I tend to take a lot of pictures at conferences, and this one has proved no different. If you find any pictures that you’d like to print, use in blog posts, whatever – please feel free. I take these pictures for everyone, not just myself.

Again, you can use any of these images for anything that you would like – free and open.

(50 more pictures at Todd’s blog)

Dale Stinton, National Association of Realtors (NAR) CEO, spoke here at Inman Connect about their recent 900 person board meeting. In that meeting they came away with 13 “exciting initiatives” (time will tell if that’s a prophetic number…) that they were going to do.

Interesting tidbits:

• NAR wants to play directly with the consumer
• Raising NAR dues gives them $100 million to play with
• NAR wants to be the consumer advocate to Washington DC

Is it just me, or does anyone really think that an organization that moves as ponderously slowly as NAR, and needs 900 people to reach consensus for any decision, really has a chance to play in the fast-moving and dynamic consumer market?

How many large organizations have been able to make a web-play that actually works? If tech giants like Microsoft can’t even buy their way into the consumer market, how realistic is it for NAR?

I might be being overly pessimistic on this. Dale did mention that they wanted to be the consumer’s advocate lobbying in DC. Okay, I can buy that. How though? How are you going to get consumers to pay attention to you online?

Dale mentioned that Realtor.com has fallen behind, but that when they catch up, they won’t fall behind again. Technically, that’s possible, I just don’t believe they can do it. There’s a lot of catch-up that will have to be done, as the Trulia’s, eppraisal.com’s and Zillow’s of the world keep innovating and winning the attention of the average American.

Incredibly cool video from Trulia showing how and where people search for homes.

Every dot on the map is a search on Trulia.com across the US and each line denotes the likelihood that consumers who search here are also likely to search there. It’s sort of like Amazon Recommends for real estate.

For example, in the first city featured in the video we see that people who search in San Francisco are also likely to search in Hawaii, Miami, New York as well as within the state.

Matt Heaton and Caleb Mardini handed out the Project Blogger awards, put together by Active Rain and Inman. It’s where prominent real estate bloggers took a real estate agent new to the blogosphere under their wings for 4 months.

Congrats to Mary Pope-Handy of Live in Los Gatos and her mentor, Frances Flynn Thorsen, theRealtyGram! $5000 will be donated to a charity from this competition.

This nugget from Pat Kitano of Transparent Real Estate:

“Facebook is the white pages,
Your blog is the yellow pages.”

There were more thoughts on why it’s important to be a part of the online conversation. With those of us who blog, that tends to be the central node of our informal social network. We do still tend to take part in the “real” social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Active Rain though.

Dustin Luther, of Move.com, brought up the point that anytime you link to someone, you “vote” for them. This is the foundation of the informal network.

Anil Dash spoke about the reality that human behavior hasn’t changed – we’re still the same. Social networking is what humans are born to do. The sites are just revealing the types of things that we do anyway. These same behaviors are just manifesting in a new medium.

Interesting tidbits and quotes are starting to come out of the real estate bloggers talking at Inman’s Bloggers Connect.

Finding Your Voice Panel

(more images on Flickr)

“It takes a while to find your voice, you have to write a little bit first before it really clicks.”
– Philip Ferrato, Editor, Curbed SF

“When someone asks a question, send them a link to a blog post that you wrote answering the question. When the next person asks the same question, the link is already there – send it to them.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“Write about what you’re passionate about and throw in your opinion. Without your opinion, your voice, I’m not interested in reading it.”
– Drew Meyers, Community Relations Specialist, Zillow

“I don’t want the same people reading me all the time, I’m an agent, I want new people calling me.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“When you’re writing about things you’re passionate about, you’re bound to offend someone sometime.”
– Marlow Harris, Realtor, Coldwell Banker Bain Associates

Monetizing Your Blog Panel

Can advertising hurt your credibility?
“Yes, in the beginning, you should be focused on growing your brand and credibility first.”
– Paul Chaney, Vice President Marketing, Blogging Systems

“No. We’re not writing for fun here, you should try and get a return on that time investment from the beginning. Especially when it’s leveraging the local connections and non-competitive partners you have (plumbers, home inspectors, etc…)”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

What about Banner ads?
“The most successful source of revenue we’ve had is from TLA. Google AdSense only works for a select few.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

“I’ve personally cached a $65,000 check from Google, but that’s when I managed over 400 sites. It’s about volume.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

“Sponsorship might be a better avenue – where someone will pay $x/month to have the link on your site regardless of how many people come to the site or click through the link. This really works well for niche sites.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

Should you get paid to write a post?
“I don’t think that you should get paid to post anything in the real estate industry. Our industry has a hard enough time building credibility, so it has to be authentic.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

It’s to easy for us technologists to get caught up in our technology, our blogs or our social networks. When we do, we often fail to remember that these are tools that are there to facilitate communication and build towards offline interaction, business and partnerships.

A bunch of us are converging on San Francisco in our annual pilgrimage to Real Estate Tech Mecca. It’s a fun event, where we realize the culmination of our online work throughout the year in the connections made face-to-face. Many of us will go away with partnerships and new business opportunities because of the time spent online blogging or connecting through social networking vehicles like Active Rain and Facebook.

This same lesson applies to real estate agents online. Again, it’s easy to get lost in the myriad tools and possibilities open to you online. You could spend a lot of time making sure you’ve got a couple hundred friends on Facebook, answering questions on Trulia Voices or blogging. The most important thing to remember is that you should be driving towards offline (face-to-face) meetings.

The websites and tools available online are just facilitators for your offline interaction.

Chances are, the next real estate deal you make might be instigated by something you did online. However, it will likely be finalized only after meeting face-to-face. The truth is that offline interaction is far more powerful than online.

Take the opportunity, whenever it arises to use tools that help raise your visibility online – grow your brand. But, also take the opportunity to leverage that into meetings and events that actually result in business.

In just 1 week real estate bloggers from around the US will descend upon San Francisco to be a part of “Blogger Connect“. Blogger Connect is an extension of the Inman Real Estate Connect conference that happens twice a year in New York and San Francisco.

As many people struggle to find the value in blogging and decide if it works for their business, I don’t. You see, I believe that blogging and social networks provide a valuable service by creating connections and these connections prove their value through the offline interactions that come about because of them.

Can you get a lot out of reading a smart person’s blog? Yes.

Can you learn new ways to create business for yourself and your real estate organization through blogs? Of course.

Does your personal brand, or company brand, increase in value because of your blog? Probably, but it depends how engaging you are.

There are a lot of reasons to blog, but the one reason that provides the most return on your time investment is the offline interactions that result in more business, new friends and stronger relationships. Connecting to a larger hub of people, and being able to communicate with them all easily, allows you to leverage that group when you have a specific need.

If you are a real estate blogger and are not getting involved with the community, offline as well as online, then you’re missing out. If you’re looking to make some connections that will help you in this smaller-than-you-imagine real estate blogosphere, then buy a ticket to meet up with us in San Francisco in 2 weeks (July 31 – Aug 1).

What’s interesting to me about NARdi Gras is how big it is. If you compare the number of exhibitors and attendees, NAR’s annual conference blows away Inman (in both San Francisco and NY combined). So, you’ve got a lot of potential to network with a wide variety of people. It’s a place to get business done – the size of the expo floor alone is a testament to that.

Then you have Inman. Inman isn’t as big. It doesn’t have that “establishment” feel to it either. Brad has done a great job of bringing in vibrant, new technologies into the spotlight.

When you go to a panel on “Top money making strategies in online marketing” at NAR there is no one sitting on the panel that was born after 1970. When you go to a similar session at Inman you rarely find a person on the panel born before 1970.

So, there is a fundamental difference between the two “big” real estate industry conferences. One is all about change, the other is about the status quo. This makes them both a target for two different demographics within the industry – real estate professionals go to both, it’s just the type of professional that goes to one rarely goes to the other.

As a company going to market with a product, these two organizations have to be met with differing styles. You know Inman is looking for new innovative products that will shake up the industry – if not that, then at least make some waves about old-vs-new. If you’re going to NAR, make sure you’re spouting the NAR company line, and you’ll need to stress how you support and make the real estate agent’s job easier – again, it’s not about change at NAR, it’s about the status quo.

Representing change or defending the status quo are neither good nor bad. In the end, this industry is complicated and has a great deal of history. Change within specific areas is good, and you see a sea-change happening within marketing at the moment because of new media. However, that change needs to be tempered with the understandings of a relationship-based approach to a highly regulated industry that will not allow a “technology lightning bolt” to disrupt it.

We’ve been pretty consistent about showing up and either exhibiting, sponsoring or attending NAR and Inman Connect conferences over the years, but I’m sitting here wondering if there are more and/or better options. What conferences do you think are worth attending? Which ones are worth sponsoring or exhibiting at?

My list of best real estate conferences:

• NAR Conference & Expo -National Association of Realtors
  Why it’s worth going: This is the biggest show of the year where you’ll see all of the players in the industry, no matter what vertical you choose. 25,000 are expected for this year’s show.
• Inman Connect West (SF)
  Why it’s worth going: It’s more technology focused, so it’s particularly good for us. It’s also in a roundtable format which gets you closer to the decision makers and give you a chance to ask questions in a public forum.
• Inman Connect East (NY)
  Why it’s worth going: Much like Inman Connect West, it’s smaller and the chances for dialogue are very open – both for business contacts, meeting friends and networking.
• MBA – Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Meeting
  Why it’s worth going: Unlike the other conferences, I have not attended this one. However, I’m wondering if it would be worth going to and would be interested in feedback from anyone who has gone to it in the past.

Going Regional: We’ll be doing this more as time allows, but I’m thinking of attending some regional conferences that can help us connect easier. Many times some of the big conferences are just too… BIG.

Besides the best conferences to go to, which ones are a complete and utter waste of time to attend?