Council of MLS (CMLS) launches a new website. W&R Studios worked with Jim Marks at Virtual Results to create a great new website for CMLS.
If you are not a member of CMLS you should be. CMLS holds the best MLS Conference in the industry and through this new website is going to start to expand its reach with guest bloggers, research papers, and webinars through the site.
This year’s conference is going to be held in Chicago, hosted by MRED, LLC. Join us!
I had a chance to stop by Russ Bergeron‘s farewell party last Friday. I was just coming back from a week long trip in Jacksonville, FL. It was well attended by Orange County real estate big wigs. I told Russ he would be sorely missed. Looks like he is ready for a new challenge. Here are a couple pics from the event.
Good luck Russ and Godspeed!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dan Woolley is moderating the ConnectTech Workshop again this year at Inman Connect SF. The agenda has been set so now he’s reaching out to the real estate tech community and looking for speakers.
To find out more details see Dan’s blog: Tzetze Fly
