy Rapattoni, Rich Lull, Michael Wurzer, Jay Gaskill, Curt Beardsley, Chris Bennett, and Lorne Wallace.

I was also very honored to be included on the list in the “Technology” category no less! I just squeaked in at #199 (as it should be), just beating out Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters! I’m sure this will cause Morgan to lose a lot of sleep at night. ; )

The list was curated by Stefan Swanepoel and Rob Hahn. So my thanks to them.

Which gives me a great segue to plug the T3 Summit Conference. The conference is being held April 8th to 10th this year at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas. The conference is 3 years old now and I’ve been to each one. I’ve written about it in the past and I think this latest conference will be their best one yet.

Here’s a highlight reel from last year.

My favorites include Stefan’s interviews, and when Rob Hahn takes the stage with his “black swan” conspiracy theories.

Katie Smithson and I will be attending this year so I hope to see you there.

There are some limitations on registrants (I think it sold out last year) but you can find out more info here. http://www.t3summit.com/register/

My thanks again to Stefan and his team. Nice surprise to wake up to!

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