Gregg Larson and crew have certainly come up with a winning formula for Clareity’s annual MLS Executive Workshop. Last week was Clareity’s 10th anniversary for holding the event and it was sold out almost as quickly as the announcement was made. I’m sure they have 10 more years ahead, here’s why:
1. Location. While most of the country is freezing, the event is held in Scottsdale and the weather was absolutely perfect this past week, just beautiful.
2. Don’t skimp. They are great hosts. Premium booze. No drink tickets, and good food. ‘Nuff said.
3. Prizes. Gregg is very generous with the prizes too. I don’t think you will ever find an event where so many high tech prizes are given away.
4. Inclusion. Vendors and MLS executives are both featured in panels.
5. Good content. Matt Cohen keeps the sessions relevanat and topical to today’s issues.
6. Audience participation. Seems like you get more Q&A than other meetings I’ve attended.
7. MLS Satisfaction Survey. They announce the results at this event. Pure genius.
Highlights for me include the listing syndication discussions. Feels like there is a change in the air on this topic. Also every year it seems like Gregg puts two industry vets on stage who may be on opposite ends of a topic. This year it was Sami Inkinen from Trulia and Errol Samuelson from MOVE. It’s great theatre to watch both participants answer questions and be cordial to one another. Even though you might sense they would rather the other one not exist.
The theme of the event was innovation. Two of my favorite presentation were the one given by Mike Wurzer, CEO of FBS and another by John Heithaus of MRIS. Mike has been talking a lot about the concept of an “MLS App Store” and the possibilities are very exciting to a 3rd party vendor like myself. John Heithaus is relatively new to this crowd but not real estate, his fun quirky presentation was informative, provoking and entertaining. Tough mix.
But my favorite presentation was by Art Carter. Art spoke of the need for standards and how everyone in the room was responsible for helping this effort. Yes I know this is a old topic, but somehow Art made it fresh. Part of it was the message he was delivering, most of it was the fact that he was something to you don’t see a lot of nowadays; Genuine.
My thanks to Gregg and Matt and the rest of the Clareity crew for a truly awesome event. See you next year!
Check out the Vendor Alley Flickr Photostream for photos from the event:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vendoralley/sets/72157626202301528/
Thank you for the kind words Greg, and for your participation in this year’s event. Every year we try to learn something and make the Workshop better, and in our 10th workshop year (Clareity’s 15th year), it’s getting pretty good.
You mentioned “Inclusion” as a key to success – the inclusiveness was more important than ever this year, as we discussed the need for innovation. For MLSs to be successful, they need to continue to work to improve their relationship with technology partners – and I felt having MLS and other software partners there to engage in the conversation toward that end was key.
A word on the generosity – we couldn’t do it as well as we do without the sponsors, which this year included eNeighborhoods, ShowingTime, Instanet Solutions, Stratus Data Systems, Onboard Informatics, LPS, dynaConnections, Scout Analytics, Tarasoft, ListHub, Property Panorama, FBS, Corelogic, Realtor.com, Clareity Security, Trulia, Supra, and Courthouse Retrieval System.
Thanks again, and I can’t wait to make next year’s Workshop the best yet.
Oops, I forgot to mention Solid Earth in the list. Many thanks to them too, for sponsoring the golf.
Another oops, forgot Point2 on the list of sponsors.
We had a lot of help from a LOT of companies making this workshop a success.