Clareity Consulting - Clareity's 2007 NAR Mid-Year Meeting Report

Real Estate Information Technology Consultants

Clareity's 2007 NAR Mid-Year Meeting Report

The Next Best Thing to Being There!
May 29, 2007

Around the Trade Show

Best Booth – GE Security

GE Security went with a Tiki Bar island theme for its booth this year and made me wish I had a Tommy Bahama shirt along. For those that remember, a few years ago I was a tad critical of GE's "diner" booth and red "bowling shirts", but GE has become a cooler company since then, and its Tiki-booth was the favorite of many people I spoke to in DC. They also tied in the island theme for their big party and gave some lucky person a free vacation. Mahalo, GE. Next time, can you see if NAR will let you serve Mai Tais? Walking by your booth kept making me thirsty!

GE Security booth

Best Booth Babes Spectrus

Spectrus Real Estate Group, a 1031 Exchange Company, had an Austin Powers impersonator and his "Shagadelic Chicks" hosting an hourly game show. The girls in 1960's mini-skirts and orange boots were Groooovy, baby!

Best SWAG

This year the best SWAG was in liquid form. Navica MLS hosted a Martini Bar on the Trade show floor one afternoon, and that was better than the usual swag and tchotchkes.

Best Bargain

$10 pure Cashmere scarves from "The Scarf Man." The scarf dude was busy again.

Best Party – MarketLinx

MarketLinx party

Kim McClean planned what might have been the best party in DC - ever. MarketLinx hosted a party at what used to be Teddy Roosevelt's house and is now a very cool three-level night club with a large second floor deck. The outdoor deck came in handy because this party had a Cuban theme with a guy hand rolling cigars – and freshly made Mojitos – two of my favorite things. The party had close to 1000 people come through it and Teddy's old mansion was rocking. The bar opened up its doors to the public at 11pm and the local, younger, and quite possibly hipper regular customers came in to a happy and well lubricated group of NAR attendees.

Kim McClean (left), future NAR
Hall of Fame Party Planner

Samuel Aubrey, Director of Government Affairs
SEVAR, Mesa, AZ

Troy Rech, VP Sales, Clareity Security and Ed Carr, Executive Officer, Hernando County Association of Realtors

Best Food

Fidelity hosted a party at Lima, a popular three-story night club in DC, and they had the best food of any party, including 4-star prime rib and some other over-the-top food for a party. The party also deserves runner-up status for best party because the dance floor was hopping and Lima had a wonderful ambience and the bartenders were HOT. Fidelity also deserves credit for showing the design process for its new Paragon 4 MLS System via a running loop video that was very clever and fun to watch

Best Music

The "Moe Town" party at the Marriott had the best music in DC this year and I was glad I stumbled in by accident. I'm sure the live band has another name, but the party was named Moe Town because it was hosted by Moe Veissi, a past president of the Florida Association of Realtors who is running for NAR president in the future. The band played many classic Motown hits and had four or five different vocalists that did an incredible cover band performance of Motown's best songs. Good luck, Moe! You throw a good party.

Best Mustache

Oliver Frascona, the Association Attorney from Boulder, CO. If you've seen the size of that thing, it's a tough mustache to beat! When not waxing his handlebars, Oliver is a very entertaining speaker on real estate legal issues, too.

People on the Move

Person	Old Gig	New Gig
Ira Luntz (old MLS dude)	President, Visient	EVP, Listing Book, back w/ old sidekick Todd Colthorp
Bob Rucker	CEO, ARMLS (Greater Phoenix Metro Area)	Leaving Jan. 2008 to pursue other opportunities
Jack Johnson	CEO, NWMLS (Seattle and much of Washingon)	Retirement – golf and grandkids
Rita Johnson	CEO, TREND (Philadelphia and NJ)	Retirement – grandkids, move to South Dakota, and part-time consulting
Adrianne Walker-Bailey	Customer Support Manager, Rapattoni MLS and Magic Association Mgt.	Unknown – resigned the week before NAR Midyear
Rich Igou	User Interface Designer, Rapattoni MLS	Founder Concentric Software (next generation MLS system)
Warren Andrich	Product Manager for Rapattoni Lockbox & USB Secure Logon	Business Development Manager, Clareity Security
Todd Costigan	NAR's CRT	MarketLinx - Product Manager for MMSI Association Mgt. System
Jack Best	RMLS (West Palm Beach)	CEO, WARDEX (new regional MLS in AZ)
Robert Sadler	GLVAR (Las Vegas)	Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches
Toni Parker	AE, Bullhead City, AZ	AE, Outer Banks, NC Association (this beach lover is loving her new gig)
Anthony Sands	MLS Director, Park City, Utah MLS	Listing Book - sales
Ken Duke	CFO for a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage	CEO of MREIS, Maine Statewide MLS
Blanche Evans	Realty Times Writer/Editor (she's still doing that, but now she is also...)	Having a blast public speaking about "The conspiracy to put Realtors out of business" – and what Realtors can do about it! Hire Blanche if you want a fresh, new speaker and a pretty interesting topic
Mark Lesswing	VP of Center for Realtor Technology (CRT)	Promoted to CTO of NAR
Errol Samuelson	President of Top Producer	Promoted to President of Realtor.com
Allan Dalton	President of Realtor.com	Working on Top Secret Project (TSP) for Move.com
David Lereah	Chief Economist of NAR	Working with Allan Dalton on BFD TSP for Move.com – possibly a real estate financial indicator or index and reports/analytics to sell to Wall Street and lender/finserv market?
Tom Hurdelbrink	Vice President, REBS Operation, California Association of REALTORS	CEO, Northwest MLS Congratulations Tom!
Judith Lindenau	AE, Traverse Area Association Of Realtors	Retiring from MLS this September - soon doing some coaching, consulting and also contract work for the International Real Property Foundation in Georgia (the one in Asia)

Missing Person Report

Person	Position
Jim Naccarato	CEO, WFRMLS (Salt Lake City and much of Utah)	Unexpected exit. Golf, fly fishing, and grand kids, or will Jim reappear?
Bryan Forman	EVP, MarketLinx and President of MLS Solutions Division, MarketLinx	Attended son's graduation from college in Texas – and likes new, improved cash flow at home
Mike Wurzer	CEO, FBS Data Systems	Father-in-law passed away in tragic accident – our prayers and condolences to the Wurzer family

"Trooper of the Year" Award

Patti Manders, a petite GE Security staff person was riding down an escalator at the airport on her way to DC and some guy behind her fell down and landed on her leg and broke it! Rather than go home, Patti had a cast put on her leg and came to the DC show and did her booth duty and other work from a wheel chair. So if any of you were whining about having a bad flight to DC, or sore feet from too much walking or standing, realize that Patti Manders just raised the bar for being a convention trooper!

The MLS Forum Meeting

Laurie Janik, NAR's chief legal counsel provided an update on the DOJ situation and the mapping patent law suit. NAR continues to provide legal funding for the mapping patent lawsuit at TREND. There were no major changes in MLS rules this year.

The NAR Director's Meeting

The directors voted to raise NAR's annual membership dues to $80.00. NAR plans to use some of the extra cash it will receive to create a federally charted credit union for its members and create a technology investment group to help increase the development of new technology for Realtors.

SSO Update

There was a lot of buzz in DC around Single Sign-On (SSO) - the ability for a user to go from one system to another without logging in again. Clareity's technical staff had several meetings with vendors and MLS executives regarding SSO.

Early last year Clareity Consulting coordinated a meeting with many major players - including the best and brightest from the worlds of MLS, TMS, title, franchise, standards groups and national associations to coordinate the SSO effort. The group agreed to use the SAML 2.0 standard to cooperate on SSO rather than using proprietary methods tools and charged Clareity with coordinating the cooperative effort through NAR by publishing a "reference implementation".

NAR funded Clareity Security to write a free SAML 2.0 reference implementation, the source code for which would be freely available and become part of RETS. This effort is now in its last stages of fine-tuning and documentation, is being reviewed and collaborated on by several of the major vendors, and will be available for free through NAR/CRT soon - watch for the announcement. Educational sessions on deploying SSO via RETS will be held this summer.

It's one thing to have Single Sign-On technology, but there are many other issues besides the technology that must also be addressed and agreed upon before SSO can be safely deployed. These issues are being addressed by the vendors and industry leaders participating in the cooperative SSO initiative.

MLS Software Update

Fidelity MLS Solutions
Fidelity showed off the beautiful new Paragon 4 MLS interface. Users will surely love the attractive new look, excellent navigation and ability to easily customize the views, search and reports. Having this new look on top of the robust functionality that has always been Paragon's strength is very compelling. Fidelity continues to integrate solutions into the Paragon system, including Hi-Fi Voice Technology (Alert and Search), PinPoint 2 Mapping and Integrated Tax Records, Transaction Point, eMarketer & eAdWriter tools, SAFEMLS Security, Multiple Showing Solutions, GetMediaNow! Print Solutions, Paragon WiFi, Paragon Mobile, and IDX SmartFraming.

Tarasoft
Virtual Earth (going to deploy for all customers). Improved CRM - including tasks and reminders with an 'Outlook' feel. Recently completed installation of bi-lingual MLS software in Montreal.

Navica
Unique: Built-in showing management with a consumer feedback component. Sponsored a nice martini party.

RealtyServer
Private Client Services (PCS) - a web site for each consumer that the Realtor can use to engage them. Their software makes it easy to maintain multiple property lists and has a wicked cool drag-and-drop interface for pulling listings from various searches into different lists - hard to describe - this one has to be seen.

Rapattoni
Mapping update - A new polygon selection tool allows agents to search within irregular geographic areas easily; radius searches can now be performed with or without a map; and new aerial and hybrid views allow the agent to make a selection on an aerial image, street map, or a combined aerial image with streets overlaid.

Solid Earth
Google Earth integration. Providing consumer-facing CMA, hotsheets - not just the listings but real market intelligence. Their regression analysis AVM, including predicted marketing time for property if listed in suggested price ranges - is HOT, HOT, HOT!

FBS Data Systems - flexmls
FBS used MapServer to create home-grown mapping engine - allowing for heat maps, custom layers - really next-gen mapping stuff.

Technology Concepts, Inc. - MyPlace Connection
Real-time buyer preference indexing - using customer saved searchs and favorite listings to create 'marketability index' for subject property. They can create a demand curve for similar properties (how long similar properties have stayed on market at a given price) – NEATO feature! Also new: collaborative webspaces for agents and clients.

MarketLinx (formerly First American MLS Solutions) – Has three MLS platforms: MLXchange, TEMPO and Innovia, plus other products including MLS Wireless, MLS Data Checker, GIS Service, Transaction Manager, and Membership Director. Broker products include: Lucero Summit, Agent Achieve, and Transaction Manager.

MarketLinx – InnoVia
Prospect PRO - a real-time prospect portal, complete with branding capabilities, activity tracking, schedule a showing, and other collaboration features. Buyer Match - reverse prospecting module. Wireless InnoVia - real-time wireless MLS access via smart phones and wireless PDAs.

MarketLinx – MLXchange
Added scores of enhancements, including identity sharing for assistants and teams, a session tracker that remembers your place in case you need to log in again due to inactivity, spell-checking, fax-in of listing attachments, and enhanced image management including the ability to reorder and add comments to images. MLX Professional now includes action plans for automating scheduling of prospecting, listing and transaction tasks, synchronization of clients, tasks and appointments with MS Outlook, password-protected client page login, property list collaboration, a listing hit counter - showing how many times the listing has been viewed via IDX search, and many new website templates.

MarketLinx – Tempo
Added new icon based navigation as well as a new Open House module, and an updated Search module to match it is coming soon. Tempo customers can also look forward to more frequent (quarterly) mapping updates. Both MLXchange and Tempo products are moving this Fall onto a single shared platform to provide the best features of each product to all customers. Both will include Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping.

Information Security Update

One of the country's largest Association's public web site was "hacked" a week before the DC meetings and the site became inoperable. Matt Cohen, Clareity Consulting's CTO, was called in to help regain control of the web site. Clareity Consulting performs Information Security Assessments to help prevent such events, and Clareity Security just started offering a daily web site scanning and monitoring service using the well established HACKERSAFE^™ tool. Is your Association or MLS protecting its information properly? For more information on Clareity's Security Assessments please visit the Clareity Consulting web site: http://www.CallClareity.com/services.cfm?section=mls&page=security.html or send Matt and email and he can send you more details - . For more information on HACKERSAFE daily security vulnerability scanning, please visit http://www.ClareitySecurity.com/hackersafe.cfm.

Suggestions for Improvement

My number one complaint this year was that the Marriott Wardman turned its lobby bar area into a restaurant and took away the best meeting spot and place to hang out during the show. The lobby bar area was a virtual "office" for a lot of people for the last 20 years. I heard a few other lounge lizards grousing about the bar disappearing as well. The Omni lobby bar is now the place to be for a late night drink, and it was packed every night – and it's a great bar except for the ancient union bartenders that are slow to pour a drink and always crotchety no matter how much you tip them!

An idea for NAR to consider next year is to add video recording and web play back for as many sessions as possible. We heard from a couple of executives from smaller Associations/MLSs that came to the meetings solo that it was tough to choose between going to an Association-oriented session and an MLS-oriented session. I personally wanted to see Saul Klein's Technology Forum and John Featherston's Power Broker Session but they were at the same time, and wished I could have "Tivoed" one of them.

Well, that's it for this year. Thanks for reading my report. Please see the announcement below about Clareity's 2008 Workshop in Scottsdale.

Gregg Larson
President & CEO
Clareity Consulting
Scottsdale, Arizona

480-368-8100 x201

2008 MLS Workshop Announced in Scottsdale, AZ

Please consider joining us in Scottsdale, Arizona March 5-7, 2008 for Clareity's Seventh Annual MLS Executive Workshop. This MLS Workshop will provide timely updates and address the key issues facing MLS executives and leaders. For more information, please see http://www.callclareity.com/MLSworkshop/

About Clareity

Founded in 1996, Clareity continually strives to provide our clients a truly independent and unique perspective. Clareity has successfully executed a vast array of consulting projects for our clients, related to:

Executive and technical staff recruiting
MLS System Selection and Implementation
Transaction Management System (TMS) Selection
Information Security Assessments
Business Continuity Planning
Public Records Request for Proposal (RFP)
Software design, quality assurance and scalability testing
Contract negotiation
Public speaking
Member/Subscriber Surveys
Focus groups
Expert witness
Project and Program Management
Regionalization facilitation
Staff audits and compensation studies
Strategic planning