Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

While we had a great program last week about real estate (Thanks, Bill!) and Erica tells me she has something fabulous for next week, we didn’t have any brilliant thoughts about this week, so we’re canceling the meeting in the hopes that we’ll encourage more of you to attend next week. Besides, who wants to go out in the slushy, icey cold? Stay home, have a warm beverage, and do something offline or go contradancing to warm up.

See you next month!

Our own Bill Wendel of Real Estate Cafe will lead a session with many special guests on the changes in real estate in the online era. Real estate is one of the industries most in flux right now, due not just to the financial crisis but also to the shift in roles of realtors, homeseekers, etc in the internet age.

Guests include:

• Tim White, of ISellBoston, will present his guest perspective which was selected as the best in the Roadmap to Recovery contest sponsored by Inman News.  Tim hopes to launch a new venture in first half of 2009.
• James Shiner & Greg Afarian of ZIPVO who led a session at REBarCampNYC on distributing your video to the world. Syndication, social media, etc. We will be there to talk about video, social media, and distribution of videos/listings.
• Tony Longo, Founder of CondoDomain and Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media  were to co-facilitate a round table on the future of buyer agency, alternative brokerage models at REBarCampNYC (but were unable to make it).  CondoDomain is a leading flat fee business model, which has bootstrapped an expansion into 10 markets in little over a year and has plans to expand to 33 U.S. markets in 2009.
• Bill Wendel, who founded Real Estate Cafe in Cambridge in 1995, will present preliminary results from UNOFFICIAL survey regarding 12 reforms proposed at ConnectNYC by Brad Inman and economist Robert Shiller.

More info at http://planyp.us/plans/709252100420-real-estate-round-table

Upcoming meetings & events:

• February 5: Yvette Wohn on the Korean news & social site Ewhaian.com: “Integrating hyperlocal news with social networking”
• TBD: Renee Lloyd on women in technology & brainstorming about a possible “She’s Geeky” conference in Boston.
• At some point, we should take advantage of Berkman’s RockBand set and have a music party in lieu of a normal meeting.
• It’s getting to be time to have another dim sum gathering, too.
• See the Berkman Calendar for other upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Because it’s hecka cold out and nobody really wants to stay out late, and because I am trying to shake a cold, we’re not going to meet tonight, 1/15.

We WILL be meeting next week, 1/22, for a roundtable led by our own Bill Wendell on the evolution of the real estate industry in the online era. We’ll hear from folks who went to REBarCamp last week, and discuss emerging technologies. Bill has set up a wiki with much more info:

http://planyp.us/plans/709252100420-real-estate-round-table