I was invited and accepted the invitation to attend the Virtual Real Estate Bar Camp yesterday and I would guess many of you did as well. What an amazing amount of material. It was also quite stunning to me how many of these presenters have a link here to ActiveRain. Then again, not so amazing if you understand the scope of what is provided here in our network, ActiveRain.
For those of you who did not attend I can assure you that you missed something that was totally outstanding. Both in the scope of the material that was presented as well as the quality of the presenters and presentations.
Certainly trying to rehash here in this post beyond a glimmer of what was covered, would be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, there were specific things that truly impressed me.
From an expansion of the concept of REAL TIME by Brad Inman and how it will affect the way we function in the real estate industry to Mobile Technology and it's place in facilitating the REAL TIME concept, I was certainly impressed that all this great information was made available to me.
Like anything in life, just being exposed to valuable information like this does not insure that it will make a difference in your life. Taking action and implementing these concepts into our business plans and lives, will.
A thought that often occurred to me yesterday was that out of the over 1 million real estate practitioners in the market places around the US , how many are even aware of the transformations that are taking place through out every aspect of the industry because of the new mobile technologies.
When we thought of technology in the past ( only yesterday) we would think of electronic media, Internet marketing , electronic communications etc. To have a better understanding, you would have to take those things and everything you already know , put it on steroids and then multiply it by a factor of 10 and you still would be just touching the tip of the iceberg. If this sounds a bit overwhelming, you might just be getting the idea.
One of the real highlights of the day came from a brilliant dissertation by Stephan Swanapool ( ActiveRain member extraordinaire) from a chapter in his new book, "Market Trends 2010". Another great presentation was from our own, Pat Kitano on Innovative Community Engagement.
Social media, is now transforming itself into Social Business. The creative have taken what people have a natural inclination to want to participate in, social friendships, because it can be instantaneously gratifying and turning it into the even more satisfying, business relationships. The pool of business prospects jumped from a somewhat limited perspective to an unlimited one , once again , a concept on steroids , multiplied by a factor of ten. The crown jewel , Twitter and the grand daddy of social networks ,Facebook of what was only yesterday thought of as "social media", has tuned up its volume into the new realm of "social business".
Mobile media is now no longer an option, it is mandatory to participate in the world of the Internet Empowered Consumers. The tools are becoming so advanced with new and greater speed of delivery, that we are now close to everything in our lives soon to becoming a layering of all REAL TIME events and having them occur simultaneously. Overwhelming for some, all in a days work for others. We have only to decide which if these two choices will apply for us.
I am sure you have all heard the expression " The Future Is Now" . After yesterdays great presentations, we could distill that phrase down and then reconstitute it again to be "The Future Just Happened and We Are On the Precipice of a Much Faster Future,soon to be upon us".
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VREBC was a huge success! Your post was a great summary and I COMPLETELY agree with your comment as to the # of real estate agents Nationwide that have NO CLUE as to the transformations of our business. I missed Stephen's session (I caught his in November). My favorite session was from Dakno about Posterous.com. That will be my new techy tool that gets put into service.