There’s always something to howl about.
The short list is no shorter — twenty posts so far — but there’s still room for you — or for someone whose work you think deserves attention. The entry form is here.
Voting for The People’s Choice Award will start just after Noon PDT/MST.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I was beyond delighted at the way things worked out in the first Odysseus Medal competition. Even so, I want to make few changes in the rules.
Ordinary weblogging carnivals are all about link-baiting. The idea is for you to get your weblog linked by the host weblog, and for the host weblog to get linked by all the entrants, and, with luck, some other weblogs as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it does explain why the quality of the entries can be of less than paramount importance.
This is not what we’re about, so why should we approach things that way? I’m happy to link back to entrants, but I expect we’re linking back all the time to most of the people we will hear from, anyway. We’re not interested in linking, in or out, we’re interested in the best quality real estate weblogging we can unearth.
So: The rules are changed to this:
The Rules (few and fair):
Rules #2 and #4 have been changed. There’s no reason a third party cannot enter a particularly excellent post. When I’ve given out The Odysseus Medal in the past, no one was entering anything; I was picking out work I thought was worth celebrating. You should be able to do the same. The change in rule #4 simply acknowledges that some of the biggest names in the RE.net are writing all over the place. We want to honor their best work no matter how many examples of it are submitted.
I’ve also built a sidebar button, 160 pixels wide, that you can use to promote The Odysseus Medal competition, if you want:
You can see this in our sidebar. It looks like this:
That image links back to the information page for the competition.
We’re Read more
As you will have seen from yesterday’s short-list of entries, we had a lot of very high-quality posts among our contestants. This seems to augur well for the future of the contest. If you didn’t make the cut, soldier on. For the most part, even the posts that didn’t make it to the People’s Choice competition were very, very good.
But: It’s plausible to me that you’re reading this post to hear about winners, so let’s talk about those:
The People’s Choice Award, the winner of the popular voting yesterday afternoon and evening and this morning, goes to Michael Cook, with Realtors, Wake Up and Start Helping Consumers.
The Black Pearl is awarded to the entry that presents the best practical, technical or marketing idea of the week. This week that award goes to Benn Rosales for Mortgage drama, real estate bubble, tech crash, dotcom disaster. Here’s the winning idea:
So now that we know it’s coming, what shall we all do about it? I’m doing a few things like; creating a shortsale team to assist sellers, offering move-down programs to those who aren’t so much in a bad way-yet, talking about it with sellers that call, offering advise on when to get out, and when to stay, talking to lenders about refinance options for those who might not need to move if we can do something now before they begin missing payments (not charging for that by the way, just guiding), calling past clients to see how they are, and that they’re okay.
And the first Odysseus Medal in this new competition, the overall best post of the week in my opinion, goes to Kevin Boer with The Innovator’s Dilemma In Real Estate: Beware Of That Redfin Swimming Just Below You. I’m a Grand Opera kind of writer, and Kevin is a just-the-facts kind of guy, but the journey he took us on in this post is simply extraordinary.
I’ll be making the three ‘badges’ shown here available to the winners as ornaments to be used with their winning posts or on their sidebars. (And if a real artist wants to volunteer to make better versions, Read more
Okay, the live version of the People’s Choice Award voting interface is on-line. My short-list isn’t all that short, alas — 18 entries total, including seven from BloodhoundBlog. I’ll do a better job of eliminating posts in the future.
The selections are shown in random order in the voting interface, this because being at the top or the bottom of a list like this is a decided advantage.
These are the posts, in no special order, except the BloodhoundBlog entries are shown last:
Go here to view the entries and to vote. I’ll accumulate votes until 12 Noon PDT Monday. I’ll post the winners of The Odysseus Medal, The Black Pearl and The People’s Choice Award Monday afternoon.
Technorati Tags: blogging, investment, real estate, real estate marketing
I have a dummy version of the People’s Choice voting interface for the Odysseus Medal competition up and running. I used five of my recent posts for examples, since I’m excluded from the competition. Play with it, if you’re of a mind to. See if it makes sense to you. See if you can get it to break. The live version will go up later today.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I’ve posted the rules for The Odysseus Medal competition, but there aren’t so many that I can’t also show them here:
The Rules (few and fair):
- The entry must have been posted within the two weeks before the entry deadline
- The entrant must be the author of the post
- More than one entry from the same weblog is fine
- More than one entry from the same person is also fine, provided that you have multiple personality disorder
- No second-guessing, no do-overs, no cry-babies
The Prizes:
Three awards will be given weekly:
- The Odysseus Medal, for the overall best post of the week
- The Black Pearl, for the best practical, technical or marketing idea of the week
- The People’s Choice Award, selected by popular voting on Sunday evenings
The Deadline: Sunday at 12 Noon MST — which is 12 Noon PDT, 3 pm EDT, etc.
Entry form: It’s here.
No doubt this will change somewhat with time, but probably not by much. I really don’t like rules, making them or, especially, complying with them. Entries that I’ve already received will be grandfathered, of course. Fair is fair.
Anyway, get crackin’. Either Cameron or I will build a voting bot for the People’s Choice Award, and I’ll put together graphic trophies for the winners. I want for this to be an enduring tribute to quality weblogging. But the truth is, I’ve got the easy job. You’re the one whose going to have to do the hard work…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
That, of course, was the name of a best-selling management book that came out in the early eighties. It not so much defined my market philosophy as confirmed what I’d already learned from Nordstrom: Concentrate on excellence and rewards will follow. Concentrate on rewards, and you’re pretty much assured of being consigned to mediocrity.
What’s been interesting to watch in the twenty five or so intervening years isn’t so much that nearly every business gives lip service to the tenet, but what’s happened to the definition of ‘excellence’. The education establishment meets failing test scores by dumbing down the tests. Grades are allocated not on merit, but on the perceived sensitivities of the students, just as soccer games are played without keeping score so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. You can get an undergrad English Lit degree at the University of Washington without ever having studied Shakespeare. In the frenetic twenty-first “I want it now!” century reading has become a chore, replaced by vapid visual stimulation and fifteen minute podcasts. Writing skills have devolved to YouTube. Joseph Conrad need not apply.
So what? Here’s so what: Words matter. Reading builds vocabulary, writing exercises its use. But not only is someone who draws on 150,000 words able to communicate concepts better than one who’s limited to the normal 50,000, but he or she is infinitely better able to conceive them in the first place. I’ve said — often — that good writers invariably make good thinkers, largely because they do.
All of which was going through my mind as I read this weekend’s BHB posts.
Whew. Excellent.
Before I started my own RE blog I searched the internet to see how others were doing it. Lots of people giving advice, most of it in the genre of Kris’ exquisite satire: Keep it short, be witty, illustrate cleverly. Most blogs seemed to keep diligently to that formula, but two things were apparent: that A) Most were blogging just to be blogging, and not to be actually saying anything; and B) the “Keep it short” formula was necessary to mask an inability to string words Read more
I’m pretty fed up with the Carnival of Real Estate. It is what it is, and there have been times over the past year when it has blown tender kisses toward the sublime. But much too often it has chosen to rut around in the mud, and, in any case, it is much too much of everything to be anything at all.
This is not good.
There is a Carnival of Real Estate Investing and a Consumer-Focused Real Estate Carnival, both of which seem to do a decent job of staying on-topic. The Carnival of Real Estate should be devoted to excellence in real estate weblogging, broadly defined. Instead it has become a Carnival of Solipsism, a space where the inherent subjectivity of judging has given way to an overarching, overreaching subjectivism: The universe is whatever that week’s judge says it is. An entry that would have been judged the best by any rational standard can get buried beneath the judge’s whim, the testy assertion of a right to supplant enduring standards of excellence with a momentary fit of pique.
In rebuttal, one word: Bah!
For a first thing, I am done with the Carnival of Real Estate. I have supported it since its birthing. BloodhoundBlog has entered a post for every new edition, winning, despite everything, more than any other weblog. No more. I will no longer submit posts from BloodhoundBlog to the CoRE. If individual contributors wish to enter their posts, that’s their business, but I will no longer make an official entry from BloodhoundBlog, nor will I enter any of my own posts.
Second, I have recast The Odysseus Medal as a new carnival of real estate weblogging. This is the description of the new carnival from its home page:
A weekly carnival for real estate, mortgage, real property investing and housing weblogs — very broadly defined. The Odysseus Medal is awarded to the highest quality writing in real estate weblogging.
The Odysseus Medal competition will be hosted at BloodhoundBlog every week, and it will be judged by me alone. That is arrogance personified, but by doing things this way webloggers will be assured of Read more
…is up at RealEstateUndressed. Host Larry Cragun got around our having broken the rules on entries by breaking all the rules. In consequence, this week there will be two consumer-focused real estate carnivals and no Carnival of Real Estate.
Even so, our friend John L. Wake took second place with Landscape staging your home.
Michael Cook came in fifth with Can I Still Get a Mortgage in Today’s Lending Markets? With Cold Hard Cash and Great Credit, Certainly; Otherwise?
I respect the right of each weekly judge to do what he or she wants about the Carnival — the lord knows we do. But much more than that, I respect, admire, revere and exalt actual excellence in real estate weblogging. We’re going to do something different from now on. News later…
Technorati Tags: blogging, investment, real estate, real estate marketing
Our policy is that Cathleen Collins chooses our nominees for real estate carnivals. I trust her to be objective, particularly about my posts. The contributors are polled for nominations on Saturday night, with their suggestions going to Cathy. Sometimes I overrule her, and sometimes she asks me to cover for her.
This week, Cathy got her short list down to four posts, one each by Morgan Brown, Kris Berg, Brian Brady and me, but she didn’t want to choose from there. She threw it over to me — heavy hangs the head.
I checked and saw that nine of our fifteen contributors had written in the past week. So I entered everything of moment from each of us. That’s a violation of the Carnival of Real Estate rules, but this is my attitude: If we’re going to lose anyway, let’s lose our own way.
These were the posts that I entered, starting with Cathy’s short list:
Morgan Brown:
Kris Berg:
Brian Brady:
Greg Swann:
Michael Cook:
…is up at Sacramento Real Estate Voice. The theme is a Monopoly tournament, but I can’t tell who won. Kris Berg triumphed at her table with I’ve Been Working Too Hard! Ask the Wall Street Journal. Brian Brady, writing from his home blog, took over the real estate on his table with San Diego Mortgage Advice: Call to ARMs. There are five other table winners to be seen, so get yourself to Sacramento Real Estate Voice to check them out — without passing GO, of course.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
…is up at Rain City Guide. The big winner? Our own Brian Brady at Active Rain, with Selling Like a Catholic School Girl.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
…is up at Sadie’s Take on Delaware Ohio.
Host Toby Boyce does a truly amazingly phenomenal job as judge — and I’m not just saying that because our own Jeff Kempe won with The Imperative of Divorced Commissions, Part 2: The Inherent Value of Free.
Toby used the idea of a golf tournament as his theme, with the chart above illustrating the competition.
And the competition was fierce, with many first-quality contenders. Wheel you golf cart over to Toby’s place to see what I mean.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
My father manufactures mens’ outerwear — overcoats, raincoats, jackets. He was with Windbreaker and London Fog for many years, but for the last couple of decades he’s been a private-label vendor: He supplies the goods, the designer or department store supplies its label. One year Consumer Reports reviewed mens’ raincoats and my dad took first, fourth and fifth place with the same raincoat. Different labels, different price points, same coat. The winner was sold by J.C. Penny for $99. Second place went to a $900 Aquascutum.
The Bloodhounds made a run at winning that decisively at this week’s Carnival of Real Estate, but judge Mike Simonsen was smart enough to see through us. I entered three times, and Kris Berg and Brian Brady entered from their home weblogs. A small demonstration of the volume at which we can howl, when we want to. These are the entries I know about (there may have been others from other BHB contributors):
Alas, we didn’t win, although all three of us were mentioned in Mike’s post.
Truly, you can’t win ’em all, but we have won the Carnival of Real Estate more than any other weblog:
Meanwhile, Michael Cook has won Read more
