The inagural Australian RE BarCamp kicked off with a bang at the Loft Bar on Tuesday. Given the event fell the day after the AREC conference it was well received because of the relaxed and “Unconference” structure. As discussed in this post RE BarCamp coming to Australia the day is all about sharing information, discussing experiences, expressing an opinion and learning about technology in the real estate industry.
A broad range of real estate industry professionals attended the event including executives from The Professionals, Ray White, Laing & Simmons, RP Data, Fairfax, RE Uncut, real estate portals, software companies, mortgage brokers, real estate trainers and agents from across Australia and New Zealand. To help launch the event Jeff Turner a very popular real estate and social media presenters in the US and a seasoned American RE BarCamp contributor attended the event.
The day started with the attendees getting together and deciding what would be the topics for the morning’s 8 breakout groups. Moderators were then decided and 4 groups ran for 1 hour followed by the next 4 topics for another hour. After lunch the afternoon group topics were set, moderators allocated and the groups ran again for 1 hour each.
Some popular real estate topics included:
- CRM Systems
- Mobile phone technology
- WordPress
- Real estate portals
- Sold data sharing
- Social Media
- Lead Generation
- SEO
- Online marketing
I discussed the event with numerous attendees and the feedback was amazing, most commenting the event was relaxed, informative and they couldn’t wait for the next BarCamp. At this stage the organises are thinking (but are open to any suggestions) it will be a bi-annual event and are hoping to expand it to other Australian cities later in the year. Special thanks is needed to those who put the event together and include:
What’s important about these BarCamps is that they’re not for profit and community run, meaning anyone is welcome to be involved and help with planing and running BarCamps. If you’d like to help with the next Sydney event or bring RE BarCamp to your city then feel free to contact any of the guys and get involved.
Well done to all and I look forward to the next RE BarCamp!