I’m not quite recovered from Inman Connect but wanted to post a few things while they are fresh in my mind.
Once again, Brad Inman and his team put on an incredible conference. I’m not sure if you caught this but Brad was in Vegas, at a family event, the day before the conference got started. Imagine that, your in Vegas partying your butt off while one of your company’s biggest events is about to start. Brad’s obviously got a talented group of dedicated people working with him to have that kind of confidence and success (It was announced that attendance at the event was bigger than expected!) Show the love to your all-star team Brad; One word – “BONU$”
: )
I have to say that my favorite part of the event was the “Connect Create” reveal at the end of the conference. Glenn Kelman and Kevin Levent “Duet” were hilarious but you got to give it up to Diverse Solutions and Real Estate Webmasters.
Connect Create was an open challenge to see what a group of developers/designers could build in a 48 hour period. Diverse and REW were the two teams. I can’t imagine why more teams didn’t show up, but I’m sure after all the great feedback and publicity this will be a highlight of future Inman Connect conferences.
But let me be more specific about the teams that did show up, because to me this was about the effort of some great individuals:
Jonathan Mabe, Jennifer Orser, and Andrew Mattie from Diverse Solutions.
Morgan Carey, Philip Pond, and Mike Griffiths from Real Estate Webmasters.
From the time these group of people got on the stage to the time to the time they left I had a huge smile on my face. Both apps were incredible and the fact that they were built in less than 48 hours is even more amazing.
I have to give it up to Justin LaJoie from Diverse for a great idea and possible glimpse in to the future. I was even more amazed at Philip, Mike and Morgan from Real Estate Webmasters. These guys lived the “work hard/play hard” ethos at the event. Without even knowing it Dan Woolley and I shared a cab with them to the Beer for Bloggers event. Then they started popping up all over the place!
We caught them later Wednesday night at the “Secret After Party” at Tony Niks in North Beach, then the next night at The Black Magic Voodoo Lounge! When did they get a chance to program anything!
Glenn Roberts did a great write up about both teams and the challenge you can read it here.
Well done to both teams and remember you heard about these real estate all-stars here first on Vendor Alley!
UPDATE: Dan Woolley has written a few posts on his experiences at Inman Connect:
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Greg,
Great post. I’m glad you enjoyed your time at Connect!
I spent quite a bit of time with the crew from RE Webmasters. I met the guys at Beer With Bloggers, and then stopped by to check on their progress during the event.
Very cool dudes.
I am such awe at what these folks, these creative developers are able to accomplish. To me, it is almost like magic. They are the unsung heroes behind the technology that we all love so much.
Bravo!
It was SO much fun, but it’s taking quite some time to recover from the excess of caffeine and the extreme lack of sleep between Tuesday morning and Friday night (didn’t sleep Friday morning — too excited!). That said, I’d still love to have the opportunity to do the whole thing again at some point.
I’d also like to try to figure out a better way to balance the social experience with the event. We were all cooped up in our suite for nearly the entire time we were there, so we missed some of the speakers we wanted to hear and some of the people we wanted to meet. It was a “work hard now, play hard later” approach, but maybe next time it’d be better to make it a 36 hour thing so that us developers could have that time to meet the people we write the software for.
Anyway, what a great time!
I would just like to point out (the mean boss that I am) made the developers (Phil and Mikey) stay behind and program / design while I attended the secret party etc – I know it seemed like there were more people (probably from all the noise) but it was just me 🙂
Great times guys – thanks to everyone for attending and cheering us on – we had a blast.
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