Take aways from Inman Real Estate Connect NY 2010

I got a chance to attend the Real Estate Connect 2010 in NY from Wed (1/13) to Fri (1/15) and wanted to summarize my thoughts here.

I attended 10 intensive sessions on specific topics besides the Main Conference Program that featured many renowned speakers including Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist. The other intangible is to meet some of the people IRL (In Real Life) that I have been following on Twitter for some time. I finally met @phxREguy in the Broker Summit and frankly, he should have been on one of those social media panels. Some of the other peeps that I met were, @mattfagioli, @ReggieRPR and @mayaREguru. Of course, also met many of the people again that I have been following for some time. Last but not the least, met Mike Ditka in the hotel elevator!

I am going to apologize for the length of the post but hopefully, it will be valuable for you to get a glimpse of what happened if you were not present.

Internet Marketing Workshop - Fulfilling the Blog Promise: Why Content is Still King
(Jake Dobkin, Founder, Gothamist.com and David Karp, Founder, Tumblr)

1. Take a four step approach to blogging:
a) Produce good content
b) Telling right people through social networks and engage with influencers
c) Measure results
d) Repeat process

2. Good Content is original, helpful, links out and is fresh and frequent

Broker Summit Workshop - Social Media: How to Cut Through the Hype, Decide What to Do, And Go About Doing it Right
(Jennifer Baumann, Attorney, DLA Piper, Eric Bryn, VP of Strategic Development, Leading RE Companies of the World, Joseph Ferrara, Publisher, Sellsius and Jim Marks, Founder & President, Virtual Results)

1. Recognize liability and develop good Social Media Guidelines and Policies
2. Start with Strategy first and find the tools next
3. Don't let your agents dictate what the brand does in Social Media
4. Great opportunity for agents to reinvent themselves (build their own brand) and have a deeper connected with the broker brand
5. Austin Black II (mentioned by Eric) in MI has created a strong business from Social Media

Connect Tech Workshop - Tips and Tricks for Working with the iPhone SDK
(Mike Mangino, Owner and President, Elevated Rails from Philly)

1. Build a mobile web app first to get familiar with the mobile development space. Positives are you can control development process and works on all mobile web browsers. The downsides are it doesn't exist in the iPhone App Store, has limited access to device features (camera, audio etc.)
2. Have a strong business reason to develop a platform specific mobile app, like a iPhone app. There are lot of benefits, with the first being user experience and brand recognition and presence in the App Store.

Broker Summit Workshop - Buy, Build, License, Own? Making Your Next Technology Decision a Smart One
(James Cahill, Executive VP, CIO of Halstead Properties, O.B Jacobi GM, Windermere Real Estate, Chris Meyers, COO, Houlihan Lawrence and Cary Macallister(?), VP of Technology of Keller Williams)

1. Process to evaluate technology - Identify core requirements, research buy solutions, estimate build solutions, compare costs/benefits and make decision
2. Outside of complex RE systems that require a lot of integration, most solutions are falling under the buy category
3. 25% build and 75% buy (in the Q & A) except for Houlihan Lawrence is 100% buy

Connect Tech Workshop - CTO Roundtable - What's the Next Round of Online Real Estate Innovation?
(Mark Lesswing, Sr. VP and CTO at NAR, Joshua Sharfman, CTO at California Assn of Realtors)

1. Arrival of Open Networks
2. Tablets overshadow netbooks and will compete with E-Readers
3. Cloud Computing (private and public sets) are coming of age
4. REST (yeah spelled correctly) Interfaces based on http
5. Social Media security threats around Reputation management
6. Green IT
7 Apple has revolutionized consumerization of technology starting with the iPod and leading to the iPhone.
8. Websites will enable mobile devices
9. Augmented Reality (merging property data w/ phone camera etc.)

Internet Marketing Workshop - Facebook Fantasia: How to Make Sense of - And Profit From - the World's Biggest Social Network
(Linda Davis, Broker/Owner at Re/MAX Realty Group, Kevin Doerr, SVP at Oodle, Dustin Luther, SM Strategy with 4realz Consulting, Mike Mueller, SM Consultant, Mike Mueller, Inc.)

1. Five areas to focus on - SEO, Brand, Fan Conversion, Landing Pages and Community
2. Using Video, getting community and local businesses involved will increase the viral nature of your brand
3. Privacy is taken care of for fan pages vs Profiles
4. Keep personal profile separate from Professional Fan (business) Page
5. Reach out and make friends
6. Share and Share again
7. Participate in conversations
8. Use Facebook Marketplace for listings

Main Conference Session, Wednesday Jan 13

1. Consumers are getting used to real time data and Instant and Live is Changing our World - Brad Inman
2. Capturing the Mobile, Local, Social Phenomenon: Using social behaviors patterns to connect with people by Dennis Crowley, Founder and CEO, Foursquare. I am not sure how this will help grow one's real estate business but for what it's worth if you are a Four Square user, I am the Mayor of the local Giants and Costco where I live!
3. Views, Clicks, Leads or Social Engagement - The national aggregators such as Trulia and Zillow have made the move to focus on leads and bringing value to their broker clients...

Main Conference Session, Thursday Jan 14

1. Chris Meyers, COO, Houlihan Lawrence stated that they went to an Enterprise CRM with all associated tools for their company and agents
2. Technology Trends in 2010 by Sam Grobart, Technology Editor, The NY Times: Tablet computing will mature with Apple being in the forefront. Due to mobile computing cycle, "we are all geeks now, welcome to the party"
3. Hyperlocal content will go a long way in becoming a local media channel - OUtside.in CEO, Mark Josephson

Thursday, Jan 14 - Technology and Media Track: Wordpress, the Category Killer
(Chris Pearson, Founder, Pearsonified, Garron Selliken, Founder M Realty, IDX Blogger)

I have been thinking about Wordpress at its impact on Agent and to some extent on broker websites and this session was one of the key take aways for me from this conference. Wordpress is a game changer for Agent Website platforms with the introduction of some very mature IDX plugins available. There is a separate post needed to discuss the impact of this platform on the traditional RE Website industry.

Leveraging the Open Web to Create a Rich User Experience
(Seann Birkelund, VP Education.com, Drew Meyers, Bus dev at Zillow, Ashfaq Munshi, Founder, Terabitz)

1. Open Web will take data mashups on website to new levels (Zillow, education.com, Yelp, Walkscore, Flickr and more have free API's to integrate for rich user experiences). A takeaway here is to get good pictures on Neighborhoods and integrate through Private Flickr free API to property detail pages.
2. Some interesting options available with the free Education.com API (we will explore this)
3. Social impact on API data - Two way API's so local experts can update, leading to more accurate data. Proper governance needed

Thursday, Jan 14 - Technology and Media Track: Tweet This, The Business Case for Twitter
(Joseph Ferrara, Founder, Sellsius, David Gibbons, Director of Community Relations, Zillow.com, Doug Lazovick, Founder, DeedStreet)

1. Twitter Search Widget, Anyone know search (AKS), Geo Chirp
2. Ok to tweet listings under a separate account
3. "Twitter allows you to strengthen your weak ties"

Connect Case Study: How Two Agents Used Technology to Create Huge Businesses:
(Krisstina Wise, Broker, The Good Life Team, Sue Adler, Realtor, KW of Essex)

1. Krisstina Wise - Start with a High level strategy, Website and Traffic, lead management. "network and not netplay" when asked about using Social Networking. Added Web, video, Social media with tracking and generated an increase of 27% of new business completely attributed to the web.
2. Sue Adler - Moved to a new market and reached 50 Million in her 4th year of business. Uses Top Producer for CRM, focus on Blog, Facebook events, SEO ranking in towns with specific landing pages, Categorizes leads and puts them in follow up buckets. "Most agents do not follow up with past clients". She focuses on follow up and maintaining a marketing funnel. Optimizes listings.

Main Conference - Friday, Jan 15:

1. Develop a mobile strategy in 2010
2. Wordpress has matured and will be a force
3. Interesting panel on RPR - Their focus is to provide one click info for Agents (keep track of them at their blog)
4. Think of your brokerage being your own local media company - All the tools you need are available (Youtube, blogtalkradio etc.)

Some Quotable Quotes at this conference:

"Tiger Woods is a gift that keeps on giving" - Eric Hippeau, CEO, The Huffington Post on how much content and news he has generated due to recent events
"Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die" - Joel Singer, Executive VP, California Association of Realtors when asked about why don't the MLS's and NAR work together to make a National MLS happen
"Use the Internet to get off the Internet" - Scott Heiferman, CEO, Meetup on how to leverage Meetup to connect with people online and take the relationships offline