Yesterday I attended Real Estate Barcamp Charlotte aka #REBCCLT. This year the event was held in Ballantyne Village which was a great venue. If you want to see what it is like just check out this quick video of #REBCCLT as people were checking in. There were four classrooms available for some wonderful times of learning. People from inside the real estate industry as well as several from outside gathered for this amazing 
event.
The highlights of #REBCCLT:
Here are just some of the things from REbarcamp Charlotte that I really enjoyed. First, I liked the fact that they had some great snacks of muffins etc for us to snack on for breakfast. They also had beverages there for us to grab throughout the day. Sometimes these events are so rush rush in the morning that there isn’t any type of food. When this happens you get to around 10:30 and everyone is no longer thinking of learning, but instead thinking of what they can get for lunch. In fact, I have seen a few sneak out of sessions early just because they cannot make it any longer which is sad because they miss out on so much good content that they could learn for free.
I also liked the way that REbarcamp Charlotte gave the group the ability to pitch ideas to cover for the day to the entire group. The reason this was so cool is that you were then able to find out exactly what those in attendance wanted to learn about. Several didn’t want to lead sessions but really wanted to learn, “How to do this, or what is…” so they were able to pitch the ideas & then the event found someone to lead the discussion. After all the ideas were pitched, then everyone there was able to go & vote and the classes with most demand were what was covered throughout the conference. This is what I would defintely call empowering the attendees with the way the conference runs. The one thing that I wish would have happened with the pitching aspect is that we could have done it a little bit faster. It seemed like we spent a lot of time on people voting that we could have almost added another round of sessions instead. Maybe next time just pitch the ideas & then do a show of hands type voting to speed things up.
The venue had 4 separate classrooms which were held on two different levels. The Superior School of Real Estate which was the main sponsor of the event opened their doors and allowed the use of their awesome space for two of the sessions. As usual though, the best part of a REbarcamp isn’t so much the great sessions, but the small impromptu breakouts that happened all over the facility. In a true unconference style, I even did a small class on the fly for a few that were begging me to help them blog better. So, the 5 of us found a few comfy chairs, brought our laptops and we did the session right there. Throughout the day I saw many small groups scattered all over learning on a specific thing to help their business succeed online.
So, try & make it out to a Barcamp if there is one in your area. They can be loads of fun as extremely informative. Every time I leave I leave learning several new things that will help take my business to the next level. My ultimate suggestion though is this: come with an open mind ready to learn, participate, and make new friends. If you do, you will definitely leave the event a changed person with tons of ideas on how to use different types of technology to increase your business. The best part of all is that these events are totally free to attend!
Lastly, I loved that the people attending #REBCCLT were definitely tweeting heavily. When I finally stopped tracking the number of tweets, there were over 350 tweets made by 77 people in about a 12 hour period! In case you were wondering who all these people were, I put them all into a list so that you can follow everyone instantly. To follow all that tweeted with the hashtag click here for the list of people who tweeted about #rebcclt. All you will need to do is enter your twitter id & it will connect you with everyone else.
Finally, I will leave you with a few photos from the event. Check it out & enjoy!
A giant thank you to Lori, Sandy, Debe, Todd, Chad, Susan, and everyone else who helped make this an awesome event!
[…] So what is a BarCamp? Put simply, it is a gathering of people who all have a strong desire to share and learn. What makes a BarCamp unique is that it is also defined as an “unconference.” If you are sitting there thinking to yourself “I have no idea what an unconference is”, don’t worry, you are not alone. If you aren’t tuned into social media or web-based technologies then you are not likely to come across the term “unconference.” When a meeting is designed as a series of open participatory workshops whose content is pitched and provided by participants then that meeting becomes an “unconference” (for more details check out this great blog from Jeremy Blanton). […]