Tzetze Fly

Once again, Inman Real Estate Connect will offer a special technical track called ConnectTech on the first morning of the conference.  And once again, I have been asked to moderate those sessions.  We’ve got the first draft of a loose agenda set up, but I wanted to reach out to my network to ask for input on topics and speakers.

If you or your company are doing interesting real estate technology projects, let me know and I’ll see if we can get you onto the speakers list.  We’re especially interested in the following topics:

• HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript/jQuery
• Death of Flash?
• Building a successful web app
• Social web
• User Experience, User Interface, Design process
• Geolocation
• APIs
• Real-time web

The format is typically 45 minutes with three speakers presenting on their project: goals, strategy, what worked, what didn’t, what you’d do different next time.  That’s followed by questions from me and the audience.

If you have something to contribute, let me know either in the comments or by e-mailing me directly.  Tell me which topic you’re currently working on and tell me something about the project, then I’ll let the right people at Inman know you are interested.

You can see more about the Inman Connect Conference at http://www.realestateconnect.com.  I hope to see you in January in New York City!

A quick note to let you know about the Inman Connect conference coming up this Aug 5-7 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.  This is always one of the best conferences of the year, and they’ve got some really great speakers this year.

Click for Inman Connect info.

Inman is also bringing back a workshop specifically designed for CTO’s, developers, entrepreneurs and product managers – it’s designed to explore innovation in a program tailored to geeks.  I will be the moderator – the “BIG GEEK” – for the day.  Check out the agenda – there’s some great speakers already signed up, and I know they’re working on a couple more that will really blow everyone away.  Let me know if you have any questions or other input.

Click for ConnectTech workshop info.

Finally, if you’re a developer (or know or employ developers) check out this opportunity.  This is your chance for fame and glory – a great way to get added to the main Inman Connect agenda and in front of the entire industry.  Real Estate Connect SF 2009 will host the first-ever real estate developer challenge.  A hack-a-thon called Connect Create,  it’s a brand-new opportunity to demonstrate your (or your company’s) innovative streak.

Here’s the short version of how it works:

1. You or your team have 48 hours to create an interesting real estate application (during the first two days of Real Estate Connect).
2. You demo your application in front of 1,000 of the most important people in real estate during our Friday general session.
3. You wow our judges, win our grand prize, and become and instant real estate rock star.

Participation is limited.  Email create@inman.com before close of business on Friday, May 22nd to express your interest. This contest is platform agnostic and applications may be business-to-business or business-to-consumer in nature.   Official rules and logitical plan will be distributed to interested parties.

Please feel free to forward this to any others in our industry.  Hope to see you in SF this summer!

• Ricky Gervais Meets Larry David – YouTube
  Two geniuses – sitting and talking – in six parts.  Hat tip to @jasonfried.
  

Dan Rothamel, Mike Cutlip, and Chris McKeever interviewed me and Greg about Dwellicious in the CRT Bloggers Lounge.  See the whole thing here.

Dwellicious beta signup links went out to about 25 people today.  If you want one, just drop me a line.

If you’re using the popular http_authentication plugin from DHH and getting a NoMethod error “protected method `render’ called for <SomeController>”, the problem is that in Rails 2.x controller.render is now protected.  This was a pain to figure out, but it can be easily solved using an updated plugin from Matthew Rudy at http://github.com/matthewrudy/http_authentication/tree/master.  Google wasn’t much help, so I’m hoping this post will save someone with this issue some time.  Just run

script/plugin install git://github.com/matthewrudy/http_authentication.git –force

and you should be fine after that.  The README in the plugin’s folder has further examples on use.

I was just having a conversation with my wife this morning about how anxious I was – anxious to be productive, feeling like I should be building stuff – instead of just enjoying my time off for a few weeks. Then I saw this amazing quote that Om Malik referenced this morning – he attributes it to Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron:

“After Sysiphus’ boulder fell down the mountain, during his descent to get it again, his time was free for the beautiful things instead.”

Wow – let’s see if I can keep that in mind the next few weeks.

The news is out – Greg and I are leaving eNeighborhoods at the end of May. Stu and Dave left at the end of last week. There’s a great group of people here who I will definitely miss working with. My team of 55 employees on the technical side of the building has never been stronger – that makes it hard to leave because things are going so well, but it also makes it easier knowing that things are in good hands and those good people now have an opportunity to step up a level.

My desire is to create and innovate, and it’s tough to do that in a big company with so many huge projects going on. I like to say that my skill is to build products, teams, and equity. I like building Inc. 500 companies – Iris was #192 in 2000 and eNeighborhoods was #84 in 2005 – but I lose my desire once it grows too large. Now that eNeighborhoods is a mature company with enterprise level clients, it’s time to pass it off to operational managers who can nurture it to it’s next level. Big companies are like playing baseball – lot’s of statistics and standing around waiting. I want to play hockey – to hit, score, hustle back on D, forecheck in the corners, and sweat a lot.

All day today, people in the industry have reached out with calls and e-mails. Your support and kind words are very appreciated. I look forward to keeping in touch with all of you, and even working together again in the future. I have a lot of anxiety about the near future, but with your support and the support of my family, I’m looking forward to creating and innovating again with Greg. It’s time for me to go build another Inc. 500 company.

Photo by konaboy