Why Connected Will Never Replace Connection

I am "attending" the 2010 National Real Estate CyberConvention and Exposition. For those who don't know, this great trade show all takes place online--you can network in your pajamas. This is my fourth day (the convention started on Sunday) and I have a few thoughts on "cyber" forums:

1. Information is easier to digest with an online convention. At a normal trade show or conference, you get barraged by so much information, nothing really seeps in. Everyone is vying for your attention, handing out promotional fliers and pens and stress balls (makes sense). With an online convention, you can access all the information at your leisure and you can easily sift through the vendors, allowing you to gravitate towards those that resonate with you and skip the ones that may not be what you need.

2. Speaker presentations sink in better online. A presenter may be miked at a regular convention, but you're still surrounded by a hub bub of activity, and a lot of what is presented may not sink in. Even if you're just making some talking points to a colleague, you're still missing some of the presentation. Not actively listening and trying to get something out of a presentation is like eating without digesting. It won't help you. With an online presentation, however, you can put on your headphones and actively listen to a presentation without missing anything. And, if you do miss something, you can always pause, rewind and playback. It really does allow the information to be more easily digested.

3. Online forums cannot replace human interaction. This was something I wasn't expecting, although I'm not too surprised by it. While I've "met" some great people at the online conference, I can't say that I've had a decent conversation. That's because no matter the technology - be it telephone, fax, or the Internet - nothing we invent will ever be able to replace actual human conversation, face to face. George Lucas was in a recent interview on Fresh Air. He was asked if he thought that movie theaters would ever become obsolete as more and more home theaters are built. He didn't think so.

"Look, he said, "as long as Green Bay Packer fans go in the 70 below zero weather, in the snow, to watch a game they can't actually see, because they all want to be together and scream together and have a good time together, the movie industry is safe. There will always be people who want that social experience, because human beings are a social animal."

The real estate industry is obviously changing, paperless transactions will be a part of its future, but so will the agents. Because buying and selling a home is an emotional experience and requires human connection, something that can't easily be replicated by ones and zeros.

If you have a chance, check out DotLoop CEO Austin Allison's take on how collaboration is the new competition here.

Really?

First I finalized my re-finance, then I had to go to the hospital.

OK, so that's a lie. But, after signing and initialing the approximately fourteen thousand pieces of paper, I could have sworn I had carpel-tunnel syndrome.

Late last week, I completed the re-finance of my home. I was a bit early for my meeting and when I walked in to the banker's office, I saw the giant stack of papers.

"Almost done," he told me, as he added a few more stacks of paper to the pile.

Really? This is what it takes?

Now don't get me wrong, I understand that a home is probably the most expensive and involved purchase one can make.

But this much paper?

I couldn't help but think back years back when I first purchased my home. Even then, of course, there were reams of paper to sift through and sign. But, as my bank representative told me, there's even more to go through thanks to the recent housing disasters.

But how is adding more paper a better way of doing things?

Luckily, DotLoop makes it easy to electronically sign and negotiate an offer all from the comforts of your home. And, of course, it's completely paperless. You don't even have to print off PDFs like you do other "paperless" real estate technologies. I wish I could have used the system for my re-finance; it certainly would have saved me a lot of ink and pain.

It IS Easy Being Green...

DotLoop is in New Orleans, helping to celebrate the Keller Williams Family Reunion. So it seems fitting that Saturday's topic of choice was about the green initiative.

The EcoBroker Energy Advantage™ course offered on Saturday gave agents and brokers alike a crash course in the Energy Advantage curriculum, which was designed to teach them about the benefits of going green. Topics included everything from green financing options for new homes to helping sellers trump up their homes' green features to help sell in a tough market.

Of course, with DotLoop on hand, an agent's job has gotten greener - including in their wallet. DotLoop allows agents to not only do away with reams of wasted paper and gobs of wasted ink and gallons of wasted gas, but to reap the monetary benefits of streamlining their process. By allowing clients and agents to negotiate online in real time - completely paperless - agents not only save time and headaches, but money as well.

We're proud to be a part of the Keller Williams Family Reunion and are happy that we're not the only ones within the real estate industry broadcasting the importance - and power - of going green.

dotloop.com

You Snooze, You Lose

I absolutely hate being late, if only because I hate waiting on others. So, on the rare occasion when I am late, I always feel really guilty.

This morning, much to my chagrin, I was a few minutes late to work. I could blame it on traffic or the deluge of red lights I stopped at on my way here, but the truth is, it really came down to me being a bit over-zealous when it came to hitting the snooze button.

It's amazing how an extra nine minutes of sleep will just completely throw off the rest of your morning.

On Monday, US Olympic alpine ski racer Bode Miller finished just shy of the gold or silver medal to win a bronze. The time difference between gold medal champion Didier Defago of Switzerland and bronze medal winner Bode Miller? 0.09 seconds, making it the smallest difference between bronze and gold in the history of the Olympics.

So--nine minutes or 0.09 seconds: either way, you're messing with fate, it seems. As real estate agents, I'm sure that plenty of you out there can tell story after story about near-misses (or complete misses) no thanks to the tick-tock of the clock. Or the crunching sound of a fax machine chewing up your contract. Or the honking of car horns in the midst of a traffic jam on the way to a client's home. Or the beeping of the printer letting you know that it can't print anything because the cyan cartridge is out ("But I don't need to print in blue, just black", you say. "I don't care", it tells you. "I refuse to print anything because you're out of cyan. I'm stubborn like that.").

Of course, here at DotLoop, we've created a system that allows for agents to completely circumvent any of the above time-delayers and sanity-destroyers. Agents can complete a contract on their computer and send it to their clients instantly. No need for running around town or figuring out which direction a paper should face when faxing. It saves a lot of hassle and a lot of time.

And with all that saved time, you can even afford to hit the snooze button a few more times.

dotloop.com

Cloud Computing: The Hard Drive's "Air" Apparent?

We got hit with another snow storm here in Cincinnati yesterday (and continuing today). While I was able to make it into work after slip-sliding up the highway, it got so bad that all of us at DotLoop had to leave around noon.

As I posted before, snow days are by no means non-work days, and I had plenty to do by the time I got home.

This presented a bit of a conundrum, however, as I am a Mac guy and I didn't have the Microsoft Word program needed to finish the report.

Luckily for me, we live in the Age of Google and I was able to use Google Docs to not only type up the report, but save it as a Microsoft Word file and e-mail it to everyone who needed it. This was the first time I had used Google Docs to create a new file and not just read a file. I was more than impressed - here I was saving a Word Document to my desktop without even having the program on my computer. I was experiencing first-hand the future of computing: doing everything you need to do all from a web browser.

Head in the Clouds

Cloud computing - that is, work done straight from the web as opposed to a hard drive - is by no means brand new; the term dates back to the 1990s. It wasn't until 2007 that Google and I.B.M. began work on a large-scale cloud computing research project. That may not seem too long ago, but considering that the iPhone didn't come around until the same year, 2007 was eons ago in tech time. And now, "apps" are so ingrained in our collective consciousness that it seems silly to think of a time before smart phones were ubiquitous.

Indeed, by 2013, we may be discussing how silly it was for us to think of anything but cloud computing. The iPad may or may not be a huge hit like its iPhone cousin was three years ago, but it may change the way we use our computers, much like we changed the way we use our phones.

A Hard Drive-Free OS?

Of course, it may be Google who ends up dominating the hard-drive-less computing arena. Late last year, Google announced it has created its very own web-based operating system (OS), Google Chrome OS. Google will partner with computer makers whose netbooks "will not have traditional hard disk drives -- they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and Internet-based storage for saving all of your data."

You can do almost anything from a web-browser - when's the last time you inserted a CD-ROM to download software? Heck, even software that isn't used in a web browser is still able to be installed through a web browser.

The Future Is Simple

All of this new of web-based computing talk only makes me smile, of course, because that's exactly what DotLoop is doing. With DotLoop, real estate agents can go to one website domain and handle all of their offers, contracts, and contacts from their web-browser, without ever having to download anything onto their computer. Their office - including all the forms they'll ever need - is anywhere there is an internet connection.

It's funny: we used to think about the future of computers and imagined how they would look and function. But it appears we were looking at the wrong thing; we should have been looking at the future of information.

dotloop.com

DotLoop Making News Again

DotLoop was once again featured in Cincinnati's Business Courier. Click here to view the article, or click on the image for a larger version.

dotloop.com

Finding Your Focus In A Blizzard

Another couple of inches of snow fell on our fair town overnight, and much of the city is still under some degree of snow emergency. Last night, I was looking out the back window as the wind spun the snow around and it looked like a bakery gone awry.

It seemed a perfect analogy to what has been going on here at home, across the country and, well, everywhere. This has certainly been a tumultuous time for the world these past few years. Between the economic meltdown, natural disasters, housing crash, political unrest and upheaval, and all the personal wreckage and chaos that go with it, the old Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" seems to resonate more truthfully than ever.

The blanket of white outside of my window reminded me that within this snarl of swirling snow, and blizzardy bedlam, it's so easy to get disoriented and flung around like a coin sucked up into a Dyson.

But it also reminded me of the importance of focus. That one thing that gets you through the turmoil and allows you to carry on, one brave step at a time.

I have been blessed and downright lucky that this economic upheaval so many are experiencing hasn't quite made its way to my doorstep; I am grateful every day for that fact. I know, however, that I am more grateful for the focus I have at my job, for my family, and for my own interests because even though I know how hard it would be to wrestle with that monster, I know I'd be able to come through in the end, like Andy DuFresne coming out of a Shawshank sewer pipe.

So, despite the hardships and losses incurred and accepting the growing pains that come with change and time, I am encouraging everyone to remember their focus, to remember why you get up every day. Here at DotLoop, we focus every day on making the best product possible. We have to--especially with the ever-increasing changes going on. But your focus doesn't have to be as lofty or noble as a doctor's creed or a fireman's courage. It can be as simple as being there for your friends when they need your time, or for your neighbor when he loses his job. Or your children when they need a bedtime story.

When the earth quakes, when the hurricane breaches, when the Dow drops, and when life comes swarming around you and you can hardly sift through the noise, what's your one thing?

I have my focal point. What's yours?

dotloop.com

Typing In A Winter Wonderland

I am writing this blog in my pajamas, eating a bowl of Rice Krispies. It seems cars don't drive very well in thick snow.

When I had snow days as a kid, I remember getting up early and turning on the radio to see if my school was closed or not. I would listen intently to the list of closings, my ear pressed against the speaker, the volume low.

"...Jewish Vocational Services Center: Closed; John Paul Catholic Schools: Closed; Kings Local: Closed..."

This was it! I went to Lakota Local Schools, so if I heard 'LaSalle High School' or 'Little Miami School Districts' next, I knew I'd have to trudge my way through the snow to sit in class all day gazing out the window daydreaming about hot chocolate and sledding. Kings Local...psh! They always got snow days...

The announcer continued...

"...L-"

Yes!

"-ah-"

Yes!

"-koh-"

Yes!

"-tah"

Woo hoo! I did a little jammy dance and headed back to my warm, cozy bed imaging the possibilities of the day that lay before me and deciding how many marshmallows I would have in my hot chocolate. Maybe I'll finish off the bag, I'd tell myself as I drifted off to a few more relished hours of sleep.

Snow Sorry

Of course, as an adult, snow days aren't as fun, if only because, well, we actually have stuff to do. Luckily, technology has made it possible for most of us to complete our job, have that conference, or finish that report even with the white death blanketing our cars. To this degree, the Internet has been a blessing to employers and employees alike. Some of us even get more done on a snow day than on a regular, distracting day in the office.

Others, though, still see snow days as a hinderance--especially real estate agents. Getting negotiations done on a normal day can be tough enough, but a snow day? Driving around town gathering up initials or making adjustments to an offer without chains tied to your tires may render a REALTOR useless. Luckily, with DotLoop, all of your negotiations can take place online, anywhere.

So now, even you, dear agent, can sit back, relax, and finish your work, even on a snow day. And, without having to drive around town, you may find some time to take ole' Rosebud out for a spin...

dotloop.com

DotLoop News

Speak of the Devil...

After yesterday's and today's blog, I ran across this in today's paper:


Coincidence? Or prophecy?

I'll never tell...

dotloop.com

In the Year Two Thousaaaannnddd....

If Robert Zemekis is any sort of Nostradamus, we're only five years away from hover boards, self-drying clothes, and automatically lacing shoes. I am so freakin' excited!

Of course, when the movie came out in 1989, Back to the Future Part II was a nice peek into the future. Now, of course, it's a bit kitschy (psh...as if newspapers will be around in 2015).

Where's My Mr. Fusion?

But not long ago, The National Association of Home Buyers (NAHB) took on the task of predicting what the house of 2015 will be like. They concluded:

The average home will have 2,330 square feet on two floors and contain 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 bathrooms and four bedrooms. The family room will replace the living room which will either vanish or become a library, "retreat," or parlor.

The average home will not have the high vaulted ceiling found in so much construction today. Foyers will be one story as will family rooms but ceilings throughout the first floor will be nine-feet high with the second floor being eight to nine feet. The staircase to the second floor will rise from the foyer, there will be a front porch and a patio, and the exterior of the house will be vinyl or fiber cement siding or brick. [source]

No real excitement there. Where are the automatic fruit dispensers? To be fair, the article does mention the tech features of the house will include fiber optic wiring throughout as well as programmable thermostats. Oooh...programmable thermostats! How futuristic!

Of course, if Microsoft has their way, your house will run on Windows. Your insurance will skyrocket, of course, due to the constant crashing of your home's operating system, but at least you'll have interactive wallpaper to keep you happy while you're trapped inside of your home because the computer-operated doors won't budge thanks to the latest Internet Explorer Malware.



All these high-tech predictions are kind of funny, though. No one ever takes into account the everyday lives of actual people when predicting robot maids or 300 mph flying cars (could you imagine falling to your death after a mid-air fender-bender?). No one ever predicts how the little things may get in the way of making such high-tech "wonders" work. How the heck are you supposed to get the dust out of your electric table?

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Of course, predicting what features the house of the future will include is about as dependable as, well, predicting future of housing. Another thing futurists never are able to take into account? Recessions.

In the summer of 2006, the REALTORS Commercial Alliance Report predicted their real estate outlook for 2010. Among the findings?

"...[T]here is only a 40 percent likelihood of a recession by 2010...real estate will revert to what it's always been, 2/3 income and 1/3 appreciation."

Oops. "Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!"

Not that you can blame them. Everybody wants to know what the future holds and a lot of people are paid good money to guess at what exactly that is. Heck, even Zemeckis thought there'd still be phone booths in 2015.

dotloop.com

Hosing Down Your Electric Kitchen Table (Just Don't Spray the Dissolving Dishware)

My brother has this running joke and, like most older brother jokes, it's at his younger brother's (that is, my) expense. The joke is a simple one line, "Did you knoooowww?"

It refers to my reputation as being a depository of useless information and is usually accompanied by a roll of the eyes.

The seed for this joke was planted years ago, when I happened to say--completely out of context--"Did you know that The Jetsons took place in the 1990s?"

So, it disheartens me to know that, while doing research for this blog post, I've been wrong all of these years.

The truth is, the show actually takes place in 2062, one hundred years after its debut on ABC (Did you knooowww, interestingly enough, that it was the first program to ever broadcast in color on ABC?).

The reason I am spending time discovering that George Jetson's robot Rosie (age 45) is older than he is (George is 37) is because I want to run on this theme I've been chewing the last week or so about the future of homes. What will home life be like when I'm 82 in 2062?

But before we look ahead, let's first look back. What did the folks in 1962 think homes would be like in 2010?

Well, looking around, I found some pretty accurate predictions, including:

• Plastic Pod Houses

• Electric Tables Rising From the Floors
  
  
• Robot Maids
  
  
• Sawdust For Breakfast
  
  
• Dissolving Dishes
  

Well now, hmmm...seems about right. Wow, these next few blogs should be a breeze.

dotloop.com

'Fore' For Much Longer?

It's funny how the universe works. Just days after discussing neighborhoods designed for the elderly, this morning, I stumbled upon this article at MarketWatch.com. In brief, it outlines how retirees are re-thinking the cliched idea of a golf-course retirement in sunny Florida and how, "today 'cost of living' is the most important consideration on where to locate."




Also mentioned is a related article discussing the downsizing of the size of the average new home for the first time in 27 years, a topic I've covered before, too.

Regardless of your thinking about the housing market, it appears retirees are making a shift in their priorities. We'll see what kind of sea change this brings to the housing industry as a whole.

dotloop.com

I'd Like To Thank The Academy...

With this past Sunday's Grammy Awards and the Oscar Nominees announced just a few days ago (not to mention last month's Golden Globe Awards), it seems as if the entire world has award fever (or, the more scientific term, 'Award Allergies').

Luckily, we here at DotLoop have our own reason to brag and celebrate along with Beyonce and the cast of 'Avatar': our very own Sam Compton has won an ADDY Award!

For those not in the know, the ADDY Awards are the advertising industry's equivalent to the Oscars (film industry), Grammys (recording industry), and Merlins (magician industry).

Sam Compton is our resident graphic designer here at DotLoop and is largely responsible for the clean and beautiful look of our site.

Congratulations, Sam! All of us here at DotLoop are proud to have you aboard!

dotloop.com

Up On The Housetop, Mow, Mow, Mow

Yesterday, I discussed how the elderly are having a hard time navigating through our modern day, fast-paced cities designed more for cars than people.

And of course I got to thinking: what will a city be like when I'm elderly? The best place to look to find out what the cities of the future will be like is up.

Green roofs are already taking root across the world, as urban developers are finding ways not only to design and build LEED buildings, but to make those buildings useful in other ways. Imagine a skyscraper that houses a greenhouse, with each floor growing local and fresh food for the city's inhabitants. Imagine entire gardens off the coast of a city, replacing the oil rigs with olive oil rigs.

The fantastic website inhabitat.com (where all of this post's pictures are from) has some excellent updates about green roofs.

Per Wikipedia, green roofs:

• Reduce heating and cooling loads on a building. A concentration of green roofs in an urban area can even reduce the city's average temperatures during the summer
• Increase roof life spans
• Reduce stormwater run off
• Filter pollutants out of the air
• Help to insulate a building for sound
• Filter pollutants and heavy metals out of rainwater
• Increase wildlife habitats in built-up areas
• Grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers

Green roofs are a win-win, in terms of feeding both people and the environment, all while keeping costs down for building owners. To find out more about green roofs, check out inhabitat.com.

I hope for my sake that when I'm an old man, I can grow my vegetables on a skyscraper. Green roofs are a plus for everyone. Even Santa can save money by having the reindeer graze on the job.
____________________________________________________________

Check out some of these pictures of green roof project ideas:




dotloop.com

Share and Share Alike

Here at DotLoop, we're always looking for new ways to share. Sharing is good, which is why we specialize in collaboration technologies.

Recently, we found a great tool to share our blogs, tweets, and ideas at a rapid pace: ping.fm.

It's a great tool to use and we just wanted to share. Enjoy!

dotloop.com

Walk this Way - Designing Communities For the Elderly

This past Saturday afternoon found me waiting at a stop sign at the end of my street for a bit longer than I would have liked. I was attempting to make a left hand turn onto a busy road, but I wasn't the only one waiting to get to my destination. Across the street to my right, an elderly lady, having just finished a grocery store run, was waiting to cross the same busy street at a pedestrian crosswalk.

Cars were flying by in both directions, and she was patiently waiting until the roadway was clear. Unfortunately, she was waiting longer than me; I made my left turn and continued down the street as her reflection got smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror.

This got me to thinking, which is always a dangerous thing. But, having had a grandfather live his last days in a cold nursing home and with my grandmother currently living with my parents, I began to wonder if there's not a better way to create communities for the elderly--one which doesn't involve playing a deathly game of Frogger just to get a gallon of milk.

Senior living centers are certainly one way to avoid dodging Dodges, but is there a better way to make the neighborhoods and communities easier to navigate for those not used to the fast-paced, breakneck speeds of our modern society?

Comfortable and Easy

I certainly hope so, and not just for my own future: beginning next year, the population of those 65 and older will continue to grow faster than the total population of each state, and, within a mere twenty years, may overtake all other age demographics across the country.

Realty Times has an article today that discusses what kind of homes aging baby boomers want (hint: comfortable and easy). Shouldn't they also want a neighborhood to match?

"I Wish They'd Bring Back the Streetcars"

I too walk to the same grocery store as my elderly neighbor and I too have been subject to waiting and waiting and waiting while at the same crosswalk. Once, when standing next to her, I mentioned how annoying it was having to dodge traffic just to get a loaf of bread.

"I wish they'd bring back the streetcars," was what she told me, herself obviously annoyed too at what used to be a very walkable neighborhood. Luckily, more and more cities are looking into bringing streetcars back, including Cincinnati.

And I hope it happens. After all, when I'm 80 years old, I don't want to have to worry about getting hit by a flying car. I'll have enough to worry about as it is.

dotloop.com