Made it! But...

...our luggage didn't. Thunderstorms in Houston delayed our flight.
Had to run to connecting flight to LA, then had to run to our
connecting flight to Honolulu. Our luggage has no legs so didn't
make it. They promise it will be delivered to our residences
tomorrow. I was thinking... they could charge extra for that as a
service. Imagine not having to pick up your luggage at baggage
claim. Just go straight to where you're going and have your stuff
delivered.

Will post a summary tomorrow... glad to be home... very sleepy now...
everything getting dim... oh! see bright light other side of tunnel...

Ran 2 make connecting flight

Made it! Next stop, Zippys.

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

Two presidents and an airport

Jeopardy contestant: What is George Bush? Leaving Houston after a
delay in Ft. Lauderdale...

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

Chilis next to gate

That's very convenient. Very crowded. Spring break returnees.

Arduous Journey book selected: Skeletons in the Zahra. History of a
shipwreck and the ensuing trek through the Sahara desert. Early
1800's.

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

The Angry Red Planet meets the Forbidden Planet

The closing session was by... oh crap, I've already packed my notes.
Anyway, this guy who gave a presentation called, "The Path to
Tomorrow." Okay! Finally, how to get leads and close sales in
Second Life! Not really. This was an old guy, though, and the
vision of the Future was a bit dated. Nothing worse than a dated
vision of the Future. Well, maybe a radical comb-over. He mentioned
"Web 3.0" in passing. Gee, I'm already staking out territory in Web
1101. It has a great view of all the lower webs and the sweltering
masses therein.

I know this guy is old, because he's about my age. I know that
because he said his dad took him to see The Angry Red Planet when he
was a kid. Wow! I remember The Angry Red Planet. That was one of my
favorite movies when I was a kid. Only the sexy babe rocket pilot
makes it back alive! Well, one other crewman, but he has green slime
covering his arm and nothing was going to stop that. The other guys
died from a giant rat-spider, and a massive amoeba with a rotating
eyeball! This stuff is deliriously terrifying and entertaining to
six year olds like me and Mr. Future.

But aha, he picked the wrong movie. The one he should have picked is
Forbidden Planet. That movie changed my life -- saw it when I was
around 7 years old, and I bet Mr. Future did too. A mad scientist
takes over the ultra-gigantic data center of the vanished race called
the Krel. Their data center inhabits the entire interior of the planet.

From my childhood memories of the movie comes a warning to the
arrogant Googles and Zillows. You see, the Krel developed the most
advanced computer system in the Galaxy. It was advanced to the point
where the Krel attached it directly to their brains (via 802.11n, I
think), and the computers did everything. The Krel almost made it to
the point where they could dispense completely with physical
instrumentality! Not only did the computers magnify the Krel
intellect, their advanced sense of beauty and meaning, their most
lofty aspirations, but it also magnified that tiny little speck of
nastiness deep within every Krel brain. The computers magnified
that, and the Krel ended up destroying each other until none of them
was left alive. Talk about a ragged cutover. There is volatility in
this new tech. Wither Zillow in five years? Still young and zesty,
or grey and ancient.. or vanished like the great Krel?!

Okay, I gotta pack up my computer now. If there are any more posts,
it'll be via thumbs and T-Mobile Sidekick until I get back to my
digs. Can't wait to be back home.

Doug via mac.com account

Why ask Y

Interesting panel this afternoon. Three Gen Y guys, including one
recent homebuyer, and one Realtor -- a broker yet! Why ask "Y"?
Because Realtors are as self conscious about their age as any fat guy
with a radical comb-over deserves to be. They worry greatly about
losing touch with the upcoming group of young clients. There was a
lot of talk of all sorts of threatening Gen Y technology. Stuff like
blogs, Second Life, Web 2.0 (and how long do you think it would take
before someone started talking about Web 3.0?).

Question to the Gen Y homebuyer: Why did you choose to buy through a
real, live, flesh and blood Realtor? Uhhh... 'cuz, you know, like,
my sister's a Realtor. He described a process of searching for stuff
on the internet to get an idea of what was out there, then contacting
sis. Duh, what did people think? He met a sexy avatar at Second Life
who sold him a virtual three bedroom split-level? Question: Why did
you decide to buy a place? Uhhh... well, I figured it was better
than renting, that's what my sister said, and I wanted to move out of
my parents' place. There was an interesting QnA for young homebuyer:
Why would you choose a younger Realtor than an older one? Well, I'd
wanna help them out. I thought that was nice. Anyway, all
reasonable answers, but the surprise was that there was nothing very
surprising.

The really cool guy was Zak, who became a Realtor (then a broker)
rather than go to college. Question: So do you have a Second Life
site? Nope. Use instant messaging? Hate it! How important are
designations to you? What are designations?

Zak's most interesting suggestion was to DOUBLE association dues. He
figures that would half the membership and get rid of the guys that
weren't serious. He felt associations provided great value.
Education was a biggie. He wanted to learn more, and become more
professional, like doctors and lawyers. He also liked the political
work done by the association. But really practical stuff. He
wouldn't be able to post "for sale" signs without the association's
effort in getting the City of Ft. Lauderdale into allowing him to do so.

I liked Zak, and I think everyone did. How did he succeed at such a
young age? Hard work, integrity, and professionalism. That's an old
formula, and it works for pretty much everything. So no tech
shortcuts revealed at this session...

Blogging dangers and limitations

So far, an excellent conference. Ann Bailey has figured out a way to
make sure the presentations begin and end on time, and that in itself
is just the superficial manifestation of a well planned conference.

I do note, though, that there are limits to public blogging for this
kind of event. I can't really post anything confidential or overly
critical on a public blog. And there's no use in transcribing my
notes onto the thing. But it may be good for posting notes to self
to serve as a mnemonic.

Notes to self:
The group I was in yesterday tasked with creating at least one innovative
method for out innovating Google/Zillow, etc., failed to come up with
anything. I held my tongue since my ideas are usually considered
hare brained. I was going to suggest that we should follow the user,
and what do users want? A combination of Google, Zillow... and
eBay. A website where one could find information on properties,
accurate sold data and comparatives, AND a place to conduct or at
least initiate an actual transaction or place a "bid." The "Realtor"
here would have to morph and retrain and repurpose in order to retain
a place in the transaction, but why not? This idea could get me
shot. Good thing no one reads this blog.

This morning's legal panel was interesting. Since the subject of in-
house tech development came up, I wanted to ask about Intellectual
Property agreements for staff, but time ran out before I got a chance
to ask. My assumption is that the employer may have a claim to IP
developed by staff only if it is within the staffer's usual scope of
work. It would be great to have asked about IP agreements for staff,
and if I can corner Laurie Janik, I think I'll ask.

Okay, have to go now. Next up: A Gen Y guy (an agent, a homebuyer,
and a seller!) will share his thoughts with us greybeards.

Doug via mac.com account

Arduous journey booklist addendum

A couple of additions to the Arduous Journey Booklist below:

My friend Henk sent this in:

"Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing 

EXPLORATION •  1998 •  PAPER  • 280 PAGES • BEST SELLER • FAVORITE 

An extraordinary tale of survival that reads like a good novel. It's the gripping day-by-day story of Shackleton's legendary perseverance: losing his ship in the ice, drifting helplessly across the Weddell Sea, and finally reaching Elephant Island, from where he sailed 800 miles to South Georgia to get help for his stranded men. With maps and a 8-page selection of Frank Hurley photographs.

And I myself forgot another one:

"The Bounty : The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty," by Caroline Alexander.  I always thought Capt. William Bligh got a bad rap.  Caroline Alexander re-examines the famous mutiny from original documents and much investigation.  Bligh is set adrift in the middle of the South Pacific with eighteen crew members who refuse to take part in the mutiny, and no compass, charts, or navigational instruments.  After one of them is murdered in Fiji, Bligh relying on his own abilities in dead reckoning,  navigates 2,700 miles to Coupang, South Timor, without losing another crew member.  It is the longest voyage in an open boat recorded in the history of the British Admiralty.  Now that's an arduous voyage.  Stiff upper lip and all that, you know?  That will be all for now -- carry on.

Keeping boys off the campus

When I was around 5 or 6 years old, my brother and I would hang out at Kyle's, a burger joint that used to be very near where the HBR offices are now.  It was also a favored hangout for the bad Catholic Girls from Sacred Hearts (is that the name of the girls' school down the block?).  They were much older than me, much bigger, had breasts, wore makeup, smoked cigarettes, and put ketchup and pepper on their french fries.  The ketchup AND pepper on french fries really sums it up.  My mom would not allow us to put both ketchup AND pepper on our french fries.  That was immodest overcondimenting, and if we were anything, we were not overcondimentors. 

 

These girl's school girls also had a lot of boyfriends.  Since boys were not allowed anywhere on the campus, Kyle's was their hangout too.  Tough, slick looking guys who smoked cigarettes, had tatoos, and bright cars with chrome engines in uncovered engine compartment bays.  The girls with the Biggest and the Most always attracted the attentions of the guys with the coolest cars.  They'd have fistfights in the parking lot too.  Back then I thought they were fighting over cars.

 

This conference is the first one I've been to where vendors have been banned.  Good idea, I think.  Vendors tend to pollute the atmosphere.  MLS folk should be talking to other MLS folk and not somebody trying to sell them expensive stuff over drinks and dinner.  But nature being what it is, there ARE vendors lurking around here.  Some are bold enough to have actually checked into the hotel.  Yeah, Spring Break, sure.

 

Funny thing, though.  The MLS with the Biggest and Most attracts the vendors and that MLS gets dinner somewhere.  French fries with ketchup AND pepper, most likely.  Well, I guess we don't have the Biggest or the Most because we didn't get invited anywhere.  But the MLS that did, well they come back and boast about who took them to dinner etc.  They just blab about it to the rest of us girls. 

 

When I was a kid, I though, wow, being grown up was really going to be something, and I always wondered what it was going to be like.

Good sessions...

On a little break before today's closing session -- Legal update re
DOJ, FTC, MLSs and anti-trust issues by Laurie Janik.

Ann Bailey was very interesting as usual. Her formula is to take
data, break the data down to meaningful information, and build points
on that. Her opening session remarks used data over time to indicate
trends and the lack thereof. Interesting in a spooky way. It seems
MLSs know the direction in which they must change, but the actual
change of course itself is cumbersome. Can't really say more than
that in a public blog, but I took good notes.

More later...

Doug via mac.com

Connection 2007: Into the Solutions

Opening session. I'm trying to remember if last year's conference was
called, "The Sky IS Falling." Anyway, here we go...

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

View from my hotel room lanai

As promised, here's a pic right off my lanai. You should see a boat, a channel, another boat, and some rich guy's house. The tourist slogan is that Ft. Lauderdale is the Venice of ... Venice of... of America I guess. Canals all over the place, but no violins. Anyway, when these big honkers start warming up in the morning, I can hear them and smell the diesel fumes. I love the smell of diesel in the morning. Anyway, about to go to sleep. Sessions start tomorrow and we have to sign up before. Good idea. There are too many good breakouts for two people to cover.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to post some headlines tomorrow. That will help me remember too.

'Kay den, gotta go. More tomorrow...

Doug

Doug's little arduous journey booklist

Three hops across 6 time zones over 17 hours or so makes for an
arduous journey nowdays. And if you're traveling for work it's one
of the things you can make a big deal about. But it ain't really
such a big deal. When traveling, I like reading books of the really
tough sailing voyages of the old days. History gets rewritten every
now and then and there are some fun books out there to help take the bite
out of travel. I mean, when you're scrunched in your little airline
seat and you get handed the smallest packet of the cheapest snack and
your ounce of water, you could get a little grumpy. But not if
you're reading about a bunch of guys in a lifeboat who have
completely run out of shoes to eat and are hungry enough to start
eyeing the fat guy.

On this voyage, I read, "Ice Master, The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the
Karluk" by Jennifer Niven. I don't recommend this at all. Poorly
written to the point of having errors that should have been caught by
the copy editor, and no narrative propulsion at all. A bunch of guys
set out to discover the Arctic continent (doomed from the start --
there isn't any such thing), get stuck in ice for months. We get to
read about them stuck in the ice for months. Eventually the Captain
sets out over the ice to fetch help, and the rest of the crew set out
over the ice to various places. Some live, some don't. They eat
weird stuff although they've brought some eskimos with them and these
guys know how to hunt. All the eskimos survive, even the woman and
her two little daughters. That's the best part.

Previous trip I read, "Over the Edge of the World, Magellan's
Terrifying Circumnavigation of the World," by Laurence Bergreen.
History gets rewritten every generation or so, and this account is
very contemporary. No need to portray Magellan as a wise and noble
explorer, but someone who was out to help Spain claim the half of the
world that the Pope had declared was Spain's. The other half the
Pope gave to Portugal. Five ships and 250 people set out, one ship
and 18 return. Magellan doesn't make it himself, but the journey's
chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta does. Full of mutiny, orgies in
Brazil, murder, shipwreck, the eating of shoes and shipmates and all
the stuff that makes your own journey seem like a luxury cruise.

Also on the list: "The Last Voyage of Columbus, Being the Epic Tale
of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of
Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery" by Martin Dugard. All the old
Captain wants by this time, is to establish his own Caribbean kingdom
and retire. Prob is that many others have the same idea, and of
course, no one seems to have asked what the native people had in
mind. Columbus is about my age when he makes this journey and he
really needs some eyeglasses. But they haven't been invented yet.
He could have also used some shoyu and tabasco sauce. Anyway, lot's
of shipwreck, rotten co-workers, murder and mayhem in this one too.
Believe me, your trip is better than his.

Wanted to mention, "Brutal Journey, The Epic Story of the First
Crossing of North America," by Paul Scheider. A Spanish Armada
journeys to Florida to make a claim, but they get shipwrecked. Some
survive this, but are captured by natives, enslaved, escape, get
recaptured, etc., until they end up walking across what is now
Texas. Four of them survive to walk BACK across Mexico, and one of
them lives to write a chronicle on his return to Spain. This is a
good book if your hotel room is far from the actual conference area.
Remember to pick up some snacks at the convenience store.

Absolute best read, though, is, "In the Heart of the Sea,the Tragedy
of the Whaleship Essex," by Nathaniel Philbrick. A whaling ship out
of Nantucket encounters a rogue whale in the Pacific who crashes into
the ship sinking it. Survivors end up in a lifeboat for many many
many days and they not only start eyeing the fat guy... What happens
is far beyond the powers of shoyu and tabasco to redeem. If the
storyline sounds familiar, a young whaler named Herman Melville read
the original account while serving aboard a whaler in the Pacific.
It really haunted his brain, and many years later he wrote the novel,
"Moby Dick."

I brought the book, "Skeletons on the Zahara, A True Story of
Survival," by Dean King. It's about a shipwreck and a trek through
the Sahara. May get to read this on my return trip. Will post a
thumbnail book report at least.

Anyone have some suggestions of this genre, shoot 'em over.

'Kay den, that's all for now. I'll give Donna another hour or so and
give her a call to see if she wants to eat breakfast...

Doug

No pics yet

Just woke up. Trying to get into the rhythm of the 6-hour timezone
difference. The posts carry a Hawaiian Time timestamp, but it's
7:14am here and I'm getting ready to start the day. No sessions
today, but we can register and plan our strategy, and meet some of
the others at the reception tonight.

I'm on the second floor looking out at a boat channel. Very
picturesque until you realize that boaters like being on the water to
meet the sun, and that these big boats make a sound like a dump truck
driving through a flooded area of Mapunapuna. I'll post a pic later
on, but the sun is coming up directly into my room, so I'll have to
wait.

After such an arduous journey, it's good to end up somewhere where
the climate is very similar to home. So far, Ft. Lauderdale looks
like one really big Kailua (the old Kailua at that). Speaking of
arduous journeys, I'm preparing a suggested reading list for such,
but just wanted to wish all a good morning first. 'Monin'!

At hotel

I'm kinda groggy but we both made it. Ran into Jeremy and Ray of
SANDICOR. Hope 2 get a chance 2 talk 2 them...

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

On plane 2 FL

Continental has a weird music playlist. Pretty much 80's pop. So far
this trip I've heard Vanessa Williams sing Saving The Best 4 Last about
12 times. I think that was early 90's, though.

Crazy for you, (That's what's playing now)

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

I'd walk a mile for a Camel

Remember that slogan? That's what we did. Houston.

The planes get smaller the closer we get to our destination. Bumpier
too.

We're @ a lunch place. Pix of oil rigs on the walls . I thought it was
Iraq. No, Houston in the old days.

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

Onboard plane 2 Houston

Donna across aisle so all accounted for. Plane filling up. Why are all
these people up so early?

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

Touchdown LAX smoking area

Didn't know they had one! It's an outdoor area right next to our gate.
Actually Donna and I are in the coffee joint.

Flight was short n suave. Good seats, v comfy.

Note to self: book Ice Master about the failed expedition of the Karluk
not very well written. Brought Zahara as backup but in suitcase...

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

On the plane to LA...

...so I should be checking in from LA soon. Haven't flown Continental
in years. Some empty seats next to me. Might be a good flight! 'Kay
den...

--Doug (via thumbs & t-mobile device)

I always hate leaving home

I always hate leaving home. I love the view from my smoking lanai. Oh well, off the the airport soon. I'll try posting via my T-Mo Sidekick as I arrive and leave from airports. Route is Honolulu to LA, LA to Houston, Houston to Ft. Lauderdale, Taxi to Pier 66. 'Kay den.

Why this blog?

Remember when James Kim died this past winter? He's the guy that made a wrong turn off the main road and ended up freezing to death. The really tragic thing is that his friends were tracking him but they didn't really know his itinerary or route so they couldn't be of much help. In the wake of the well-publicized tragedy, I thought for sure that blogs would modify some functions to accommodate a "travel itinerary" mechanism for people planning trips. Since you can post info from mobile devices, if Kim had a known itinerary he could have sent updates from time to time. Blogs should incorporate an optional "deadman switch" which would RSS a warning to a list if the blogger hadn't checked in. Hasn't happened. Oh well.

Well, this isn't a roadtrip in the middle of winter so it's not the same thing, I know. But I'm not a blogger so I thought it would be fun to try it out. I'll see how easy or difficult it is to post from the road. I'm thinking posting notes directly into the blog after the sessions might help me retain and organize more info later, but this is only a test of that.

I'll allow anyone to enter comments, but remember, this is a public blog, one coming from me at the Honolulu Board of Realtors, so don't get weird on me. Don't make have to moderate you -- deal?

Doug