REbarcamp as DIY Punk
From its inception (which I was here for, but didn’t realize the significance of), the whole idea of REbarcamp seemed to have a certain spirit of the punk rock DIY ethos to it. I liked that about it. Almost as if it were giving the finger to the establishment and writing its own rules, REbarcamp made its own way in the world of real estate conferences and conventions and became a hit. I’d say it was the Sex Pistols of the real estate world (except it didn’t need its own Nancy Spungeon luckily enough).
It’s a digital age, so why the hell not?
Although perhaps not his exact words, I think Jim Cronin meant exactly that. And so Virtual REbarcamp was born. When I first heard about it, I was a little doubtful of the possibility. Yet, I signed up. I have yet to be to a regular REbarcamp, so to be honest, I’m no expert in the field. I have learned enough from these very pages and the people I’ve met to know that they are quite a thing to behold. I have watched several sessions thanks to Dakno’s feeds, but that has been the limit of my experience. Until yesterday that is.
Oh I know, some of you purists out there would pooh-pooh my parade here and yes, I do realize there are many differences between sitting in front of my computer and sitting there in a room full of people, but there was still an experience and I’m here to tell you what worked, what didn’t, and what was absolutely horrible about it.
Good news first.
Overall, I’d say the day was a success for REbarcamp and it’s new virtual partner. Last I heard, there were over 1,900 attendees, which is pretty good, considering they were trying to hit 1,000 at first. The whole setup was pretty good through the day, although there were the expected glitches and such (see below for the bad news). What did I like most about it? The conversation. One of the things most REbarcamp attendees say is that it’s “all about the hallway conversations.” I even noted that in my trip to BlogWorld Expo this year. Since the virtual doesn’t allow us all to be in the same place, we were forced to seek a different type of hallway. A simple chatroom set up by Real Estate Tomato that was quite active through most of the day. I saw a lot of familiar faces from both my real life meetings and my online friends, but I saw a lot of new faces too. Faces I didn’t know, but wound up engaging with. My biggest fear as it was a very simple scrolling chat, was that the conversation would inevitably turn boring. It didn’t. People engaged and discussed the finer points of what was being said in each session. We shared our tips, tricks, and ideas. My guess is that it was a lot like the conversations that take place in the hallway of REbarcamps all over the country.
Despite some of the classes being a bit “101″ for me, I did learn some new ideas and heard a few things that sparked ideas within me. If this had been a non-virtual event, I would have been happy with the money I had spent to get there. I loved the idea that they tried to encourage get-togethers and after-events, although I didn’t know of any in my area (and never thought to do one myself, but next time I most certainly will). I know several people that were part of events in other cities and they seemed to enjoy the experience much more with that communication and group experience vibe.
The kind of bad, but more frustrating than anything.
Of course, as mentioned above, there were technical problems. Hal Lublin and Ginger Wilcox’s session on “Secrets Of Web Success” was completely wiped out by audio issues and was never seen (I felt bad for them – I know they had to be frustrated as those in attendance were). At times things were glitchy and caused presenters to stumble and fumble as they tried to get it worked out. With the slightly less fluid nature of trying to coordinate sessions, this was rough, but nothing I didn’t expect to see some of.
Some of the sessions were more presentations and less interactions. I think as REbarcamp has evolved, I think this has been seen as a stumbling block more than once. With more people wanting to get involved and “present” there seems to be a bit of a disconnect from the audience (of course, this is based on my conversations with people who have attended them). Some of the sessions did their best to combine the two and I hope to see that continue.
The nature of any kind of training course or educational experience, especially when it comes to technology and social media, tends to lean in the “101″ direction. This can be frustrating for anyone who knows some of what they’re doing. If I went to a Twitter class tomorrow, I certainly wouldn’t want to hear someone explain #hashtags to me, but then again, most of the class probably would. This has always been a problem in any sort of tech learning environment in my experience. Even teaching my mother how to change a setting on her computer can be a little frustrating for a guy like me. I do think that the Virtual REbarcamp experience could be improved with this in mind though. Because of the numbers attending and the lack of any real space limitation (you can only have so many sessions in so many rooms if a building only has x rooms), this event could easily expand to more rooms, more presenters, and therefore more divisions of what was being taught. For example, you could have multiple sessions on Twitter, but each one could be talking about different concepts from the ABCs up to converting conversations to business. To make it even more effective, you could have all those sessions at once – so that an attendee who doesn’t quite know where their skill level sits, can move from “room” to “room” in order to find their comfort zone.
The bad…and I mean REALLY bad.
Spammers. Simple as that. Presenters who thought that having a captive audience means a license to advertise. That used their access (I assume they can see who’s in their session) to send out emails, tweets, and Facebook friend requests in order to further their business. Even the sponsors didn’t do that, and although I would be against it, if anyone should have that capability, I would rather have it from them. In one case, I even suspect there were a few “ringers” in the chat room talking about one of the sessions (long after it had come and gone) and passing out the presenters email and website info. Disclaimer: I have no proof that that is indeed what happened, but my gut instinct tells me it did and I am firm believer in my gut (as is pizza). Some people might have differing opinions on this, but I simply find this unacceptable behavior (even at a live event). If I ask you to send me something or I sign up on a sheet – go ahead and shoot me an email about your services, otherwise, I’m not interested.
Overall?
I’d say it was a success. It had some bumps and bruises, but these can be solved and weren’t so bad that they destroyed the experience as a whole. I definitely see potential, but I don’t by any means think it will signal the end of REbarcamps or anything extreme like that. Even though I didn’t think some of the sessions were enough for someone like myself who is tech-minded to begin with, that’s not to say I got nothing out of them. I have several pages of notes, which is a lot when you consider most of my notes are one-liners such as “check out fakewebsite.com – see what you can take away.”
Will I attend a second virtual event? Most certainly. As well, I will be more pro-active in involving my area and doing my part to make it a better experience for all. Jim, if you’re reading this – next time I’ll be more than happy to share my thoughts on the user experience with you and do what I can to help you improve it.
Loading ...
Consumerism, Geo-mapping columnist
Marketing columnist
Would i attend again? Absolutely. Living 17 miles West of the middle of nowhere, by Lake Powell, means getting to a major airport is a 6 hour trek. Having never been to a REBC I was not sure what to expect.
The Good. Lots of take aways for me. Posterous (which i could sense was awesome but didn’t really “get”) is now comfy in it’s new home safely on my own, self hosted WP blog. Apture is installed and when I am done here – gonna go give it a whirl. Oh yes, and I got to chat with Daniel Bates, who was, without his knowledge, the single person whose blog prompted me to start mine, to take the first jump off the cliff. Stephan Swanepoel’s illustrations really “got” me and if nothing else, verified I’m on the right path. My Linkedin profile now has a new place – a link in all of my emails.
The conversations in the tomato chat and on twitter were zippy and unexpectedly fun.
The not so good. The techie difficulties, which having used gotomeeting before, were actually less than I expected. The one class I was in where there was a sales pitch, was, disconcerting. Maybe future presenters will read some of this feedback and not duplicate the spammy sessions.
Next time, i will make sure no out of town clients have my morning covered so I can’t get to all classes possible.
One of my biggest concerns about slapping the Barcamp brand on a virtual conference was the inability to manage a good “give-and-take” type of discussion. As someone who has moderated several conference calls with large numbers of attendees, I can tell you it’s like herding cats. Not impossible, but surely not easy. The other concern I have about the REBarcamp concept in general is the misnomer that the events are somehow a tech event or conference. The better REBC events I’ve attended had topics from attendees that ran the gamut of real estate related issues. Some of them controversial and many that really opened my eyes. In Houston we had someone show up to talk about credit related issues, he had no agenda or anything to really sell – what he did have were inside secrets and tips that you would never hear from the credit industry.
It would be impossible to have a true barcamp event online. Barcamps have no agenda until the day the event takes place. Attendees pick session topics the morning of the event and it’s sort of a fluid, controlled chaos.
That said, I’m not against the idea of a VREBC, but I think it clearly needs to be described as something different than an actual barcamp and the organizers need to encourage sessions that exist outside of the realm of technology and encompass contemporary issues facing the industry as a whole. I hope I have the time to help Jim Cronin and others when the next VRBEC takes place (vetting presenters a little deeper could prevent the carnival barkers from showing up), They should be commended for such hard work and the many successes of a first time event. Online or otherwise, when planning and event it’s the 1st one that has so much riding on it, if you have 15 things that went right and 14 that went wrong, you still have a shot at great second time event.
I listened in on three presentations yesterday.
I thought the virtual bar camp was excellent and in some ways superior to the the “live” events.
At the last RE BarCamp in SF, it was often hard to hear some of the presenters.
The “live” events are more like a meet and greet networking event which is fine – I always love a party – but in terms of actually learning something, the virtual event may be superior.
Often the “give and take” at a live event is a waste of time, you might have one or two people dominate the conversation asking questions about stuff that most of us know or stuff that we do not care about – interupting the presenter – and it just becomes a lot of noise.
I like the virtual because I did not need to travel or commit a day to it. I was able to listen in when I had time.
From ym point of view, GOOD WORK Jim!
Heather – The thing that shocked me the most was the chat. When I logged onto it I thought, “What garbage – what is this? AOL in it’s earliest days?” Old school scrolling chat rooms are frustrating to say the least. I thought that it wouldn’t work and it wind up being just a “chat” room – “Hey Heather, did you get that email I sent you?” “Yeah Matt, that photo was hilarious. When are we going to Applebee’s?” That kind of stuff. But instead there was a lot of good info being exchanged and discussed. Highlights, add-ons, and splinter thoughts…all were covered it seemed. I can’t remember who it was, but someone even tried to get a break out session started, which I think is something to note for the future. If there was perhaps an easy to use system to create such breakouts, it might be able to be a bit more like a regular REbarcamp in that aspect.
Mike – As someone who gave a talk about Twitter for my office and tried to help some local businesses wrap their heads around it, I can attest to the fact that it’s hard to do the give and take when multiple people are throwing things your way and someone is dominating the session with “101″ type questions. You want to give what you have, but at the same time need to participate and allow others to as well. I do like your point about it being more tech oriented than it perhaps should have been. Let’s bring real estate back into the mix a bit more. Social media is the hot topic and it seems everyone and their mother is ready to speak about it at any given moment, but you’re right, let’s talk about real estate issues and technology. There’s no reason we need to only talk geek-speak.
Arn – Thanks for throwing in the opposing side about the “give and take.” Me, I like when things are fluid…not so much because of the interaction, but the potential for a simple topic to turn into something much larger and more interesting. I’ve heard some people complain that the presentations became to much like presentations. When I was at BlogWorld, one session I went to involved someone reading the slides as they showed up on the screen. I can read the screen by myself thank you very much. That isn’t a learning experience to me, that’s like watching a filmstrip in school (yes, I’m that old). It’s more like busy work and a break for the teacher.
Twitter
A huge cheer for the Virtual REbarcamp. We were able to participate from Nicaragua and just that fact made it a very special for us.
In our work in Central America we regularly draw inspiration from the US RE.net. But we sometimes feel that our distance is a handicap. Can we really get to grips with what constitutes best practice from afar? Would we benefit much more if we were interacting with the key players in person?
Maybe. But yesterday if felt like our location didn’t matter one bit. Thanks very much Jim and roll on the next one.
I work for the Tomato and while I was asked to help out in the chat room and present (well actually I volunteered for that), I certainly am not speaking for them and didn’t participate in the planning of the event. These things don’t change my opinion that the knowledge shared was mostly at a higher level than anything I’ve ever paid to attend and this was free and convenient. I in a technological black hole and have had to drive 7 hours in the past to access the closest tech conference – ReTechSouth in Atlanta. I will agree with the spamminess aspect, I had a dozen or so new facebook friend requests (which I have not responded to, no offense to anyone, but subscribe to my business page if you want to follow my business discussions, my personal page is for my IRL friends) and twitter followers. One such person failed to realize that I could TEACH THEM on the subject they discussed and asked me to give them a call for a free talk. I think that was because of the chat room being based on twitter and facebook logins which aided for the distribution and “buzz” around the room, but while simplistic in nature I thought the chat room went pretty well. I’m going to recommend longer 45 minute discussion with the additional 15 minutes added to be spent by most speakers on taking questions offered by the attendees similar to how we do on our Tomato Radio show. I agree with the 101-iness of some of the discussions and will also suggest a better labeling/classification of classes as to their audience and offering more intermediate and pro classes as well.
You have to recognize that this was our first try at this and there were a lot of unknowns, so I feel confident that we’ll only continue to improve on our successes and failures, but thank you for all your valuable input. DB
Been a Realtor for 2 years after being in sales and sales training for 30. Never been to a physical REBAR. Probably will go at some point when my biz is “deficit neutral” as Congress would say.
I though the sessions were good. I learned some things I did not know. I learned that some things existed that I did not know existed – and now need to learn about. Some of it was very basic.
I dont know if the idea that is was too 101 for some folks should be considered a negative. There is a very broad spectrum of knowledge among the community. What is 101 to some may be like Greek to others (that is not meant as anti-Greek comment).
I think, going forward it might be helpful if there was a way for the presenters to define more specifically what they’ll cover – that might help people avoid sessions they don’t need.
There was without a doubt a misconception on the part of some presenters that presenting was supposed to be an opportunity to sell what they sell – but, that is a natural ocurrence.
I had a unique experience in that my laptop crashed the night before and I recommissioned an old Pentium PC (circa 03 or so) for the event. I could not get the Citrix App to load. I listened to the presentations only on the phone feed. The chatroom was my only connection to the community and I thought it was great. There were some great conversations as well as some nonsense – which is like any chatroom would be.
Overall an excellent job of managing the logistics and problems – especially for the first time. Looking forward to another one at some point.
Rick Schwartz
Danbury CT
@rickschwartz
Hi Matt,
Loved the post and agree with what you’ve said. I think one of the issues that real estate has encountered in integrating barcamps is that they are “late to the table” in some aspects of technology and scrambling a bit to catch up. This means that large numbers of people flock to barcamps hoping for answers. This is great because it means increasing numbers of agents are interested in tech, but makes the forum a bit different than the original barcamp setup. I used to attend barcamps in Silicon Valley for tech (I’m not a Realtor, I’m a technology industry veteran) and they were typically smaller groups, dedicated to certain topics (not social media as a whole) so only a few people in the crowd actually KNEW enough to be able to talk about it. Just as it would be tough to take a bunch of tech people and have them attend a barcamp just labeled “real estate” – as a real estate industry member you’d probably recognize that’s a pretty broad topic that a lot of people would claim to know a lot about. Just my thoughts.
Twitter
Erin makes some great points. With most of the tech Barcamps I’ve attended, the overall skillset was higher across the board. You had programmers sharing tricks with programmers. With the RE model, you are mixing in such a wide variety of topics and skillsets that it can be great to some and frustrating to others.
I think the real estate model needs a hybrid solution. There is a definite need for 101 level presentations of info from those qualified to present it and there is a definite need for groupshare conversations.
Hey, Jason and I are thrilled that we were able to actually pull this whole thing off. =)
We learned a ton from putting on this event, so much that I am certain that there will be an incredibly noticeable improvement next time.
Without having done anything like this before, we could only make an effort to overcome the pitfalls that we could conceive beforehand. Monday morning quarterbacking is always easier. But all-in-all, we were incredibly pleased with the outcome; I see it as a huge victory in effort on everyone’s part.
Regarding the speaker selection, and the ’selling’ in the sessions, let me first explain that, much like a real barcamp, the schedule was filled on a first-come-first-serve basis. I was going to audition anyone for the spots… in fact I was thrilled that they were filled in just a few days so I could stop worrying about that detail. I’d love to hear some discussion on an alternative to this selection process. My opinion is that this roster turned out pretty darn good… a little something for everyone. We made it clear that there was to be no selling of product in any session, but did allow for selling one’s time, so-to-speak, as many did.
Regarding the tech challenges: the crew practiced trying to break it from the audience and the presenters’ point of view, so as to have solutions to any challenges, and believe-me-you, we dodged a ton of potential issues that you never saw. However, you put 27 presenters in 27 different locations, on 27 different set-ups, and then try to get 1.900 people to tune in all in accordance… you are going to find challenges that you couldn’t prepare for. We now know how to avoid some of the issues we had, making our next effort all that much better.
The Chat Room. That was something that I toiled over for some time. How were we going to make the Hallway Conversation happen. I, like most, feel that the room we used turned out better than expected, but could still be improved. I would love some more discussion and ideas on how to better provide a social atmosphere, virtually.
In the end, I know that we exceeded the expectations of most, including myself, and are encouraged to schedule the next event immediately. I see the format being relatively the same with a couple major (to-be-announced) improvements. I will be writing a full post on the VREBC.com blog (it will also appear on Tomato Blog), so be sure to check that out for more opinion, overview and event announcement.
Matt, thanks a ton for the review – we appreciate the coverage and feedback. Every bit of direction we can get from attendees is important.
Matt – What a great review covering the highlights ! And super comments and discussion ! I need to make it here more often. I am sorry I missed it but am really enjoying reading about it and am looking forward to the next one. Jim Cronin and all the folks that set this up rock ! Is just awesome : )
Jim, I was thrilled with this event and think everyone involved did a wonderful job. I look forward to the next one and will encourage more to attend. I might suggest having fewer topics and run them 45 minute each. Also a panel discussion with prearranged more advanced questions would be interesting for a couple of the sessions. I am sure as I have had time to sift through all the great material, posts, and comments I will have other suggestions. Special thanks to all of you for contributing to the education of our industry.
Mike
I’ve only been blogging since April this year and incorporated Social Media in the last couple of months. There is a need for 101 type stuff, especially up here in Canada. Perhaps just more clarity in the session title would be sufficient.
At the very least the simpler sessions and links provided help to find sites such as this.
I’ve posted elsewhere that this is a word I can’t stand but the only way I can describe the event is Awesome.
Matt is Jim Johnny Rotten or Malcolm Mclaren?:)
Nice read on the day, Matt. For a first of its kind event it was, in my opinion, a success. I have been to five R E Barcamps this year and each has its own character and quirks. Yes there is a 101 feel to a lot of this and some people are looking for the 300- 400 level classes. But those same people are often the ones leading or facilitating the 101’s.
One of the quirks I have seen of the typical format is that at times the short sessions get quickly off track or dominated by an individual with an agenda – yes the law of two feet applies and its up to the individual to exercise it. And the open discussion can prevent the session from getting much depth.
The Virtual camp this week I think had the best of both worlds. There were several technical sessions that did get to good depth and one could pick up great SEO tips and real life examples of how agents are employing the tools. Great job on that Jim and Jason – and Daniels session at the end of the day – top notch.
Others were too much of a sales pitch, some with a good message clouded by ” this is what my clients….. and my clients…..” Happens in live camps also. Some people just don;t get the culture.
The chatroom worked well at times though I flipped back and forth between that and twitter. It did allow some of the hallway experience where so much of the learning takes place.
Now, if we could find a way to bring it all together for the afterparty……..peace,
I appreciated the quality of ’speakers’ and thought the virtual event went very well, especially considering this was the first run.
What I didn’t like? Sessions could have been longer; there was too much advertising.
Forbid boring Power Point presentations.
Linked-in | Twitter
Sorry that I missed it but want to lobby people to find a RE BarCamp and participate in person.
Conversations can get off on tangents and that is the risk of volunteer events… but, as they say, you can vote with your feet and change classrooms.
Here’s the overview I wrote on the event: http://rebarcamp.com/virtual/2.....e-success/
Digg | Facebook | Linked-in | Technorati | Twitter
Claudia – Your example is a great look at why Virtual REBarcamp can be in some instances better than its non-virtual cousin.
Daniel – I attended your session and it was one of the better ones in my opinion. I do agree about the idea of a longer presentation, one I attended felt so rushed I didn’t enjoy it and my attention span slipped. Your presentation was a good example of 101 and how to deal with it. While some of your plugins were very 101, some were not. I walked away looking at a few plugins and what they could offer me. I also found your chat room attendance to be very helpful after your session. Perhaps there’s a key in there – a chat room set up for post-session chat with the presenter?
Rick – The 101-ness was a bit of a negative for me, but I definitely see the need for it. With so many agents at so many different skill levels on so many different topics – you will never be able to make a session that is perfect for all. I do think it’s something that needs to be considered, but I don’t think it will ever be “solved” 100%. Perhaps a well written description of each event, so you’re not just heading into a room based on its title, would help out.
Erin – Agree with you on the thought that there are so many agents out their thirsting for knowledge about things involving tech, that it can make it a little harder. Interesting comparison on the real estate vs. Silicon Valley style barcamps. Having that thought in my head gives me a slightly different perspective on how hard it must be to arrange the REbarcamp conversations, when everyone wants to be the expert these days.
Bob – I think the hybrid idea will win out in the end. Yes, we do need 101 conversations…they are actually crucial I think in getting more of the industry involved and working to move us forward to new and better ideas and practices. Of course, if you stay at the 101 level, you’ll have the 102s leaving at an alarming rate. It’s the same problem teachers face everyday – how to teach the basics without boring the kid who’s already at that level.
Jim – As I said in my email to you, I think you all did an amazing job keeping it running. Even when things were going wrong, you all handled it with calm and a sense of humor. All in all, a success in my opinion. I’ve read your post about it all and will more than likely comment more over there (how can I not, you did mention me after all). A few notes:
Chat room – anything that can be done to make it more readable would be better. The banner across the top took up a lot of screen real estate (no pun intended) so even with a high resolution (although smaller monitor – 15 inch laptop), I was unable to see much more than 3 to 4 comments at a time without scrolling. To stay within the conversation took a lot of back and forth. The more comments available at a given time, the better in my opinion. I also think that based on the 45 minute time schedule, a possible “private” chat room for each room would be good – this would allow the speaker to stay around in the room and answer questions and interact with the audience a bit more. As I noted to Daniel – he did an excellent job with this in the chat room.
Presenters – Knowing how you had to select the presenters makes it hard for me to see a way around much. You could never vet each and every presenter without making this a full time gig for yourself. Perhaps a better set of guidelines might encourage them to do better, but I can’t be sure of that as who knows if they would pay attention to that.
Socialization – I think between the hashtag on Twitter and the chat room, there was plenty of socialization going on during the event. I think this will improve as you do it more and more. People will start to “get” what the hashtag and chat are for and begin pushing to utilize it even more to generate that “social” feel that many feared would be missing from a virtual event.
Chris – You would have enjoyed it knowing you. It went well I think and now that they’ve announced another one, I’m looking forward to seeing that as well.
Mike – I have to say that I’d like to see more topics, but as I suggested before, perhaps some hours could revolve around specific topics and run from 101 to advanced – each level running concurrently in a different room.
Andrew – Unfortunately I use the word “awesome” a little too often. Sorry about that in advance. Hmmmm…I don’t know which I would pick, perhaps Malcolm.
Tony – Do you think having your live-session helped you get more out of it with discussion and interaction? I would have liked to have experienced that to see how that worked.
Susie – As a first run, this actually exceeded my expectations. I had a bad feeling it was going to be more of a technical nightmare than anything they had expected. Even with them practicing breaking it as Jim said they did, I was fearful – technology has a way of getting in the way of your best laid plans sometimes.
Doug – I do think this may have been a good way for people who don’t understand what a REBarcamp is all about. It will be interesting to see if this sparks more interest in the events or not.
Jim – Thanks for letting us know. I’ll comment over there when I have a moment.
Matt no need to apologise, I was just emphasising how impressed I was to such an extent that I had to say Awesome.
Does that make Daniel or Jason “Sid”?
Wow Matt, tons of comments on this. Glad to see that there’s so much debate about a topic that two years ago probably wouldn’t have gotten much air time. It’s great that people are taking the initiative to make more barcamps and learning opps available, and as with anything, it will likely take some time to iron out all the issues that come up along the way. The perspective from tech barcamps to real estate barcamps is definitely interesting. One of the biggest differences is that people don’t show up to yours in sweats!
Matt – It was good to have a group but all being at different levels with diff interests – promoted some level of discussion. Tight schedule limited post session discussions as there was often overlap.Might be different if done on an agency level, though that would be more 101.