I got a chance to catch up with Saul Klein and Walt Baczkowski in Washington D.C. last week at the CMLS Listing Syndication Workshop. As you may know Point2 was acquired by Yardi late last year. It was an entertaining chat as Saul and Walt told me about a trip that took them from Saskatoon to Transylvania. Yes, that Transylvania.
Yardi being a global company has a shop in Rumania with about 50 programmers. Yardi’s CEO/Owner thought that Saul and Walt could help with some organizational issues and asked them to join him on a trip.
The plane flight brought them through Germany. Ever wonder what they call a Big Mac in Germany? Well now you know…
The programming shop was in a city pretty close to the forest where Vlad, in which the character Dracula was based, killed a bunch of people by impaling them. Talk about adventures in real estate!! Both Saul and Walt had a bunch of great stories about their trip from which I can surmise:
1. Rumanian programmers are very talented.
2. Rumanian women are very attractive.
3. You need to be very careful of gypsies.
BTW I’m not making this shit up.
For two guys who have been in the industry awhile its just another crazy adventure, and from the sound of it they are enjoying the new challenges!
It was one of the most talked about NAR Midyear Conferences in recent history. Decisions were being made that effected how listings were displayed on the internet and how much money REALTORS would have to pay to “survive”, ($40.00 per year, it turns out.) Now that the dust has settled I’ve put together a mixed bag of my thoughts and observations.
CMLS Listing Syndication Workshop
Sold out in less than 24 hours this event was a huge success. I may be biased but CMLS really put together an outstanding event, so look for more of this type of stuff in the future. Congrats to Merri Jo Cowen and the entire CMLS Board of Directors for pulling this off. See photos here.
IDX listings, Franchisors, and RSS.
“Repeal”, “Rescind”. “Suspend”, “Franchisor”, “Broker Network”, WTF?. I’m not going to do any deep analysis, so many other people have done a great job writing about this topic. It’s just becoming so ridiculous I’m getting bored with it. PREDICTION: NAR will punt on these issues again in November.
CIVIX Patent. Anytime NAR calls an emergency meeting and has industry consultants, with big names coming up to the microphone one by one to tell you how great something is, you better watch your back. NAR thinks it’s doing the industry a huge favor by making the MLS vendors pay up. Me thinks these MLS vendors (especially the two largest) might have something to say about this. PREDICTION: NAR won’t be able to pony up the 7 million to settle this thing (without major modifications to the deal), which means it’s everyone for themselves.
Inman News
I gotta say Tim Smith, CEO of Inman News, and his team is killing it lately. Two big moves announced at NAR Midyear, Chris Smith aka “Tech Savvy Agent” has left MOVE to become Inman’s Chief Evangelist, they announced a recent deal with LPS Real Estate Group to handle there online advertising, and a new “invitation only” Data Summit is going to be held a couple days before the Connect Conference in SF this year. Plus I really like some of the changes they’ve made to conferences, and their Agent Reboot roadshow has been a huge success. Looking forward to Connect in July to see what else Tim has in store for us!
Dominion Enterprises Reorg
This was announced a few days before NAR Midyear began. I’m writing a 3 part series about Dominion Enterprises and what I see the challenges and opportunties may be. Part I is already available to Vendor Alley Private Newsletter subscribers, and I’ll be posting it later next week.
and the the category you’ve all been waiting for….the award for Best Dressed Vendor goes to Ohan Antebian from RPR. Best Dressed Vendor NAR Midyear 2011
