Updates: Hurricanes, BlogWorld & Real Estate Barcamp Houston

Ike Update: Oak Ridge North Gets Smacked Around
The past 12 days or so have been about as action packed as they can get. Hurricane Ike decided to treat my little town of Oak Ridge North and southern Montgomery county Texas harder than any area not directly on the coast. We are still without power and I am crafting these 0's and 1's to you via a generator generously loaned to us by future in-laws. Our home suffered no major damage at all and as luck would have it, I had business trip to Las Vegas scheduled right in the middle of these days of recovery. If you're an MLBroadcast client, please accept our thanks for your patience in the delays that have resulted in production. We are working hard to get back on track and should be caught up soon. Call me directly if you have a concern or issue 832-331-4846.

REBlogWorld
Last Thursday through Sunday was spent at the Real Estate Blog World and Blog World conference. Todd and Jason should take great pride in successful first time event with REBlogworld. The sessions were great, the preparation and execution stellar and the overall experience definitely a worthwhile one. I highly recommend this event to any real estate professional or company interested in blogging and new media as a part of their strategy. We are proud to be a sponsor of the event and look forward to getting involved with the event in a big way again next year. Stay tuned for information regarding videos that were captured for each session at the event.


BlogWord Expo
The BlogWorld Expo was amazing. I've either been involved in the planning of or in attendance at more expos and conferences than I can remember and I believe this event was as well done both in execution and content as any I have attended before. It's only the second year for this event, but I can already see it becoming one of the larger and more well attended "digerati" events in the future. It covered much, much more than blogging, in fact, if it had to do with new media of any kind, it was addressed in some way. I enjoyed speaking with my old pal Paul Cheney who is now the president of the International Blogging and New Media Association, we became members because Paul is at the helm and I had a chance to find out more about their charter and see how I can become involved. Look for a podcast interview with Paul in the coming days. The highlight for me personally was being able to network with folks in the speaker ready room. I had a chance to talk to the social and new media folks with Wal-mart and get a preview of their cool new iPhone app being released this week. It's pretty cool to hang out with people like Guy Kawasaki. Most of the people in this industry, not matter what their celebrity status, are very approachable and that carried through to the sessions and the expo floor. Keep in mind for next year that by attending REBlogworld you are also able to attend the entire BlogWorld event. As Jeff Turner put it during a conversation we had, BlogWorld has been very "mind expanding". After all, isn't that why we go to these things? Oh wait, it was in Vegas, let me rephrase that, "Isn't that one of the reasons we go to these things?"

REBarcamp Houston Is Still On
I had a few conversations with some of my REBCH cohorts prior to my departure about whether we should postpone Real Estate Bar Camp Houston. The overwhelming consensus was to stick with the original date and plan. With all that will be taking place afterward like NAR's expo etc., it just makes sense to push forward. We will need as much help as possible from volunteers. Rich Jacobson of Active Rain being the awesome human being he is, has offered to come in a day early and help set up. We need sponsors! It's only $250 to be a sponsor of the event, so if you know of a person or company that wants the extra exposure and overall warm fuzzy that comes from being a part of a cool grass roots effort like a barcamp, have them get in touch with me.

REBlogworld Kicks Off Friday. MLBroadcast To Sponsor.

It's 2 am on Thursday and I am sitting here in the pitch black darkness except for the glow of a generator powered MacBook. Hurricane Ike has much of the Houston and surrounding area still without power. It's been one hell of a week and as Jeff Turner mentioned to me, I'm going to need to go to Vegas just to get rest. That's something you don't hear too often :)

I'm really looking forward to both Real Estate Blog World and the Blog World Expo. I'm extremely impressed with the sessions and the speaker line up. I will be sharing a presentation stage with Daniel Rothamel of The Real Estate Zebra and Morgan Brown of TurnHere to discuss the Why, How and Distribution of RE Video Content (Officially Titled: Video Marketing tools & strategies to help your business go viral). I've had a peak at my co-panelists' presentation decks, this should be one of the better sessions of the event! Matt Fagioli of Diamond Dwellings is moderating and has done a super job of getting prepared ahead of the event.

MLBroadcast is proud to also announce that we will be joining Trulia, Zillow, and TurnHere as sponsors of the event. We're honored to join this stellar group in supporting what promises to be a great first year event with many more to follow. Todd and JB have been working their butts off and I'm rooting for them to hit a home run. To use a Vegas analogy, I'd make book on it.

I wanted to offer my readers who won't be attending an opportunity to get questions in front of the moderators and speakers. I had hoped to pen this post earlier in the week, so if you would please Digg, Facebook or share it in your favorite way with the RE professionals in your network. I would appreciate it. Take a look at the sessions and then drop back here to pose any questions you might have as a comment. I will be sure to get them to the right place for you. You can also send your question via Twitter during the event as I will be trying to live blog as much as I can. I'll do what I can to get your answers and provide them in the form of a follow up post upon my return.

Once again, If you're an MLB client, we are working to get caught up as fast as we can. Normal production times should be back on track Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for your patience.