As usual, I’m ridiculously long between posts here… I think that’s probably just how it’s going to be, folks… also as usual, in between working with all of my great clients, I’ve been hard at work designing a couple of new features for the site… things like GoogleMaps for cities/areas that outline the tracts and a new, refined search system. Anyway, I didn’t want to start a post about the past… I was thinking more about the future… But, with any story, context is everything…
About three months ago, I was speaking with Linsey Planeta who is the broker/owner of Belterra Fine Homes located in Rancho Santa Margarita. We were chatting about a deal one of her agents and I were working on and she commented about my site and we started chatting about the real estate biz and how are you doing, etc… she said “Have you heard about the reBarCamps?” I told her I hadn’t; what was the scoop? She said I had to go to one and that she was driving out to the latest gathering in Phoenix the next day and how great it was going to be… I thought, “She sounds like she knows what she’s doing and anyone who would drive to Phoenix for a convention must know something I don’t, which is often, but nevertheless…”
Anyway, I thought, well, I’ll go if one lands on my head, but I am so crazy busy that it’ll probably never happen… that’s what I thought, of course, until the reBarCamp came to Newport Beach to the not-famous-but-super-cool Blue Beet bar near the pier a month later… let’s see – cutting edge, free-form sessions revolving around real estate and technology held at the beach in a bar? Did I mention free? I was in…
Here are some photos and a bit about the event… in a nutshell, it is a place for real estate brokers/agents and real estate-related technologists to get together and talk about the future of real estate. And to learn something.
The informal registration desk in front of the Blue Beet
I got a chance to chat with Steve High, Coldwell Banker Previews, Harrison Long, Coldwell Banker, Drew Hartanov of First Team in San Clemente, who I actually really wanted to talk with. He had to get running, but I am going to track him down and see if we can spend some time talking business… Drew – you reading this? Call me. I was actually looking for Drew and Scott Sambucci (Scott works for Altos Research who provides the data for my OC Real Estate Market Reports) and I bumped into both of them talking together… I had never met either of them, but I had seen pictures of Drew and Scott had an Altos t-shirt on… As I stood there waiting for an appropriate time to introduce myself and say “Hello”, they looked at me and said “Jesse? Jesse Brossa? We were just talking about you…” I laughed and told them I was looking for them… probably doesn’t sound all that coincidental to you, but I thought it was at the time… we chatted about the Altos Research reports I have on my site and Drew wanted to know what I thought of them. I told him my clients like them, but other than that, I didn’t have any hard metrics that proved they were doing wonders for me… I wanted to talk to Drew about managing his clients… I think we share a few challenges and I was looking for some good solutions…
A quick pan of the bar before things got going…
A couple of shots I stitched together for a vertical panorama
Jerel Taylor of American Trust Escrow & Mike from (the Valley?) I never asked… he is an agent/developer who had some excellent ideas about client management solutions… Mike -if you are reading this, send me an email so we can connect – we’ll start that ‘Deals not Dumps’ site.
Volunteer/Organizer Stacey Harmon on the mic downstairs calling the crowd to order… I like this shot… with the disco ball and fireworks projection, she looks like she’s on an open mic at a karaoke contest. After a few intros and thank-yous to supporters, volunteers and participants, Jim Marks took the mike and started asking the crowd what we wanted to talk about, which was really cool… after a few suggestions, I shouted out that I wanted to talk about how to elegantly manage the ever-increasing email & voicemail inboxes, which is to say, how can agents diligently and effectively reach everyone who needs attention? The topic ended up being called Client Management or something… which I, ahem, actually missed because I chose to hang out with David Gibbons and a handful of other ubergeeks who were thinking what I was thinking – the 3.0 tech chat on the sand in the sun…
From left to right, Stacey Harmon seated, (don’t know w/ glasses), Eric Stegeman, Jim Marks, Linsey Planeta
The crowds moving in to see the board come together.
I think that is Eric Stegeman posting up a few of the early round-table sessions on the whiteboard…
Admiring their whiteboard handiwork
Jim Marks downstairs
Jim Marks & David Gibbons getting one of the first sessions going. From what I could tell, Jim Marks, Eric Stegeman and David Gibbons appear to be the core of reBarCamp… I don’t know if this is a local thing or they are the ‘it’ men for the gatherings statewide… whatever the case may be, they were certainly in their element… The topic was an intro to social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…) and why agents absolutely need to be in those spaces… I beg to differ, but that is another post… One of the highlights of the event was meeting David Gibbons from Zillow; he knows the business of real estate, understands the intersection of social networks and business and has a thorough grasp of internet-based technologies… not that I can sum up what the guy knows in a sentence, but he was fluent in multiple relevant topics… loved that guy… he turned me on to a real estate company in Portland called mRealty that he said is doing some excellent things on the front end as well as behind the scenes on their site…
Eric Stegeman doing a session on GoogleAnalytics with Stacey Harmon at the assist. The session was an introduction to the analytics suite, but I didn’t get much out of it… I guess what was most interesting was to see how much other agents did or didn’t know…
The rooftop at the Blue Beat… a nice place to grab a smoke (can you still do that in the US?), chat about the day’s topics and enjoy the view of the sand and surf beyond…
While it was a pretty interesting day that held a ton of promise, it was mostly a day of ‘101’ topics, which was not bad… I think a 2-day event is the way to do it… a 101-type day to get things going, make some introductions, set the tone for the event and then let day two move deeper into topics like the future of the real estate brokerage, the future of the MLS, interstate MLS information sharing, mobile search solutions for clients… I guess I don’t know what I was expecting, really… maybe a small tribe of benevolent ex-Google developers, Yahoo UI geeks, and Zillow/Redfin ex-pats… At the end of the day, I had a great time and met some good people…
Note to reBarCamp organizers & volunteers: Thanks for putting that event together! Let me know when the next one happens. Locally, that is. I don’t think I’d drive to Phoenix for the event… probably wouldn’t drive to LA for the gig either. Well, maybe Santa Monica. (coastal snob) Santa Barbara? Maybe. San Diego? Eh. Hawaii? I’d fly there and then spend all day at the beach… looks like its going to have to be Round Two in Newport… or maybe in Laguna Beach somewhere…
Til next time!
