Convention & Expo Photos Now Available

Photos from the VAR Annual Convention & Expo are now available for your online viewing. All are available for free download, and you can purchase prints directly from the web site. Now, if you see something that you really like, you can even make cool gifts from the photos, like 6×6 ceramic tiles for your kitchen floor, or a cooking apron, a T-shirt, or many other possibilities. Start browsing!

And yes, that’s your 2008 VAR President, Pat Jensen in the feather boa. She kindly removed the big pink sunglasses for this photo.

Announcing Comment Drawing Winners

Congratulations are in order! Two commenting VAR members were drawn randomly from the 50+ VAR Convention & Expo 2007 blog comments received between October 2-4. They are Candy Lynn from the Lexington, Buena Vista, Rockbridge Association of REALTORS® and Cindy Jones from the Northern Virginia Association of REALTORS®. They are both winners of a $100 gift card to Virginia-based consumer electronics store, Circuit City. Here are your winning comments:

• Cindy Jones was pleasantly surprised by her first VAR Convention & Expo experience.
• Candy Lynn gushes about her experience in the Virginia REALTORS® Leadership Academy.

Please continue leaving comments if you have anything to say about VAR’s Convention & Expo 2007. If you need something to sound off about, try these questions…

1. How did the convention live up to your expectations?
2. What was surprising?
3. Give the convention a grade (A - F) and back it up with an explanation.
4. What was the best session you attended and why?
5. How does this convention compare to prior years?
6. Which exhibitor was most helpful, surprising, best decorated, or had the best give-away?
7. What are you most looking forward to at next year’s convention in Baltimore?

Go ahead and comment. It’s painless!

Stay tuned, we’re not done yet!

I encourage you to continue checking in on the VAR2007 blog or subscribe. Over the next few days, we will have more commentary about the convention & expo from our staff and member contributors, as well as a ton of pictures to share. And our comment winner will be announced on Monday. Stand by for details!

Moving forward after the Convention

Here’s an idea, from the BloggerCon:

Blog all the VAR meetings. From the Policy Board to the PPAG to the IMAG …

Set up a blog, based on WordPress, within the VAR site and give each committee, Workgroup, Advocacy Group, etc. their own category. It would all be password-protected. Members may subscribe to the entire blog or just the categories that interest them. Explain what “Your Virginia” means. Give members insight into the direction VAR is going.

Embrace transparency. Seek it out. Provide members with the information they seek (or put it out there in the hope and expectation that the information’s availability will provide them the impetus to get involved).

Did You Get Your Caffeine Jolt?

You did if you went to one of the great sessions at the conference offered by Zan Monroe. You couldn’t possibly have nodded off with his caffeine pumped presentation style and all of the information that he had to share. I had the chance to attend both his pre-conference CRS Course “Mastering the Art of New Home Sales” and his session “Creating a Real Estate Business for Life”. Both sessions were informative and relative to today’s market conditions. Zan is a big fan of the metaphors from the movie the Field of Dreams so here is a sample of what you might have seen if you were in one of his classes.

Thoughts About The VAR Convention, From A First-Timer

Not sure how many of you have been to the VAR Convention before, but this was my first time here so I had no idea what to expect. Though there were a variety of things I learned and took home from the convention, the biggest thing I got out of the experience was a better understanding of what VAR’s role was and that VAR actually cared very much about it members (yes, I was a skeptic up until very recently).

VAR does seem to care about what it’s members think and how they feel on issues as illustrated by it’s staff, management and board members - they took the time to stop by, listen to and engage with myself and others in discussions about everything ranging from disclosure issues on blogs to VAR’s desire for increased interaction with members and it’s role in the future. This kind of forward thinking and interaction is exactly what VAR needs to help retain it’s current members and attract new ones, as well as help it’s Realtor members remain competitive and efficient in their business.

Thank you to everyone at VAR for putting this together and helping to change my views. Definitely looking forward to the next VAR Convention and BloggerCon being even bigger and better.

“Best Event” Lived Up to Billing

Wow!  Last night’s party with the Pink Flamingos was even better than expected - which is saying a lot.  In a preconference post I called the event the “best” of the entire conference.  It may have been the best EVER at a VAR convention.  That assumes that best = fun.  By the end of the night, everyone in the room had been up on stage to sing with the band, dance and party.  If you missed this event (or left early) you blew it.

Your Last Chance to Comment & Win!

Remember, leave a comment by 11:59 tonight (October 4) to be entered into a drawing to win one of two gift cards from Circuit City, the consumer electronics superstore based right here in Virginia.

Take a REALTOR’s hand, take the friend next to ya…. (as the song goes)

I am just getting back to my room from the great event tonight. I am exhausted and energized all at the same time. I am looking forward to the graduation tomorrow and closing events, as well as the chance to get home and gather my daughters back from the friends they were staying with. But in reflection, I was thinking about who many good friends I have made over the past four or five years of coming to the conventions. Yes, VLA has helped introduce me to several of these folks, but there are even others that I have connected with in classes or through other state meetings and I am impressed by the REALTOR friendliness and connection that we all seem to share.

Some of the connection we share is from having similar interests, but I think it’s also from having similar enemies that unites us. Enemies such as non-ethical practitioners, who tend to not come to events such as this, or bad lenders or just difficult clients. We have all faced them and we’re all surviving – and we’re doing it together.

Whereas I liked Mel’s message of it all being about me (I am somewhat egocentric), I equally like the new theme of “Together we can….” Here’s my challenge to my fellow REALTORS – let’s keep the lofty idealism as set forth in the pre-amble to the Code of Ethics, but let’s also eat the elephant the only way some of us can – one REALTOR at a time. I would challenge each of you to bring one REALTOR to next years convention, Education and / or Legislative Conference next year. Bring someone who has never attended these events and mentor them to come to more and to get involved. That’s it – that’s my challenge, just one non-participating member to each event.

My thought is that if each of us brings just one person to this event next year, we’ve gone from 850 attendees to 1700. That’s 850 new faces that will hopefully increase their business, get a stronger sense of what lofty calling we swore an oath to and be just that better educated and prepared to do business ethically and professionally.

Just one more person for each of us… and then in 2009 it’ll be 3400 more ethical and more professional practitioners. Just one more….

Matthew Rathbun, VLA 2007

Matthew@MyAgentMatthew.com

Wednesday almost in the books

The Inaugural Celebration has already begun, so I’ll have to keep this post short. This morning’s general session was, as Dave mentioned earlier, a touching tribute to 2007 VAR President Melanie Thompson, and a warm welcome to 2008 VAR President Pat Jensen. Demonstrating that REALTORS have perhaps the best collective sense of humor of any profession, the general session was filled with jokes, spoofs, pranks and plenty of laughter. A vocal sextet of VAR members performed a variation of The Sound of Music’s “So Long, Farewell…” for Melanie Thompson, the dress rehearsal of which can be seen below (that’s VAR’s CEO, Scott Brunner, coaching).

VAR’s incoming officers were sworn in by incoming NAR president, Charles McMillan, with the exception of Pat Jensen, who had Ann Palmateer, VAR’s 2002 president, do the honors.

Once the swearings-in, send-offs and speeches were done, Quality Service Certified president Larry Romito delivered a convincing keynote address about how providing the best service is the key to higher profit and lower risk. His QSC training seminar was sold out today, adding several dozen new QSC certified REALTORS to Virginia’s ranks.

The trade show floor was packed once again today, and our Social Media Lab techs added at least another five REALTOR bloggers to the online community.

As I departed the successful Virginia Real Estate Bloggercon, the RPAC major donors reception was in full swing. And now that I’ve posted this summary of today, as I saw it anyway, I’m going back out to work!  I’ve already missed the first 23 minutes of the Inaugural Celebration.