What do you get when you take 9 real estate pros in 4 states, Skype, DimDim and a blustery Thursday?
Mini-Bar Camp...
Half BarCamp, half accountibility group and half implementation assistance hotline, we "met" for almost 7 hours of hardcore tech and sales talk. Four of us were in the Atlanta area, so we all got together in a reasonably central location during the camp. The other agents, in North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama all called in.
Each person "presented" at some point during the day and we had some wide-open discussion periods as well. While we had planned on having fairly structured sessions, we ended up flowing from one presentation into another and still covering almost all of the subjects we had on our list.
A few lessons learned...
We went through a lot of trouble to set up the "webinar" portion of the camp. We tested several webinar solutions, looking for one that had VoIP, was free, and had the ability to rotate through presenters. We ended up using a platform called DimDim. Combining it with Skype seemed like a good option, although it seems that DimDim might have VoIP capability.
In the end, we turned off the webinar and were pretty much content with Skype. By building a group call, we also had a group chat. Between the chat and the voice interaction, we were able to communicate and share a LOT of ideas, technologies and resources.
Next time, we will likely just use Skype. Aside from some bandwidth issues and voices dropping out every once in a while, it worked great.
We started with a list of topics... we didn't have anyone assigned to run specific topics, and winging it would be the best description... and it went REALLY well. But I think in the future it would be better to have a little better idea going in about who would be presenting what... At least for me.
Who was this cast of characters?
- Thom Abbott
- Kathy Drewien
- Debe Maxwell
- Connie Harvey
- Patty Keller
- Susie Blackmon
- Elizabeth Cooper-Golden
- Mara Hawks
Replicate?
Yes. We will, and you can. This small group will be starting a bi-weekly coaching/accountibility/implementation/support call. Instead of spending a day of it, we will be "meeting" for about 90 minutes, with a clearly defined topic... and time for open discussion.
For those that enjoy the rebarcamp experience or other technology camps, this might be a great way to amp up the learning between events. We have all been there... head ready to explode from new tools we learned about at REtechSouth or rebarcamp... but we just couldn't get all of those tools into the toolbox when we got home.
By breaking down the technologies and not having to learn everything at once, we expect to get more from all of the events we attend. Also, because each of us have different strengths, we all can learn from each other and help each other with implemention.
The Beauty of Mini-Bar Camp...
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