Here’s a synopsis of my take aways from each session:

• Mobile – The statement was made repeatedly by Eric from SmarterAgent and Jim from Kurio that users demand native apps customized for each phone.  That may be true right now, but I see the adoption of HTML5 in mobile browsers, combined with abstraction toolkits like PhoneGap, making possible universal, browser-based apps in the future.  At least I hope so – building native apps for each platform right now is a very expensive and time consuming endeavor.  Sasha from Redfin concentrated on the importance of a clean and simple UI for the phone, but would not give up any details on the rumored imminent release development of a Redfin mobile app.
• API’s – Oren from Mashery made the point that you should think of your API as an “ecosystem” wrapped around your data or service.  That was very well received, and set the stage for Matt from Walkscore and Steve from Education.com to discuss exactly what they’ve done, on a more practical level, with their API’s.  We use both of those API’s in Dwellicious and that data is very popular.
• MLS Hell – What would an Inman conference be without people complaining about MLS data standards?  The panel – Chris from Wolfnet, David from eNeighborhoods, and Mark from Homefinder – each gave an overview of their architecture for downloading and normalizing MLS data.  The general agreement was that RETS succeeds in giving real-time access to updated data that can be easily downloaded, but fails when it comes to data standardization, thus the need for sophisticated normalization procedures that are unique to each MLS.  Mike Wurzer from FBS asked the group if they would adopt a new standard for field names if RETS were to create one, and the unanimous consensus was yes – although there didn’t seem to be too much confidence that this would see the light of day anytime soon.  One thing the struck me was the huge cost that hundreds of vendors are incurring doing the same exact thing – downloading and normalizing MLS data.  Of course, that cost is being passed on to the customers.
• User Experience – This panel was designed to be a discussion about Flex, Silverlight, and AJAX.  Cosmo from ForeclosureRadar.com was up first and gave an overview of their architecture which used a web services back-end and a Flex front-end.  He was very careful to point out the positives and the negatives of Flex – the main positive being the speed of UI creation and the main negative being lack of a good PDF/printing solution.  For PDF creation, he had to fall back on a PHP solution, but I felt that was a good example of using the best tool for the job and not forcing everything to be Flex.  Ben from Ajaxian.com and Mozilla then gave what I thought was the most fascinating presentation of the day when he showed browser developments coming in the next year.  He showed what could be done with HTML5, Canvas, and made the point that the speed of the new generation of browsers made certain client side and AJAX techniques possible that weren’t just a year or two ago.  His presentation further convinced me that open standard browsers are, currently and in the future, the direction to take for client side UI.  Interestingly, we were not able to find anyone to speak on Silverlight, and even those few in the audience who indicated they were doing some development with Silverlight had no positive comments to make about it during the Q&A segment.
• Agile Development – This was a panel I was really looking forward to, being that it’s a hot topic right now, especially in the Ruby on Rails community.  Mike from Elevated Rails gave a great overview of Agile, then Zach from Point2 brought some practical experience and stories about how he used Agile to make their large team of developers more efficient.  Galen from Estately then followed with details of how they use Agile and Rails with their small team of developers.  My take away on this one is that Agile not only makes development teams more efficient, but also makes them happier because they are getting constant feedback on their projects and that is keeping them from going down blind alleys, diverging from the goals of the customers and the rest of the organization.

My one complaint was that 45 minutes for each panel of three speakers made everything too rushed – I would like to see one hour sessions next year.

What did you take away from ConnectTech?  I covered the entire Inman Connect conference in another post.

Coverage in the press and blogoshpere has been very positive:

• Inman News
• TechCrunch
• BloodhoundBlog

• Facebook, Google, and Plaxo join the DataPortability Workgroup. Goal is to release your data from the clutches of your social network in a standard way.
• The OpenID train steams ahead: Google, IBM, and Verisign said to be joining. Goal is to allow you to login to all your favorite sites in a standard way with one id.
• Connecting Standards at Inman in NYC. Goal is to leverage the work done by RESO on the standard RETS2 schema to allow more efficient syndication and updating of real estate listing data.

Standards allow developers to concentrate on creating value with their products instead of worrying about creating proprietary methods for authentication, import/export, etc. This leads to more efficient tools for consumers and businesses.

Did I miss any related standards announcements? Leave them in the comments.

Right now, brokers have to spend time and money inputting their listing data into the numerous (and growing) consumer sites. If they develop technology to automate getting their data from the MLS or back office systems into one of these public sites, they still have to write code to interact with the API’s and data formats of each site individually. If you want your listings on a dozen sites, you must write code, test, debug, and keep updated with all dozen, and in a dozen different formats. I know that for RE/Max International (we run remax.com and handle around 75% of their US office traffic), the limiting factors for widespread syndication of their listing data has been cost and effort. Right now, we are syndicating listings for many offices to GoogleBase on their behalf, but that project has not been extended to other sites. Instead, it is left up to individual brokers or regions to handle their own listing syndication.

Over the past couple of years, the Schema Workgroup of RETS has done a fantastic job creating new XML schemas for real estate data sharing. The schemas describing listing data are particularly well developed, having been hammered on by MLS staff, MLS system vendors, client vendors, and other technical staff for over a year. Others in the real estate technology space would be well served to utilize this intellectual property – and help the RETS group improve on it – to accomplish the common goal of providing better tools and lower costs to the brokerage community. These standard schemas should easily fit into their current processes, utilizing simple XSLT transformations to convert the standard XML schema into their current proprietary schemas. This small addition to the workflow of a few sites would amount to a tremendous savings on the input side of thousands of participants – the brokers and the MLS’s – and encourage increased participation.

Only when we have consistent standards do we see an increase in the creation of tools, increases in efficiency, and lowering of costs. The participation of these leading web sites in the mission of the Real Estate Standards Organization will go a long way toward ensuring adoption of these standards.

From Mark:

This Earth Day I made a presentation at a technical conference in Austin, TX that combined Programming, Real Estate and a Rube Goldberg device I called Mark’s Portable Pedal Power Generator. The device turned kinetic energy in the form of a spinning bicycle wheel into standard AC electricity. Google and Specialized Bikes announced a video contest for just such a device a few months later. The contest ends this week and is hosted by YouTube. I have created an 84 second Video that shows me lighting a Christmas Tree in the middle of a forest, using the device.

Click here to watch the video. And give Mark some link love when you’re done.

Worked the RETS booth on the show floor in the afternoon and got to talk to a few agents who stopped by to ask questions about the state of the standard. After that I made a loop of the show floor. Didn’t really see anything new that stood out this year, but was surprised by the number of booths promoting both domestic and international second home and resort properties. I’m thinking that may be a waste of time given the malaise most Americans feel about real estate right now and the weakness of the dollar overseas.

After a great cocktail party at the eNeighborhoods suite, dinner was with an eNeighborhoods crew at Isla’s Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar over in the Treasure Island – recommended. Ran into Bob Morse – now with FNRES – at the bar and he joined us at the table for dinner. We were referred by the concierge at the Paris, but Bob said he read a People magazine on the plane and it mentioned this is where a bunch of celebrities eat when they’re in town. The guacamole was great.

Big thanks to the Marketlinx crew for putting on a great party at Margaritaville. The drinks and food were flowing, and it was full of of industry people talking and having a good old time.

Mark Lesswing – CTO of NAR – filled us in on a new MLS rule that passed unanimously at the conference requiring all MLS’s to provide an up to date, compliant RETS server. Mark lobbied for this to ensure not just the spread of RETS servers, but to accelerate their usage. This is a great rule that should have a positive affect on real estate standards.

Mark also introduced Lennox Scott as the new technology liasion for the NAR President. I spoke with Lennox for about ten minutes about his plans, which center around utilizing technology to accomplish “real time real estate”.

After a series of good meetings, we went to dinner at Del Frisco’s with our old friends and great customers from Sacramento Metrolist. The rib eye at this place was probably the best I ever had!

We had a great discussion about web services and Sam Ruby’s great new book “RESTful Web Services”. (I’m hoping to provide a book report here on this soon.) Seems like every time I read a book or article and can’t wait to refer Wurzer to it, he’s already on it. Of course, lot’s of discussion on RETS too. Later Hensley provided current insight into one of my other favorite topics – Orange County real estate.

We had a couple of groups come by to say hi, and it struck me that the projects the three of us are working on are probably affecting the daily work of 90% of the Realtors out there. That’s pretty heavy.

I’m off to the CRT sponsored lunch right now, which should be interesting. I understand 140 people are expected.

We’ve been running remax.com on our Enterprise Platform at eNeighborhoods for the past year and a half. Starting Spring 2008, we’ll also be running listing searches, lead distribution, and office web sites for century21.com, coldwellbanker.com, and era.com as part of a huge new deal with Realogy. Lot’s of traffic, eh? I’m calculating that the cumulative real estate listings traffic passing through our platform next summer will come very close to the long dominant realtor.com. This deal has been over a year in the making, and I know both Realogy, eNeighborhoods, and Dominion Enterprises are all very proud that it is finally seeing the light of day.

Press releases:

From eNeighborhoods – http://www.eneighborhoods.com/press_11_12_07.asp
From Realogy – http://www.realogy.com/media/pr/show_release.cfm?id=466

Photo courtesy Zap2It.