REBarCamp Perth!

As in Perth Australia and a fabulous video to recap the event!

http://rebarcamp.com.au/

Great Job Everyone!

Who’s behind REBarCamp Australia?

REBarCamp Australia was founded by a small group of individuals all of whom have been closely associated with the real estate industry over many years. The founding group included:

  • Peter Brewer
  • Lara Scott
  • Tatiana Mijalica
  • Ben Stockdale
  • Greg Vincent
  • Peter Fletcher

Mike Mueller

Mike builds the custom Apps that create the Tabs that make Custom Facebook Pages special. He also builds WordPress Blogs. He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike and a motorcycle (a really fast one), loves strong beer and good red wine.
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Rebar Camp Ohio was a Huge Success!

Rebar Camp Ohio was a huge success on Thursday. The venue was at the attendance record breaking Dayton Dragons Baseball Stadium. We began the day behind home plate with the warm sun shinning upon the crowd. It was fun to see the Realtors and small business owners from the tri-state area attempting to understand exactly what they had signed up to do. When the crowd was asked if they had been to an REBC prior to that day no one raised their hand, not one single person Astonishing but true, this part of the country has not had contact with this type of forum. I hear some say REBC is dying, not so here, we are just giving birth to the idea.

After a quick welcome and orientation we went up to the private suites over looking the field where there where five session an hour. Approximately 90% of our sessions were tech but there were a few on negotiating, HUD homes, legal counsel, lending and credit.  Facebook, Twitter and ipads were heavily attended. We also allowed our Platinum level sponsors to facilitate. Surprisingly those sessions were well attended also. In the spirit of REBC we asked everyone to refrain from selling his or her products in the sessions.

 

In holding true to the culture of REBC we kept our chairs in a circle, which in my opinion was the key to a good conversation. There was lots of sharing and no presenting. It was very cool to see the conversations throughout the day. The questions were sincere and the answers were honest. One of the best parts of the day was to see the very young and the very experienced agent ask questions to each other and participate fully in the sessions. I knew we were going to be OK when the sponsors and volunteers for the day kept disappearing and sneaking into sessions because they wanted to learn.

 

From an organizational point of view, Eventbrite was the key to registration and for electronic check-in at the gate. Diverse Solutions provided our name badges and sponsors were instrumental in funding a few extras. The DJ kept spirits high between session and the door prizes and our half-baked session kept them to the end.

 

We had a local council member show up to learn and the best surprise was the Apple Stores area manager spent the day attending sessions too. When Apple shows up in any form you have to think you are doing something correct. All in all it was a great day, a day that delightfully surprised many. I can’t wait until next year.

 

 

Organized by:

Julie Beall, Real Estate Strategist Heart of the Strategy

Sue Miller at M&M Title

Tyler Morton at REmax Victory

 

juliebeall

Love life, God, my family, sunsets on the front porch, hot and warm glass hobbies, good cup of coffee or a nice glass of wine. And drawn to Africa to complete medical missions as a volunteer nurse on occasion.

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A simple case for REBarCamp

What’s in it for me?

The question every person should ask before attending any event.

Worth repeating   What’s in it for me?

First there was the conference.  People would go to a conference to hear speakers speak.  Hopefully the speakers who spoke were specified to speak about the specific things the people who sprung to hear them speak wanted to be spoken to about.

Ok I’ll stop that…

Photo Credit By p_a_h

Conferences can also be entertaining, inspiring, or thought provoking.  Fine, but I generally go to conferences to learn.  Under the learning banner, many conferences have recently sprung up centered around “Social Media”.  I’ve been to them, been entertained by them (sometimes), inspired by them (sometimes), and garnered a few nuggets from them (sometimes) but did I learn?

Realistically, we hope the attendees paid for the right conference, that had the right speakers, that covered the right subject matter.  If they did, everyone leaves happy.  While that was mostly what happened, we’ve all been to conferences where it wasn’t.  Then again, how could it be?

Take a 100 people interested in social media.  On a scale of 1 to 10 describe your proficiency and knowledge with using Facebook.  How about Twitter?  YouTube?  LinkedIn?  RSS?  Video Editing?  The questions could go on and on…

You can see right away how the groups expertise will be spread out.  Some people might have expert knowledge about one topic and zero about another.  How do you cover everything to everyone?  What if they covered some of what you wanted but left out something and you had a question?  It just can’t be done.

Enter the REBarCamp movement…

REBC discussionIt’s different.  The REBC says to the attendees, “What would you like to learn about and why are you here?”  The attendees then help to create the conference.  Actually, lets change that to conference(s) as most REBCs have a series of different sessions going on at the same time.  But who is going to be the speaker?  The REBC says, “If you want to speak you can speak” and taking it one step further, “but the speaker shouldn’t be the speaker, they should instead lead the discussion”.

That’s really revolutionary.  It doesn’t exist anywhere else.  It means that everyone attending has a chance to learn what they need to learn and if they have questions they have the opportunity to get an answer.  That means everyone walks away happy!

REBC discussion 2In purist terms, a REBarCamp experience should be the single biggest learning event you attend all year (assuming you attend only one).  Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and every REBC is different, but if you attend a REBC and think it wasn’t worth every minute of your time there’s only one person to blame.

So, if you feel like learning exactly what you wanted or needed to learn, you just need to ask yourself one question…

“What’s in it for me?”

Do so, and I’ll see you at the REBarCamp!

Side Notes:

  • You can find upcoming REBC’s at the “mothership”  http://REBarCamp.com
  • If there’s not one in your area – put one on yourself!  Ask me and I’ll be happy to help.
  • I’m also happy helping your get a blog up and running with the REBC theme – just ask!

Mike Mueller

Mike builds the custom Apps that create the Tabs that make Custom Facebook Pages special. He also builds WordPress Blogs. He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike and a motorcycle (a really fast one), loves strong beer and good red wine.
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Why I think you should attend an REBarcamp

I’ve had fortune to attend the outstanding REBarcamp experiences  in the US over the few years and I gotta say I’ve loved every minute of them.

They’ve been a great networking experience, but most of all they’ve been a great learning and sharing experience. What I’ve found at the Bar Camps I’ve attended is that there’s been at least 10 other people in each break out session that have had the same or similar questions or ideas that I have.  (Read on)

How cool to learn and share with your peers that are faced with the same challenges. They say 2 heads are better than 1.. Well, Try it with 200. Its AWESOME!

In April 2011 I shared a few ideas on why I think you people should have registered to attend the Inaugural Australian REBarcamp we held in Sydney, Australia held on May 24.  They were to:

1       to network with fellow real estate practitioners seeking to increase their knowledge particularly in the area of the effective use of technology and social media.

2       to engage in healthy debate around industry trends with industry peers, leaders and key stakeholders.

3       to be exposed to cutting edge ideas and concepts around where the new tech tools of  today can take a business today and beyond

4     to be challenged about whether your business practices of this year will cut it next year.

5     To enjoy the opportunity to share in a social, no pressure, brand agnostic environment.

6     To engage in healthy debate in a peer to peer environment.

7     To network with like minded professionals.

This is a great opportunity for you to join in a great ‘Think Tank’.

In that post of April 2011 I shared what is a key fundamental:

If you’re thinking of coming to Bar Camp (and we really hope that you are!) its really important to remind you that REBarcamp is a ‘Participatory’ event. Make sure you come with an attitude of preparedness to share, learn and generally participate. If you ‘give’, I promise  that if you ‘participate and give’ then you’ll get at least 5 times what you gave in return. If however you sit on your tail bone, then you’ll get nothing other than a sore tail bone.

 

Peter Brewer with Jeff turner at NAR 2009. San Diego

And our first REBarcamp in Australia became truly International:

Of particular note in our wonderful list of attendees is a colleague by the name of Jeff Turner who I met at the 2009 NAR Annual Conference in San Diego.

Jeff came all the way from the USA join us and to launch the REBarcamp concept into Australia. Jeff is one of the most highly sought after presenters and true thought leaders in the USA, particularly in the area of social media in the real estate community. We are honoured that Jeff came out to join us.

Our hard working organising team of Peter Fletcher, Lara Scott,  Greg Vincent, Tatiana Mijalica, Ben Stockdale and myself worked busily behind the scenes to ensure that our first REBarcamp was an absolute hit. We were that confident it was going to be a roaring success that we already mapped dates for Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne for mid year.

Was it a success?  Absolutely!  Here’s what others had to say!

Ian Campbell, former head of marketing at Ray White in Australia wrote here.

We kept an interesting Tweet analysis of the day here;

We even made a video to be sure we met the expectations of the people who came: Watch it here:

And I shared a post afterwards on what I saw of the day here:

If you’re thinking of running an REBarcamp in your community, be sure to call on the wisdom and experience of the great people at this site.  In Australia we were lucky enough to have some amazing support from people like Mike Mueller , Todd Carpenter, and Jeff Turner.   Don’t be afraid to ask a question. There’s some damn fine people here to help you get started.

Peter Brewer

I'm a proud Aussie living in Brisbane Australia. I've had a very priveliged life and enjoyed a 30 year real estate career up til 2008 from where I took my passion for the real estate industry, added my love of technology, the digital world and my love for good people and today I'm the luckiest guy on the planet! You'll find me hanging around REBarcamps in Australia and the USA when the opportunity arises. If we share the same passions?.. I'd love to connect! Hit me up!

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