Below is a video of Chris Anderson describing the “core values” for the TED conferences, which are “truth, curiousity, diversity, no selling, no corporate bullshit, no bandwagoning, no platforms, just the pursuit of interest, wherever it lies.” Some of the best minds in the world gather to ask questions and engage with each other. Powerful.
Is there such an event for real estate? I attend CMLS, used to attend MLS Connection (before vendors were banned), go to the mid-year, annual and some state REALTOR Association conventions, and we hold our own Summit, and I don’t think any of these produce the focus and learning opportunity of a conference like TED. Typically, a lot of thought is given to the conferences by those who are organizing them, but the level of engagement from the participants is limited by the lack of time and preparation they can give ahead of the conference. Contrast this with TED, where attendees are all sent the same books throughout the year to prepare them for the conference so they can all engage together at a deeper level. Depth and the preparation to engage, that’s what seems to be missing from the current conferences.
Would a TED-like conference work in real estate? There are some new events on the horizon, could they be where the future of real estate is engaged? A few or several days of “broad and intensive debate“, with the best minds in the industry, about the interconnectedness of competition and cooperation in real estate, including offers of compensation, data sharing, data quality, data ownership, syndication, consumer engagement, MLS competition, consolidation, lead generation, and so much more. As Chris Anderson says in his video below, what’s exciting for him is how mind-blowing it is to see how interconnected so many issues are. Those interconnections are where learning occurs. Do you know if there is somewhere this debate is already occurring? If not, do you think it would be worthwhile trying to create such an event?
Mike – Count me in! No Fargo in the winter though.
Todd, I’m really looking forward to REBarCamp. The entire idea of an “unconference” is intriguing to me.
Dan, can you imagine the level of debate we could get here in the tundra?
Hi Michael, glad to have you on board.
I love your topic list-
“competition and cooperation in real estate, including offers of compensation, data sharing, data quality, data ownership, syndication, consumer engagement, MLS competition, consolidation, lead generation, and so much more”
Hoping that a few of the attendees will lead sessions on those topics. Kristal Kraft is also going to be holding a topic brainstorming session webinar in the near future, so stay tuned.
2:58 am
One objective I have for the REBarCamp blog is to use it as an open preparation resource for the event itself. As I noted on the wiki, we could use the blog as a platform for developing discussion topics, and getting feedback ahead of time. A bit of home work in a way.
I think a more TED like preparation system would be pretty difficult to organize. It’s a great goal to shoot for though!