by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
Welcome to “Three Questions,” an interview series that introduces you to real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards with a goal of humanizing the tech side of the industry, fun included.
This week’s interview is with Chris Lambrou, Chief Information Officer at Metro MLS and the chair of the RESO Internet Tracking Workgroup. We talked about Internet privacy, music and beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Enjoy!
Q1: The RESO Internet Tracking standard has been evolving for several years. In a tech landscape that actually shows more attempts to thwart tracking – as with Apple now outright asking if you want apps to track your activity and the legality of websites asking users if they want to accept cookies – is there still a bright future for Internet Tracking in real estate circles, or do we have to now work extra hard to keep it operational or even relevant?
Chris: It’s always been a challenge for tracking. Marketing and data science teams have always found a workaround and will continue with their best efforts to find alternate solutions.
Consumers should have a choice of privacy, but it shouldn’t ruin the movement, because the metadata is more valuable than information about the consumer.
Knowing exactly who speaks to whom at what time vs. what they talked about, what sites they went to and from what region they visited from, all anonymized, is the real endgame. Having all of that commingled together is a bigger benefit than microing in on a single user. Those single users are where we might see some hurdles.
Q2: You are the lead singer in a U2 cover band. Is music a big part of your life and has it informed your career path in real estate at all, or is it more of a sidelong hobby to keep you sane amidst solving issues of MLS technology and writing new specs for RESO standards?
Chris: I’m a big fan of work hard, play hard. Music has always been in my life. It’s kept me out of trouble, it keeps the left side of my brain fresh, it’s therapeutic and it connects people. Let’s add meditative in there, too, while we’re at it.
I do see a connection with tech, to be honest. It just makes me feel like a better person all around to work on songs like I work on technology problems.
It’s another outlet, and I would recommend that everybody finds an outlet outside of work to express themselves.
If you want to see me express myself, come to Shank Hall in Milwaukee for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Our band U2 Zoo is playing Saturday night, March 16, 2024.
Q3: “Hi, I’m Chris from beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” Not everyone leads with where they are from these days, especially when they were adopted into the city. I dare say that you are proud to be living and working there. Where does this pride come from?
Chris: Having a sense of community has always been important to me. Not just working there, but raising a family, helping out with neighborhood initiatives, etc. I feel it wherever I live, and Milwaukee is no different in that regard. Well, maybe a little different than other places.
Having pride in where we live is a holistic experience that I think we all should have no matter where we live. Otherwise, why live there?
Q4: Bonus question from a former Milwaukee denizen. Have you ever closed Wolski’s?
Chris: No. I’m afraid that I’m not a closer in the sense of bar times. I’m a lightweight.
