Technology
Who’s Going to Be at This Year’s FWD Innovation Summit? One Former Judge’s Thoughts on this Year’s Contestant Line Up
Last year, when I was one of the judges on the FWD Innovation Summit, I wrote up a fairly rigorous analysis of the participants so that I could be prepared for their presentations. This year, I won’t be judging, but I will be live-blogging the event on Tuesday here on this blog, so I did the…
Read MoreThe Upcoming Realogy FWD Innovation Summit — Advice for Participants, an Overview, and the Upcoming Live Blog
Realogy is holding its second FWD Innovation Summit the coming Tuesday. It’s a really cool event. Fifteen technology companies make a pitch before a live audience, and answer questions from a panel of judges. Then, the judges pick finalists, who are then presented to the audience, which votes on the winner of the $25,000 grand…
Read MoreIs the Real Problem With the Real Estate Industry the Clients? Maybe
I was asked again last week to contribute a response at Inman News to a provocative article from Brad Inman. Last time, he wrote about the potential disruption of the broker-agent relationship from online portals, in the way that Uber has disrupted the traditional limousine industry’s relationship with drivers. And in my response, I challenged…
Read MoreIf Technology Disrupts the Real Estate Business, We Only Have Ourselves to Blame
I have not been writing much recently on this blog, but Brad Inman contacted me this week asking me to contribute a response to a piece that he wrote for Inman News entitled “Real Estate Disruption May Not Be What You Think it is.” In his piece, Brad questions suggests that disruption in the industry…
Read MoreRules for CORE Agents #34: Only Embrace New Technologies That Replace Old Tools With Better Tools
Consider the plight of the poor “Realtogeek” – real estate agents who embrace new technology so tightly that they leap into every new trend and buy every shiny new gizmo that hits the market. While the Realtosaurus reacts to the intimidation of new technologies by shutting down and ignoring them, Realtogeeks respond by elevating them…
Read MoreRules for CORE Agents #33: You Wouldn't Trust a Doctor Who Still Used Leaches
Consider the plight of the poor “Realtosaurus” – real estate agents who are increasingly falling behind because they stubbornly resist learning how to use modern technology. They’re so afraid of these new technologies that they’ve overcompensated by making it an “old school” point of pride that they don’t know how to use a computer or…
Read MoreBook Review: Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (1998).
I blame Who Moved My Cheese for the slew of copycat animal parables that followed through the last decade. I also think that Cheese is a seriously overrated book, not only because the message is simple – not deceptively simple, just plain simple. I also found the parable itself confusing and poorly written, trying to…
Read MoreReviewing the iPad Apps from Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow: The New Home Search Paradigm
I love my iPad. Seriously. I find myself curling up in bed with it, with no particular idea of what I’m going to do with it other than that I want to play with it. I read my books on it, surf the web, read blogs, and I’ve even started reading comic books again because…
Read MoreThe Guide to the Best Smartphone Apps
A good smartphone is really a mini-computer in your pocket, capable of doings things that computers even five years ago could not do. But you’re not getting the most out of your smartphone if you’re just using it for making calls, checking email, and surfing the web. Those are all good things to do, but…
Read MoreBook Review: Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right — Achieving Operational Excellence in the Real Estate Industry
Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto is a powerful book, one of the best and simplest articulations of how to achieve operational excellence that I have ever read. Gawande’s message is simple: the world has become increasingly complex, and we need to actively create systems and processes that will simplify the tasks that we have to…
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