The question every person should ask before attending any event.

Worth repeating What’s in it for me?

First there was the conference. People would go to a conference to hear speakers speak. Hopefully the speakers who spoke were specified to speak about the specific things the people who sprung to hear them speak wanted to be spoken to about.

Ok I’ll stop that…
Conferences can also be entertaining, inspiring, or thought provoking. Fine, but I generally go to conferences to learn. Under the learning banner, many conferences have recently sprung up centered around “Social Media”. I’ve been to them, been entertained by them (sometimes), inspired by them (sometimes), and garnered a few nuggets from them (sometimes) but did I learn?

Realistically, we hope the attendees paid for the right conference, that had the right speakers, that covered the right subject matter. If they did, everyone leaves happy. While that was mostly what happened, we’ve all been to conferences where it wasn’t. Then again, how could it be?

Take a 100 people interested in social media. On a scale of 1 to 10 describe your proficiency and knowledge with using Facebook. How about Twitter? YouTube? LinkedIn? RSS? Video Editing? The questions could go on and on…

You can see right away how the groups expertise will be spread out. Some people might have expert knowledge about one topic and zero about another. How do you cover everything to everyone? What if they covered some of what you wanted but left out something and you had a question? It just can’t be done.

Enter the REBarCamp movement…

It’s different. The REBC says to the attendees, “What would you like to learn about and why are you here?” The attendees then help to create the conference. Actually, lets change that to conference(s) as most REBCs have a series of different sessions going on at the same time. But who is going to be the speaker? The REBC says, “If you want to speak you can speak” and taking it one step further, “but the speaker shouldn’t be the speaker, they should instead lead the discussion”.

That’s really revolutionary. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. It means that everyone attending has a chance to learn what they need to learn and if they have questions they have the opportunity to get an answer. That means everyone walks away happy!
In purist terms, a REBarCamp experience should be the single biggest learning event you attend all year (assuming you attend only one). Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and every REBC is different, but if you attend a REBC and think it wasn’t worth every minute of your time there’s only one person to blame.

So, if you feel like learning exactly what you wanted or needed to learn, you just need to ask yourself one question…

“What’s in it for me?”

Do so, and I’ll see you at the REBarCamp!

Side Notes:

You can find upcoming REBC’s at the “mothership” http://REBarCamp.com
If there’s not one in your area – put one on yourself! Ask me and I’ll be happy to help.
I’m also happy helping your get a blog up and running with the REBC theme – just ask!

They’ve been a great networking experience, but most of all they’ve been a great learning and sharing experience. What I’ve found at the Bar Camps I’ve attended is that there’s been at least 10 other people in each break out session that have had the same or similar questions or ideas that I have. (Read on)

How cool to learn and share with your peers that are faced with the same challenges. They say 2 heads are better than 1.. Well, Try it with 200. Its AWESOME!

In April 2011 I shared a few ideas on why I think you people should have registered to attend the Inaugural Australian REBarcamp we held in Sydney, Australia held on May 24. They were to:

1 to network with fellow real estate practitioners seeking to increase their knowledge particularly in the area of the effective use of technology and social media.

2 to engage in healthy debate around industry trends with industry peers, leaders and key stakeholders.

3 to be exposed to cutting edge ideas and concepts around where the new tech tools of today can take a business today and beyond

4 to be challenged about whether your business practices of this year will cut it next year.

5 To enjoy the opportunity to share in a social, no pressure, brand agnostic environment.

6 To engage in healthy debate in a peer to peer environment.

7 To network with like minded professionals.

This is a great opportunity for you to join in a great ‘Think Tank’.

In that post of April 2011 I shared what is a key fundamental:

If you’re thinking of coming to Bar Camp (and we really hope that you are!) its really important to remind you that REBarcamp is a ‘Participatory’ event. Make sure you come with an attitude of preparedness to share, learn and generally participate. If you ‘give’, I promise that if you ‘participate and give’ then you’ll get at least 5 times what you gave in return. If however you sit on your tail bone, then you’ll get nothing other than a sore tail bone.

And our first REBarcamp in Australia became truly International:

Of particular note in our wonderful list of attendees is a colleague by the name of Jeff Turner who I met at the 2009 NAR Annual Conference in San Diego.

Jeff came all the way from the USA join us and to launch the REBarcamp concept into Australia. Jeff is one of the most highly sought after presenters and true thought leaders in the USA, particularly in the area of social media in the real estate community. We are honoured that Jeff came out to join us.

Our hard working organising team of Peter Fletcher, Lara Scott, Greg Vincent, Tatiana Mijalica, Ben Stockdale and myself worked busily behind the scenes to ensure that our first REBarcamp was an absolute hit. We were that confident it was going to be a roaring success that we already mapped dates for Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne for mid year.

Was it a success? Absolutely! Here’s what others had to say!

Ian Campbell, former head of marketing at Ray White in Australia wrote here.

We kept an interesting Tweet analysis of the day here;

We even made a video to be sure we met the expectations of the people who came: Watch it here:

And I shared a post afterwards on what I saw of the day here:

If you’re thinking of running an REBarcamp in your community, be sure to call on the wisdom and experience of the great people at this site. In Australia we were lucky enough to have some amazing support from people like Mike Mueller , Todd Carpenter, and Jeff Turner. Don’t be afraid to ask a question. There’s some damn fine people here to help you get started.

2. Get some generous sponsors so you have some funds to pay for the event. (see sample sponsor letter below)

3. Find a great venue to help generate the buzz and work with them on a date

4. Promote like a freak to the local association, brokers, and ancillary real estate professionals.

5. Ask for help! The more people you get involved, the more people you have out there helping you promote the event.

6. Create social media channels for promo. Create a Facebook business page and ask people to like it and spread the word. If you are a star on Twitter, create a hashtag and tell people to use it to get the online buzz generated.

7. Invite speakers or participants that you think could help lead the discussions. The key here is not asking local social media “guru’s” who come to pitch their services. The goal here is an open learning environment. This is not a presentation conference. If someone is standing in the front of the crowd teaching, without a level of sharing within the group, the dynamic is not working correctly.

8. Have a HUGE white board so you can set up the presentations. “Setting the board” is an art form derived by how many rooms you have available to hold sessions divided by how many sessions you want to hold throughout the day. Viewing photos of past boards will help you.

9. Buy stickie notes and 3 x 5 blank cards. (also have pens!) Pass the mundspülung onfy apotheke cards out during the morning session and ask people to write down what they came there to learn. Have a dynamic and QUICK team go through the cards to decide which are the hottest topics that people want to learn about. If your “presenters” are disappointed that their topic of interest is not in there, it’s ok..they can still facilitate and be part of the learning process.

10. The sticky notes will help you put the topics up on the board and move them around until the group sees that the most asked for topics are at the top and there is a diverse topic list through out the day.

11. Then write the board with the times and the names of the rooms with the topic discussions in each space. If you have a large venue, make numerous boards and put them up around the venue, so everyone does not have to squish in one little area to go back to find out where they should be next.

12. Seed the rooms with volunteers to make sure that sales pitches are not being presented as fact. The host should state at the beginning of the day that if people are being sold to, its ok to get up and leave and find another room.

13. If you can get lunch catered you are a star and should be showered with REBC love.

14. If you can, have a prize for the person who asks the most questions, gets involved with the most discussions and shares their personal experiences using social media and tech tools. Participation by the audience is what drives the REBC movement.

15. Take pictures throughout the day. Post them to Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and wherever else you can tell the world where you are and what you are doing. Share the pics afterwards and tag people…this drives interest among the peeps who should have been there and will show up next time.

16. Invariably, attendee’s heads will swim, they will want to get back to work, and they will leave before 3. However, a few devoted fanatics who see the social media light will stay to the bitter end. Reward them with beer and drinks.

17. Keep in mind in setting the board that you will have fewer attendees towards the end of the day and plan accordingly. By 3, mush up everyone into one room and have a big general discussion, have some fun and seriously, provide free alcohol. Many life long relationships have been developed in these after hours networking opportunities.

18. Clean up. But don’t do it alone! Ask for everyone to load chairs, put away tables, take down signs and clean up the venue. It’s hard enough putting on a REBC that you can lean on the VERY grateful attendees to help you..just ask.

19. Send thank you notes to your sponsors. Post pics on their Facebook pages of people standing near their signs and give them a public and social shout out for their support.

20. Breathe and know you have helped your fellow real estate professionals grasp the concept of social media, online marketing, blogging, apps, tablets, or whatever else was the hot topic that day!