Seattle reBarCamp is the word

Seattle RE BarCamp is being talked about all over the blogosphere… check it out!

What I Want to See at REBarCamp Seattle by Jeff Bern

RE BarCamp Comes to the Emerald City on March 3rd by Rich Jacobson

Womens Council of Realtors South King County:  Are You Curious About the next Seattle RE BarCamp by Rhonda Porter

Productivity Junkies RE BarCamp Seattle 2011 by Darin Parsinger

Real Estate Bar Camp by Babbs Weissman

Chik Quintans talks about how much he has learned by attending Seattle reBarCamps in this video (you have to check out the special guest appearance).

You can also see what people are saying on Twitter by following #rebcsea.    If you’ve written a post about Seattle reBarCamp, let us know!

11 Reasons To Sponsor RE BarCamp-Seattle!

My week has been peppered with great chats regarding sponsoring #rebcsea.  Many of the biz owners in my sphere have had the same response:  Money is tight… WHY SHOULD I? or more simply put: What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)

I decided to surf a bit and gather together some of the major reasons why companies become event sponsors.  This may help you in identifying people YOU know (including yourself) who might be interested in sponsoring!

11 Reasons 2 Sponsor Events:

1.  Corporate ID
Companies planned to display their corporate or brand names or logos on event signs, buildings, equipment, programs, uniforms, and/or promotional materials.   

2.  Target Marketing
Many companies saw event sponsorship as a way to reach a self-selected audience, hopefully interested in purchasing the companies’ products or services.

3.  Entertainment Opportunity
A number of companies mentioned that they would use an event as a place to entertain clients.
(Hmmm… sounds like an opportunity to carpool a captive audience to the event!)

4.  Offering Discounts
A number of companies said they would use events as a way to encourage product/service trial, either by offering samples at the event, or, if that was inconvenient, by passing out coupons.

5.  Awareness
Some companies wanted to use event sponsorship as a way to create public awareness of their brands or products. If you are launching a new business – this one is for you!

6.  Image
Some companies hoped event sponsorship would improve, enhance, or change their corporate, brand, or product image.

7.  Usage
Some companies planned to use events to encourage purchase of their products (e.g., buy two items to get a free ticket to the event) or usage of their products (e.g., American Express will donate twenty-five cents to the local symphony every time you use your American Express card).

8.  PR
Some companies cited public relations value (i.e., the newsworthiness of the event and/or the sponsorship) as a reason why they were sponsoring an event. They expected to see their company, brand, or product mentioned in media coverage of the event.

9.  Contests
Some companies intended to use an event as a theme for consumer contests or sweepstakes… with the added bonus of gathering names at an event to develop a mailing list or database of consumers.

10. Demonstration Opportunity
Some companies planned to use an event to demonstrate or display their products/services.

11. Sales Opportunity
Some companies wanted to use an event for on-site sales or to generate sales leads – with both consumers and other businesses! 

REMINDER:  Sponsors who sign up before February 22nd will have their company website printed on our ULTRA COOL BLING this year! 

If you are now inspired to be a sponsor or you have questions on HOW to sponsor… shoot me an email: [email protected].

Check out this example of what the WATER BOTTLE will look like…
You TOO could have your company on this list!!

"Your Name Here"

Great Explanation of “Bar Camp”

When I tell people I’m helping to plan an “RE Barcamp” it’s often followed by a blank look.    “Rebar? Is there a bar? Are you camping” is not an uncommon response.    In fact, I bet many attendees of RE Barcamp may not know where “BarCamp” comes from.   I came across this short and sweet definition when I was reading Brain Picking’s post on the ”Top 10 Contemporary Cross-Disiplinary Conferences” …for the record, Barcamp came in at second on the list.

Inspired by Tim O’Reilly’s famous invite-only hacker summit, Foo Camp, BarCamp borrowed from the hacker slang foobar to create a set of guidelines for an alternative, open-to-all, ad-hoc event around a common topic or theme that anyone can host anywhere. (These user-generated experiences are also sometimes called unconferences or non-conferences, after legendary eccentric curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s experimental non-conference in Jülich, Germany, in the 90’s.)

A self-organizing community of diverse interests, BarCamp participants are also its presenters. Attendees spend the first part of each event brainstorming and voting for session subjects, and can then choose among the various breakout groups. As you might imagine, the quality of a BarCamp can vary considerably depending on who’s present — we’ve had mixed experiences, accordingly. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for; and BarCamps are typically free.

RE Barcamps are for the most part based off this premise of open sharing and peer to peer learning where the participants are also the presenters with a “real estate theme”.  Topics can be anything real estate related and tend to have had a heavy emphasis on social media in the past.   With all that’s going on in our industry today and considering the Seattle event is following the Pacific Northwest Housing Summit, I won’t be a bit surprised if Seattle’s 2010 REBarCamp participants also decide to have discussions based on the new Good Faith Estimate/RESPA, HVCC or how to market distressed properties.   The great thing about REBC’s, in my opinion, is that we are not limited to any topics–we’re only limited by those attend and participate in the event and out of all of the REBC’s I’ve attended (5 or so?) I’ve always learned plenty! 

I’m really looking forward to this REBC Seattle 2010!