(They're green for St Paddy's Day)

I like full circles. Here’s a good one with an added twist on the end.

First There Were Bullpens

Agents would come and work in their real estate broker’s branch office.  Why?  Partly because they had to in order to gain access to listing information, office equipment, and/or to meet clients.  Some of the benefits of having to come into the office were camaraderie, energy, and from what I hear a sense of community.

Insert Technological Advancements

Affordable technology changed the game.  Agents starting buying copy and fax machines, computers, and scanners for their home offices.  Realtor essentials started flocking to the internet – most notable, the MLS.  (I still hear campfire stories about MLS books.)  Add on cellphone technology and company intranets and now you have eliminated the *need for agents to come into the office.  With many individual offices comes much less camaraderie, energy, and from what I hear a smaller sense of community.

Online Networks

Twitter and facebook emerge and help identify that even though people may work on the road or out of their home office, they still like to connect with others in their industry.  Ideas are shared, good practices are shared and there becomes a renewed sense of camaraderie, energy, and community – primarily based on interacting online.  The difference with these online communities is that there are no lines in the sand based on what company you are with, or whether you’re a lender or title rep, etc.  Everyone starts sharing with everyone. These connections turn into face-to-face gatherings like barcamps, tweet-ups, and the sort.  Some are work related, some are purely social.

#RETT

A group of forward thinking real estate industry folk (Dean Ouellette, Nick Bastian, Jay Thompson, Justin Mchood, Shane Hollenback, Bill Risser) take the face-to-face work meetings to the next level.  In addition to regularly communicating via the internet, they decide to also meet face-to-face in order to share ideas/work together on a more regular basis. (They call it Real Estate Tech Tank – aka #RETT.) It’s similar to the open collaboration of ideas that are being shared in the online communities, only now it’s face-to-face.  One person’s comment about #RETT was something like “it sounds like the bullpens have made a come back”.  I kind of agree…

The Twist

The “bullpens” being used for #RETT are open to everyone, not just members of a particular company.  That is a huge twist.  Now product sales guys, lenders, title reps, Thompson’s Realty agents, Realty Executives agents, and John Hall & Associates agents can all sit around a table working on their individual tasks or listening to a presentation together.  Camaraderie, energy, and sense of community are back in the face-to-face world!

There are other #RETT locations popping up around Arizona.  It appears to me, people like working around others in work environments.  There is now a #RETTphx at the Phoenix Association of REALTORS® and a #RETTredrocks in Sedona.

My Comments

It forces me ask myself, is it time to open the John Hall & Associates real estate offices to all?  Would it be better to have open office work environments where all are welcome regardless of what you do or what company you are with?  I guess if it started to get *crazy* it could cause the the elimination of the twist and offices would go back to being company specific?  But then maybe there would be a renewed sense of camaraderie, energy, and sense of community?  Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree at a 100% brokerage.

I’m definitely looking for feedback on this one, what do you think?

(If you don’t want to post publically, feel free to email me – psexton at johnhall dot com)