“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” — Howard Aiken

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The quote comes from WorkHappy.net this morning. Yesterday — plane-bound, casino-bound, Twitter-bound — unable to post — I reflected upon why it’s all just so much waxed fruit — for now:

Rusting in irony. I really, really want to post and I have 140 chars to work with.

That’s Jeff Turner and a newly-shorn Dustin Luther checking out Jeff’s camera at last night’s BloggerCon event at the NAR Convention in Las Vegas. The event was a lot of fun for me, much more fun than I had anticipated, but we were just so much waxed fruit to the NAR, a minor constituency to be placated.

So be it. A year ago, there was nothing of our world at the NAR Convention. This year, amidst the pageantry for MS FrontPage and MS Publisher, Dustin Luther spoke on “Understanding Your Online Competition.” Seth Godin is speaking, too, although I think he might go over like The Great Gazoo.

And: So be it. What I was ruminating on, unable to post, was Jim Duncan’s optimistic take on working within the NAR. My thoughts run in the other direction — working without the NAR — and my honest belief is that the NAR is destined to go the way of the Typographer’s Union — marching stoutly and steadfastly into an unlamented irrelevance. Sic semper tyrannosauris — thus, ever, to dinosaurs.

Organizations don’t change because they should. They don’t change because the world has changed on them. The don’t change because glib ideologues like me persuade them to embrace their better angels. Organizations change — if they do — when they have to: When a sufficient power-bloc within the group forces a change or when a force from outside the group proves irresistible. Most dinosaurs change — to a state of perpetual demise — when they get hit by a meteor.

Are we — the RE.net, the Web 2.0 world — are we that outside force for the NAR? Are we that meteor? Don’t kid yourself. We’re waxed fruit for now, up from barely negligible a year ago. But a year from now…?

I live in a very long-term world, but I live in a world where every word I write lives on forever in an instantly-available form. I didn’t write the consumer’s guide to the divorced real estate commission so I could listen to Realtors wheedle that they “don’t wanna grow up!” I don’t need to be reminded of that. I wrote it so that the consumers Realtors and the NAR insist don’t exist — smart, savvy internet-focused consumers who research everything in enormous detail — can discover what’s wrong with the way we do business now. I live in the world of Web 2.0. This is how I live, which is how I know how they live. Consumers like me are waxed fruit for now. But a year from now…? Five years from now…?

When I showed up at the BloggerCon event last night, no one who was there had any idea who I was. I have to laugh at my own vanity, because as big as BloodhoundBlog is, it’s still nothing to the unwired world. Hilary Marsh of Realtor.org tried her best to soldier on, insisting, “I think I’ve been to BloodhoundBlog.” I smiled and said, “You’d remember.”

I worked in Twitter yesterday, because it’s the perfect kind of walkie-talkie-tech for coordinating dispersed minds. Jeff Turner has a site built using Twitter and Utterz to track events at the NAR Convention as they happen. BloodhoundBlog.TV will start hosting interviews with Conventioneers tonight. The Web 2.0 world is on the ground in force, and I’m thinking the Web 2.0 story line is going to be, “Hell-o-o…? Is there anyone awake in there?”

But, lest you despair, take note of what I found in my email in-box this morning:

Hilary Marsh (hilarymarsh) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Waxed fruit? Hide and watch…

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