By Jeremy Crawford
The first time you attempt anything is a risk. But when you back that risk with $25,000 in cash prizes and invest $15,000 in hosting the event, you are especially delighted when the result is a success. Everyone involved in the RESO DataComp at our 2017 Fall Conference in San Diego should celebrate what was achieved.
Many thanks to our terrific event sponsor Realtors Property Resource (RPR) and to our prize sponsors, FBS and Stratus Data Systems. Our remarkable panel of top-level judges, including Mark Birschbach of the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) and Second Century Ventures; Chris Heller of Keller Williams; Kyle Campbell of Hack Capital; Glenn Shimkus, who sits on the DocuSign Advisory Board; and Craig Rowe, a tech reviewer and reporter for Inman News.
The participants, winners and innovations based on RESO data standards that they all created within a 30-day window were simply incredible. We had more than a dozen entries from all over the U.S. The competitors’ live presentations for the RESO DataComp on the first day of the RESO Fall Conference at Pendry Hotel in San Diego were a highlight of the conference.
The “Best Overall Product” was My Drawbridge, a highly interactive web app that allows real estate investors to find and develop opportunities in searching for land parcels. It won the overall prize and received the $10,000 cash prize. My Drawbridge also won “Best Use of Non-listing Data,” snagging another $5,000 prize. letsbutterfly, a beautiful mobile app that creates CMAs, won the “Crowd Favorite” and $5,000. Swim Lanes, a blockchain app for real estate, won $5,000 for “Best Use of Listing Data.”
Key Takeaways from the Keynotes
With more than 50 speakers in attendance providing a wide scope of top-notch content, the conference was packed with many memorable moments and valuable takeaways.
Among some of the top highlights:
Newbie Attendance: More than half the crowd were first-time attendees, a stunning number. RESO clearly is having a broader impact on mainstream real estate – not just the data tech crowd – as we continue to push beyond adoption and into more rapid utilization of industry standards.
Workgroup “Ted Talks” are Working: Many new members and other attendees told us in the past that they were a bit lost attending in-person workgroup meetings at conferences. Workgroup chairs, however, find these among the most valuable. We tried to create the means for a more generalized update during general sessions – Ted-talk style – asking chairs to get everyone up to speed so the full meetings can be more productive for all. Based on the feedback we got, overall, this is starting to work. We’ll continue to make it better.
The Internet of You: Among the most popular keynotes was Adrienne Meisels of myPlanit. She demonstrated how her firm is leveraging “Personal Big Data” to create a remarkably personal experience, leveraging different technology from many of the best platforms.
Pushing the Envelope with Technology and Standards: Scott Petronis, CTO of eXp Realty, gave a broker talk about avoiding chasing the wrong “shiny objects” via video conference that was as clear as if he was actually in the room. Several other presenters gave us a peek into what they are working on and what’s coming next. From Zillow Group’s Bridge Interactive custom listing input system and the case study by Homes.com showing the huge savings they have found (92 percent reduction in development) from the RESO Web API implementation, to the progress all of our Workgroups are making, including Internet Tracking, IDX Payloads and Universal Property ID.
Focus on Empowering Agents and Brokers: RESO Director and realtor.com SVP Suzanne Muller showed the power of emotional connection to consumers in her presentation to brokers about the “White Space” of homeownership. Several of the keynotes – Debra Schwartz of RocketUrBiz; Dr. Umesh Harigopal of Innovation Incubator; Matt Mauseth of MapVida; Ben Bacal of Roofshoot; and Aida Bryce of DocuSign – all focused on ways new technology can be leveraged to either enhance the consumer experience or leverage data and technology to improve the ability of agents and brokers to better understand, identify and reach buyers and sellers.
Deep Thinking: For the many geeks in attendance, there were a couple of deeply technical sessions that may have lost the business folks but resonated with technologists. Tavi Truman of RocketUrBiz talked about reimagining MLS data with a semantic web technology stack, with the goal, he says, of creating a “super-charged real estate agent process and workflow.” Ohan Antebian of CoreLogic was a little more down to earth but still provided a thought-provoking talk about how “random is wasteful and costly,” and that the result is that we get a lot of data but not a lot of guidance on what action to take based on the data we get. Ashish Antal of MLSListings and Sergey Ermolin of Intel gave an incredibly insightful and truly riveting presentation on neural networks’ deep learning, all related to their work to improve image search, semantic tagging and identifying image similarity.
Analytics and Valuation Models: There’s a lot going on in this space, and we had two top keynotes on the topic. L.D. Salmanson, CEO of Cherre, dove into the challenges of real estate valuation models and the work that has been done to improve both the accuracy and reliability for valuations of firms in the residential space. Mike Mauseth, Co-Founder of MapVida, navigated us through the world of data science and one of the hottest topics in real estate today: predictive analytics. Mike looked at ways analytics are being used to help find sellers and even the best neighborhoods through new ways to search for buyers.
The Greg Robertson Show: The panel was called RESO in the REAL World, but Greg earns top billing as a moderator since he asks great questions, keeps the pace going, maintains a lively energy and has some fun. The cast included Troy McCasland from AgentSquared, having just rolled out Instant IDX websites with Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) after being embedded as an option in Flexmls, Collette Stevenson at REsides (formerly MLS of Hilton Head Island), Tom Weiss-Lehman at Redfin and Chris Freeman at WolfNet, Greg had a first-rate group that kept everyone interested. The big takeaway: Adoption is just the fuel. Movement comes from full utilization and implementation. MLSs need to start the engine and step on the gas, not just put fuel in the tank.
Workgroups in Action: Finally, it wouldn’t be a RESO conference if we didn’t hold our in-person workgroup meetings onsite. While these are normally monthly scheduled conference calls, the workgroup chairs insist that the in-person meetings at our twice-yearly conferences are among the most productive. That’s because the content that is presented on stage at our conferences and the discussions in the hallways and over drinks at the receptions are where some of the best new ideas emerge that make their way into our R&D Workgroup and, then, into other workgroups. With so many great ideas for future evolution of RESO standards, onsite workgroup meetings will be extended at future RESO events.
- For the San Diego onsite meetings, the R&D Workgroup discussed a wide range of topics, including heat mapping, machine learning in visualization (including photo tagging), and data best practices for both data providers and consumers.
- The Internet Tracking Workgroup discussed that, with Data Dictionary 1.6, Internet Tracking has started and now brokerage firms need to ask vendors for the data.
- The Transport Workgroup primarily focused on RESO Web API 1.3, discussing security and authentication, testing rules, standards for annotations, and the need for documentation to help navigate errors encountered with OData and other software tool libraries.
- The Data Dictionary Workgroup is already looking at the 1.7 release for the summer of 2018, focused on Platinum Enumerations Status. They approved some data field changes and discussed a variety of topics, including membership, business rules, lockbox, queue/kill resource, DOM (Days on Market) and Hold Status Definition.
A lot of work gets done at RESO conferences, and we still manage to have a lot of fun!
