9:20 am: The crowd is beginning to gather. This wine bar makes an interesting location. We’ll see how it works out for the sessions

9:43 am: @Andykaufman talked me into leading a session with him on mobile… hard to lead and live blog, but I’ll try.

iPhones, EVO’s & Droids, Oh My!

9:50 am: Andy asked how many iPhone users were thinking about switching phones. Vast majority of group is using the iPhone.

9:59 am: “I think the next gen iPhone is the perfect RE tool. The ability to edit video is a key” – @jerrykidd

10:07 am: “As a broker, creating content on the fly creates real opportunities for mistakes.” – @genariede

10:12 am: The crowd at the mobile session is highly participative.

10:13 am: @jerrykidd recommends “print n share” for the iPhone.

10:23 am: Interesting discussion about the relative value of testing vs talking on the phone, accuracy, conveying emotion, etc. I feel like the balance of the crowd is leaning toward higher levels of texting.

10:25 am: There are real dangers in the ubiquity of access to data via mobile technology. Andy asked how many have considered a communications policy to limit access. Interesting question.

10:26 am: How many have a communications policy to limit access?

Automated Social Media Marketing Systems via @pkitano

“My background is in developing media companies. So this is going to be a completely different approach to real estate social media.”

11:07 am: “First engage your community.”

11:08 am: “Local advertising doesn’t work because a cpm model doesn’t work.”

11:11 am: What works in local advertising? 1. Immediate discounts. 2. Making it easy to find a place to find a local service. “You need to become the local media for your community.”

11:14 am: “All local news will be user generated at some point.”

This is more about @pkitano’s product than an REBarcamp session, but he’s raising some interesting points.

11:22 am: Groupon – what makes it interesting is the deep discounts they can offer. They sell at deep discount and take 50% of the gross. They are now segmenting their market even smaller to access deeper local involvement. There are now at least 10 Groupon imitators in San Francisco alone.

11:24 am: Local ad power – “I rarely go to any restaurant without a coupon now.”

What Pat is suggesting is that real estate agents use an automated system to become a local media channel and create value for their community by creating local advertising outlets. Focus is on creating on a specific location and providing an aggregation point for user generated local content.

What is the need for a revenue model via advertising if the goal is to sell real estate? “It’s to create quid pro quo opportunities for the community.”

“From my experience, with over 4000 followers, I only average 40 clicks on any link on Twitter.” @jerrykidd

11:46 am: Pat is making a connection between automated local news Twitter streams and the 365 Things Facebook page ideas and the consistency of the content and ease of creation.

Twitter: Fad Or Effective Marketing Tool

If I were to base an opinion on what I’m hearing in this session, I’d say it’s was fad. I find that Twitter conversations that focus solely on broadcast tactics woefully miss the mark.

2:22 pm: Fad Or Business Tool?

2:32 pm: Relative to business, I think Twitter is one of the most misunderstood social sites.

2:49 pm: I do like the way this Twitter session has navigated… Lively conversation. Thanks @christellez

The End

3:05 pm: Tamara And Laura Close It Out

Building An Online Marketing Strategy by @garrons

10:43 am: “Consider using the Internet.”

10:46 am: “Before you blaze out of here with all of these tool ideas, take a step back and look at ‘the moment’ when new appointments are set. If you understand what drove that moment, you’re way ahead of the game.”

Garron is talking about three sites, for three different agents that are archetypes of conversation points. Each one represents each agent’s “moment” points.

1. Showing requests prospecting DB.

2. Sphere referral, direct inquiries, prospecting sign ups.

3. Sphere referral, IRL meetings.

10:57 am: @garrons is talking about blogs that are designed to support real life relationships, not Google. clairewidmark.com is not designed to attract search engines, it’s designed to support what Claire actually does each day to get to the moment.

10:59 am: “Realize when you find something interesting & ask, ‘how can I share that?”

11:00 am: Garron getting animated.

11:02 am: “I want my website to reflect me in a way I’m proud of. I want to be proud to share my site because it reflects who I am.”

11:06 am: “Take a look at your online presence. If it does not reflect YOU and how you connect with clients, you will not be as succesful in your online marketing efforts.”

11:08 am: “Utilize supportive tools. Understand your community & use tools that work.”

I want more on “the moment” concept from @garrons

Creating A Successful Real Estate Hub By @tyr

“Your real estate business comes from your ‘sphere’ and yet most tools are direct to consumer and doesn’t play to your existing skills.”

11:14 am: The agent business cycle.

11:17 am: “Tools fall into 3 areas, lead generation, client management & sphere building.”

11:18 am: Building your sphere: Facebook, Twitter, Blog

11:21 am: Keys to Facebook success: 1. Super easy. 2. Awesome referral marketing tool. 3. Focus on status updates.

11:23 am: 365 Things To Do In Vancouver, WA is a great example of a Facebook fan page that has impact in increasing sphere of influence. Created by @dalechumbley

11:25 am: Facebook tracks the “influence” and interaction on your fan page. The greater the level of interection, the more Facebook promotes the page.

11:27 am: “You need to have a solid hub for your social media activities, a place to lead people to.”

11:28 am: “A blog is just a series of emails to the world.”

11:29 am: Lead generation has to happen from your hub. The first step is having a hub you’re proud to show off.

11:30 am: “Your hub has to have dynamic content. The content must change!”

11:31 am: “Your hub must have home search.”

11:32 am: “You really need to be able to prospect against the database you create.”

11:33 am: CRM –> Conversion

CRM Keys

11:36 am: 1. Get them into the CRM! 2. Observe activity and track behavior. 3. Know when to ask for business, understand the trigger.

11:37 am: “Most important: make your blog the hub of your agent business cycle.”

11:52 am: Dale Chumbley & John Payson close the morning w/ a discussion of their strategies.

Afternoon Breakout Sessions

1:17 pm: mugtug.com <– had not heard of this one. @1000wattjoel is detailing apps that help you move to the cloud. This one is an online photo editor.

1:19 pm: blacktonic.com allows you to tell a story with your slides. Entirely web-based.

1:22 pm: Joel Burslem presents the cloud.

1:24 pm: notableapp.com is mostly designed for websites, but will work for any document or image to notate changes you’d like made to the document. Entirely browser-based.

1:30 pm: @1000wattjoel thinks mailchimp.com is the best email marketing site.

1:33 pm: squarespace.com is being discussed, but it’s “cool” features have been replicated in themes like Headway for WordPress. It has lost it’s luster for me.

1:36 pm: Note to self: take a look at kissinsights.com

Lifestyle Branding: Why It Matters by @bhgre_wendy

Shifting gears. Wendy will be focusing on strategy. Pointing out the differences between traditional and lifestyle branding. This is a shift away from commodity features to values and aspirations and vehicles for self expression.

1:47 pm: Wendy Forsythe

1:48 pm: “Informed consumers & pervasive technology = consumers in control.”

1:49 pm: There are 73 million echo boomers… the next generation of agents and consumers driving change.

1:51 pm: “The traditional business model of real estate is old fashioned & broken.”

1:53 pm: How do we fix the model?

1:55 pm: “RE brands were built on ego & status quo.This won’t work going forward.”

1:57 pm: “Leave the past behind.” The focus needs to move to value, quality, design, innovation and relationship. Relationship is the glue that holds it all together.

2:00 pm: “C-Level Life – Complete Consumer Control” What does today’s consumer want? Simplicity, speed, scrutiny, customization, innovation, freedom, entertainment, collaboration, transparency.

2:01 pm: “Brand interaction is a dialogue -requires integrity, authenticity, performance.”

2:07 pm: “One of the mistakes we make in building our brand is being to generic.”

2:15 pm: @bhgre_wendy is using @tboard & @locoheather’s blogs to illustrate community focus.

2:17 pm: Recommendations: 1. Focus your branding on neighborhoods and communities. 2. Focus your branding on lifestyle.

Traditional branding is out. Lifestyle branding is in.

Why Your Name Matters Most – @barryhurd

“We’re all Big Foot to people searching for us online.” They’ve never seen us, all they can learn about us must be pieced together from what they find online. What will they find?

2:42 pm: “48% of searches on Google are based on names.”

2:45 pm: “If I know people are searching for me, I may as well manage my appearance.”

2:51 pm: Barry Hurd

2:55 pm: Interesting ideas about putting ads for yourself on searches for your name. I’ve never looked at the ads associated with my name results on Google.

2:57 pm: “One reason why tweeting matters: it occupies search results quickly.”

2:58 pm: Video matters for the same reasons, especially on YouTube.

3:03 pm: Showing Webmynd’s Firefox plugin to move Google ads out of the way to get quick snapshots of someone your searching for information on.

3:07 pm: www.SocialMention.com allows the export of search results to an RSS feed and excel spreadsheet.

3:09 pm: Note to self: take a look at addictomatic.com

Barry’s presentation is available at slideshare.net/123socialmedia

Implementation Without Procrastination, Frustration or Complication by @darinpersinger

Darin is discussing the fears that keep us from making a choice and moving forward. Began his discussion with the MIT Door Study on fear of loss.

3:30 pm: Darin Persinger

3:34 pm: Encouraging action –> “You’re already ready.”

3:36 pm: rescuetime.com monitors how much time you spend on web sites and shuts them off to you if you’ve exceeded preset limits.

3:37 pm: Identify and focus: “What is the one thing that I will start doing tomorrow morning.”

3:38 pm: Motivation: “Is this something I really want to do?”

3:39 pm: Focus: eliminate, delegate, don’t complicha

3:45 pm: Implement: hesitation is a productivity killer. “Just do it.”

The Future Of The Real Estate Brokerage

4:19 pm: Great conversation:

Click here to download the plugin immediately.

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This video will walk you through the process of exporting your ActiveRain XML file and importing it into your WordPress blog. This is for self-hosted wordpress blogs only.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His first presentation was entitled, “How To Speak Geek – Hiring And Managing A Developer.” In that presentation he broke down the common communication problem areas the average business person faces when dealing with a developer, and how to fix them. His second presentation was aimed directly at the developers in the audience. “Real-Time Plugin Development” gave Steve the opportunity to get into the nuts and bolts of building a WordPress Plugin. He wrote the plugin, which focused on a more intelligent use of a post’s gallery of images, while at the Wordcamp, then demonstrated the building for the audience.

Below you’ll find the entire real-time plugin presentation. (56 minutes)

7:08 pm: Let’s try this again.

7:48 pm: I put a few streams of Brandon Dove talking about BuddyPress at www.qik.com/respres

7:50 pm: A good BuddyPress site to look at as an example is www.rideoregonride.com

7:55 pm: Niraj is demoing ScreenSteps, which can be found at www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps

7:59 pm: ScreenSteps uses XML-RPC to post ScreenSteps documents directly to a blog post on your WordPress blog.

8:05 pm: ScreenSteps uses a manual/lesson/step metaphor. Ablog post will be a single lesson.

8:16 pm: ScreenSteps also allows you to update the blog post from the ScreenSteps desktop application. So changes can be made to all docs and the post with one edit session from the desktop app.

8:28 pm: This ends the live blog app/plugin demo.

8:42 pm: Sorry, one more thing: magicfields.org is rockin’! Some concern was expressed about WP 3.0 compatibility.

11:20 am: Testing a new feature. Again, pay no attention to me.

11:34 am: And again.

11:43 am: Testing a few new features to our live blog app… in the wild.

6:57 am: “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Testing A Header

11:40 am: Oh, that was nice.

11:45 am: Will be testing new WP livebloghgng features at #rebcphx including new hinternal headlines.

This Is How Internal Headlines Look

11:46 am: Uses H2 tags… Will be configurable in release.

6:43 pm: Testing from iPhone OS 4.0 Beta

Doing Some Testing – 4/26/2010

2:07 pm: We’re refining the UI, so I’m just testing.

2:17 pm: Non-tweet test.

Looks like all is well.

10:22 am: Photo test.

4:46 pm: Testing new features.

2:14 pm: OC Wordcamp tomorrow. #wcoc (just testing Live Blog update)

2:19 pm: OC Wordcamp tomorrow! #wcoc (just testing Live Blog functions)

The row actions in the WordPress dashboard are hidden by default. They appear when you mouse over an area that you want to edit. Some users are confused by this as they tend not to “hunt” for functionality.

We wrote this plugin to display the Row actions all the time. Enjoy!

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