I’ve been remiss to offer my insights on last week’s Inman Connect SF.  Too damn busy.  Brian Boero from 1000Watt Consulting summed up things pretty well, you should go read his “fuzzy notions” recap.  I have to agree with Brian, it was truly one of the best Inman RE Connect conferences I’ve attended.

And I’m not just saying that because the Premium Member Lounge (Brilliant Tim, brilliant!)    : )

"The Twins"

I didn’t get to catch too many sessions (see this post) but one I did get a chance to see ( and from the front row) was the “debate” on the main stage titled, “Is the MLS System Broken“.

I’m going to focus on 3 people at that session.

Mike Wurzer

Michael “Invisible Hand” Wurzer.  Mike is a good friend, so I might have some bias here (duh!)  but I really can’t help but thinking what a great asset he is to our industry and I’m not just talking about vendors.  His arguments were clear, concise, and he didn’t pull any punches.  I talked to some people that thought the suggestion that the market will decide when to “fix” the MLS industry was “pollyanna”, but Michael lives and breathes these issues everyday.  So if you got a better solution, prove it.

Joel Singer

Joel “Fail Forward” Singer.  I’ve been very critical of Joel’s organization, the California Association of REALTORS®, and their efforts to start a statewide MLS system (calREDD) in California.  On stage he was a bit light on details but you just got to respect a guy who goes up there in front of all his industry colleagues, after the rough two years he’s had, and still comes out swinging.

Brian Boero

And lastly I come back to where I started.  Brian Boero.  Brian’s “geek chic” vibe is like Steve Allen and Ira Glass had a baby.  Stay with me here… Brian is able to capture the essence of the conversation, ask great follow up questions, shut up when he needs to, and always get the biggest laughs.  It’s a remarkable thing to stand in front of 1,000 people and accomplish this, and Brian makes it look effortless.  Bravo.

Stay tuned for Part II of my Inman Connect SF recap in which I ask, “Inman Innovator Awards WTF?”

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.

No use crying over spilt milk.

We’ve been getting a lot of good comments, tons of traffic, and I’ve been also receiving a few e-mails too.  More and more information is coming out.

If you are interested check out: New CALMLS Business Proposal, the CALMLS Merger FAQ, and this handy dandy comparison NEW CALMLS Vs. OLD check list: CALMLS and MRMLS Joint Initiative Proposed.

It’s still not clear whether or not the C.A.R. board of directors has approved the “merger” and the $750,000 extension is cash (calREDD had already blown through 2.5M of the 3M they originally asked for) but I think we can assume it will be approved, nobody will lose their job (calREDD, as predicted threw their MLS Vendor under the bus) and new CALMLS is ready to roll.

So taking a fresh perspective what do we have here.  As I’ve mentioned before Art Carter has done an excellent job at MRMLS.  He was also instrumental in the formation of CARETS.   His organization is everything the old calREDD was not: professional leadership, a proven MLS Vendor, plus they are now open to multiple MLS systems, and most of all a proven data sharing platform CARETS.  So we should be willing to give this new CALMLS a shot.

I stand by my earlier prediction that Art will have a tough time signing up any MLS providers beyond Southern California but as I hinted before that doesn’t mean CARETS can’t flourish.  And what’s really wrong with that anyway?  Why the need for one statewide MLS system?  Why not just one statewide database?  eNeighborhoods essentially pulled this off for a brief time a few years back with MLS Alliance.

So let C.A.R. revise history all they want (we all know the Emperor has no clothes).  Sure the CALMLS board will be stacked (what board isn’t?).  But a one database solution is really compelling, and maybe, just maybe C.A.R. will finally come to the same conclusion.

Besides the whole calREDD drama was getting kind of well…boring.  Looking forward to seeing what CALMLS can pull off.  Onward and forward.

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!

The bombardment of Fort Sumter

The red and blue badges at the 2010 National Association of REALTORS (NAR) Midyear Conference took on a different meaning for me this year.

Fort Sumter as many of you know was the place where the first shots were fired in the Civil War.  The Civil War I’m talking about was first written about by Rob Hahn, entitled “The coming Civil War in Real Estate.”

I believe that Rob’s predictions are coming true, and the first shots fired were here in D.C. The vibe from a lot of vendors that I spoke with was that they are feeding the beast (NAR) that might eventually bite them.

NAR, thru RPR and other entities either own or have a significant interest in a  data and analytics business, an association management business , not to mention a web portal (Realtor.com), a lock box company (Sentrilock), and a forms company (Zipforms).

In a nutshell just take a look at the exhibitor list to the conference and you basically have a list of NAR competitors.

With the deck so completely stacked against them why do vendors who have products that compete with NAR even bother to show up to NAR events?

NAR has also cranked up the pressure on their competitor/exhibitors too.  Tactics such as kicking vendors out of Suites if they don’t pony up more money (in the form of registrations and booth space), and enforcing a “no meeting” rule in Suites when official NAR business is being done.

These heavy handed tactics could end up doing more harm than good.  Other conferences could grow or new conferences could be created that cater more towards exhibitors wants and needs.

Nick Rapattoni

Early this year I was speaking with Nick Rapattoni about what they were working on next.  He had mentioned that plans were on the table to migrate their MLS system to Microsoft’s Sliverlight platform.  Browser compatibility was one the issues he cited as a reason for looking in that direction.

Speaking with Rapattoni today they have scraped those plans and  “our goal is to develop our applications (both MLS and AMS, but it’s most relevant to the MLS) in a way that recognizes and takes advantage of different form factors (desktop, mobile, etc…), and Silverlight would back us into a corner — ”

Smart move if you ask me.

Now with one major MLS vendor getting off the Flash/Silverlight bandwagon will LPS Real Estate Group and Marketlinx follow suit? LPS Real Estate Group has already announced that Paragon 5 is cross browser compliant.  But poor Tempo MLS is still tethered by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer ball and chain.

Me thinks that LPS and Marketlinx are too far down the Flash path to change direction.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile companies that don’t have to worry about such trival details as “will my MLS system work in Firefox” have their development staff working on some true innovations.  Case in point FBS.  Their new Listing Activity API is simply awesome.  It will be interesting to see how companies will implement their new API.  Nice to see some great innovation come from the MLS space.

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"Old Glory"

Back in the day when I worked at eNeighborhoods I would attend these meetings hosted by the National Association of REALTORS (NAR).  They were for participants in their “REALTOR VIP program“.  Basically a bunch of companies who, by working with NAR, would have closer ties to their members via advertising and branding.

The meetings were always a good time and I got to meet and hang with most of NAR’s senior leadership.  They are a great group of talented people and I got to know them and their families pretty well over the years.  So a big shout out to Bob Goldberg, Mary Stark-Hood, Kristin Stafford, Frank Sibley and everyone else if they are reading this now.

Every year they began with a session, led by the very smart, and always dapper, Frank Sibley,( who is in charge of events, publications, and PR at NAR) to go over NAR/REALTOR basics.  One thing Frank would focus upon is how to say the name “REALTOR” properly.  “It’s not REEEELTOR”, Frank would say.  “It’s pronounced like detour, REALTOR”.

If you ever hear those NAR radio spots they really over emphasize the word REALTOR it really sticks out.

A quick side story about Frank.  It you ever see a NAR commercial, notice the name on the yard sign.  More than likely it says “Sibley Realty”, or something like that.  I also have another story about the time I showed Frank the proofs for our Fabio ads, but that’s for another post.  :  )

I always thought these guys were went a bit wacky on their whole branding/identity thing.  When I would submit advertising with the “Realtor VIP” logo on it I would always get something back from NAR about the proper use of the logo or I didn’t use capital lettered or forgot the registered trademark symbol.  Always something!  They were more than attentive, they were passionate about it.

So what’s this have to do about RPR?

So the dirty secret out there is that MLS information is being collected and sold under the table.  This is mostly done by entities outside of the industry that don’t understand they just can’t scrape or download  (or claim they don’t) MLS information and sell it to the highest bidder.

"Where'd you get that data son??"

NAR needs a “Data Sheriff”

I’m not sure if this would be a NAR or RPR ( or LPS?) job but they need somebody, maybe from their branding enforcement team (jk), who is going to sniff out, investigate where that data came from and how it was licensed.  If RVM is ever to become the “gold standard” they must make a concentrated effort to shut down companies that are obtaining and using MLS data nefariously.

Part of this can be helped with technology.  But if NAR spends even half the effort they do protecting their precious “R” symbol it will be time and money well spent.

I love my iPad, when I can pull it away from my son.  I think that other MLS vendors (LPS Real Estate Group, First American Core Logix, and Rapattoni) are making a big mistake by jumping on the Flash, Air, Silverlight bandwagon with their yet to be released next generation MLS systems.  We all know how Dear Leader feels about Flash!  Maybe Mark Scheel can offer some input about the new tablets running Android, and Adobe’s Flash.

Go dynaConnection!

________________________________________________

dynaConnections’ connectMLS seamlessly compatible with iPad

On-the-go Realtors have an out-of-the-box solution to all their MLS needs with connectMLS on the iPad.
AUSTIN, TX – April 22, 2010 – dynaConnections announces that its flagship product, connectMLS, is accessible and highly functional on Apple’s new iPad. Unlike many other MLS systems, connectMLS works seamlessly on Apple’s popular web browser, Safari. And because connectMLS avoids excessive use of flash technology, it is ready to use on Apple’s Safari-based, iPhone, iTouch, and now the iPad. connectMLS continues to lead the pack through its ability to provide seamless accessibility for their customers.

“We were the first MLS system to embrace Mozilla’s Firefox browser because we saw the high potential for adoption across all platforms,” said John Kennedy, Product Manager at dynaConnections. “Likewise, we saw the huge popularity of the iPhone and iTouch and anticipated Apple would come out with derivative products. By making connectMLS work well with Safari, we knew all our bases would be covered.”

About dynaConnections

Based out of Austin, Texas, dynaConnections Corporation is a privately held company that provides web-based Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Solutions to MLS organizations. dynaConnections’ flagship product, connectMLS, is a patent-pending, all-in-one MLS Solution that increases agent productivity without a steep learning curve. dynaConnections continues to create innovative solutions that keep its customers at the forefront, as real estate technology evolves.
For more information, visit: www.dynaconnections.com .

###

dynaConnections and connectMLS are registered trademarks of dynaConnections Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

dynaConnections Corp.
(512) 306-9898
www.dynaConnections.com

Peeling the skin off Orange County’s MLS situation.  -

Russ Bergeron

When I first heard that Russ Bergeron was leaving SoCalMLS and taking the job at MRED I didn’t believe it.  When it was confirmed my first thought was about Bud Fogel and how shabbily he had been treated by the MRED board and to how Brad Tertell and the rest of the MRED staff would react to the news.

In this two part post I’ll go over my take on the players and the moves they might make on the vacuum that was created by Russ Begeron’s departure as head of SoCalMLS.  So lets get it on!

Part I – The Players

Russ Bergeron
I can only guess his motivations but my best guess was he decision was two fold.

1.  He was looking for a new challenge.
2.  He was tired of the association politics in California.

I can certainly understand the need for taking on a new challenge, but I fear he is walking in to a situation where association politics is a blood sport.  I can almost hear Sean Connery in “The Untouchables” say…. “He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”

Needless to say, I wish him well.  And on a side note, Southern  California will not be left without another Bergeron in the real estate technology game, his daughter Wallis is a product specialist/trainer with LPS in Irvine.  The torch passes….   : )

Art Carter, Nancy Glimore and Phil Hawkins.

From all accounts Art Carter has risen to the challenge of operating and even thriving at MRMLS.

Art Carter

It’s hard to remember what a mess MRMLS was when Art took over.  They had a history of messy conversions, questionable technology, lawsuits and poor management.  Since Art has taken over he has not only righted the ship but taken on leadership with new initiatives like CARETS initiative which has been a huge success.

Nancy Gilmore

Where did Art come from?  The answer is closer than you think.  Art was on the executive team at the Pacific West Association of REALTORS.  Or PWR as it is known locally.  PWR is the largest association in the state of California and is run ably by Nancy Gilmore.  I’ve always liked Nancy.  She’s never one to mince words and has no problem telling me when she thinks, whether you like it or not.  I like that quality in a person.  She’s honest and fair and runs a great association.  And she certainly has an eye for talent, her second in command is another stellar individual by the name of Phil Hawkins.

Phil Hawkins

Phil is a super nice guy and well respected by everyone at PWR.

Bob Bemis

Bob Bemis

Bob Bemis is the CEO of ARMLS. He comes by way of MRIS.  Some of you might not know but MRIS is behind the technology at CARETS.  Bob is one that has been given some very high marks for taking over a rather large MLS in a very difficult market and has won the respect of his staff and peers.  And from a Vendor’s stand point I can tell you that the vibe of ARMLS is completely different (for the better) than is was before.  I mention Bob because I think  that anyone with experience with CARETS, or in this case, the technology behind CARETS could be a potential player in Southern California.

calREDD
calREDD, C.A.R.’s initiative for a statewide MLS has a role in this game, but it’s probably not what you would think.

Bud Fogel
I’m not going to count Bud out.  I believe there to be an option here where Bud may find his way rise again.

But I’ll leave that for Part II.  Now that we know the players I’ll go over what I think the moves they may make (or should make) in the coming weeks/months.

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.