Recently we had the pleasure of attending the national conferences for both Coldwell Banker and Century 21. As agents from neither company, we had no idea what to expect (in case you did not know, we are with Keller Williams Realty). As “The Geeky Girls,” we consider ourselves nondenominational in the real estate world — we spread the “geeky” love everywhere. We have a ton of “social” friends within both these companies, including Debra Trappen, Linda Aaron, Sean Carpenter, Mike Bowler, Bill Lublin and Amy Chorew, so we felt very welcome everywhere we went at these conferences.
We arrived in New Orleans to a steamy 81 degrees, contrary to weather reports that it would be a bit chilly during our visit. The jackets and boots we had packed did not come out of the suitcase until the last day we were in town. We were excited to spend the first half of the trip attending Coldwell Banker’s “Gen Blue” event, meeting as many people and vendors as possible. After the opening session, there was a reception in the vendor hall to kick things off. The DotLoop booth was the hot spot where we met new friends and caught up with old pals.
We were excited to meet Beverly Hills agent Christophe Choo (from HGTV’s “Selling LA”) for the first time in real life. We had the honor of having dinner that evening with Christophe and the Swagga Girls. During the next two days we attended breakout sessions led by some of our favorite people: Matthew Ferrara, Jeremy Blanton, Chris Smith, Sean Carpenter and The Swagga Girls (Debra Trappen and Linda Aaron). We enjoyed the NOLA YPN (Young Professionals Network) meetup with our friends Nobu Hata, Rob Reuter and Matt Case, and had some late-night burgers with our MarketLeader peeps at “Lucy’s.”
The closing ceremony for Coldwell Banker (CB) was pretty awesome. We were excited to see who the top producers of 2011 would be, but it was interesting that CB did not give any actual production figures — numbers of closings or gross commission income (big difference between brokerages). CB announced that the new voice in its television commercial campaign was Tom Selleck and showed some of these new ads. They are aimed at putting a positive, warm feeling back into homeownership — they are great!
Gen Blue ended with one of the best real estate parties we have ever been to … hands down. Great job, David Marine, on planning such an awesome event and a big thanks to Michael Fischer for the invitation.
The very next day, the Century 21 conference began. The energy was great — and we needed a little at this point. It was fun seeing all the gold jackets around the convention center! Our great friend Katie Lance flew in for a powerhouse panel led by Chris Smith, which also included our good friend Amy Chorew.
In an afternoon session about Google, Chris talked about how important it is to have a website that is mobile-optimized. You can check out how your site stacks up at www.howtogomo.com. Of course, before he could discuss someone else’s site from the session who had a 1-out-of-5 score, Lisa had tested her own and was very happy to learn it scored a 5 out of 5. Thank you to MarketLeader for providing us with fully optimized sites!
One of the amazing events we attended during the C21 conference was a tweetup where we met Matt Gentile, C21’s director of social media. It was a fun evening chatting with our great friends Bill Lublin and Amy Chorew and so many others.
During the five days we were at these conferences we were running the Twitter accounts for both DotLoop and MarketLeader, helping keep followers up to speed with what was going on in New Orleans. DotLoop raised the bar again with an exciting announcement! They are about to give you one of the best productivity tools that we use and you can have it FREE. Have you visited www.dotloopmovement.com yet? You can sign up to be one of the first to get this new version of DotLoop when it it released.
As agents, we view the “brokerage brands” at a local level, but as The Geeky Girls we have a unique opportunity to see things from a different perspective. We want to say thank you to all our “social” friends for being open and welcoming. We love you all!
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