I had the good fortune of addressing some of the best and brightest real estate agencies in Australia at the Best Practice annual get together on Hamilton Island.

Firstly I would like to thank Robert Bevan and his team led by Katie for the opportunity to speak at this event. The event was held on Hamilton Island which was perfect for all but one reason, that there was no Internet access, which sort of makes creating a Keynote Presentation with live content difficult to say the least. No fault of course of the organizers of the event, but meant I needed to re-create my whole presentation the night before and therefore less time lapping up the gorgeous surroundings!

The highlight of the event for me was Adrian Butera of Compton Green doing what was a mix of a stand up routine and off the cuff hilarity on final evening dinner. Funny stuff!

So what did I speak about?

Well what I attempted to do was create some inspiration for taking control of their websites and daring to be a little different in their approach to the future of their own websites.

Some notable points

Understand the web medium (see above video)
Get a Open Source Content Management System (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) to control the content on their website from company pages to blogging and social media integration.
Work only with providers that have (or are planning) an API (Application Programming Interface) so that they can hook into CRM (Customer Relationship Management ), Web Forms, PMS (Property Management Systems) and any other systems that bring in data to their websites or systems.
Embrace Android for building mobile interfaces to applications for their team and general public.

Responsive Design / Generation Change

The talks highlights are listed below. A little hard to follow without the speech, but I thought I would add this information anyway.

I spoke about our company and the tools i need to use to get the job done. Most of the people use iPhones which is probably the best phone out there, however iPhone 5 is a dud for agents until they get their maps sorted out, so stay away until at the another year or until they get Google Maps back into the fold of at least sort out the myriad of issues they are having with new maps application - a true shocker!

My Tools

Google Premium Apps
iPad, Google Nexus, Kindle Fire
iPhone, Samsung Nexus Phone, HTC Thunderbolt
iMacs, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Acer Laptop
Integrated Google API's, Highrise, Quotiant, Basecamp, Xero Accounting,
Payments from ANZ, Citi, Square, PayPal

Understand + Change + Users

Where have we come from? Where are we now?
First Impressions
Google vs Microsoft vs Apple
HTML5
Who you are? What do you do?
Who are your users? Google Analytics
Your Target Audience: Google Webmaster Tools / Google Analytics
Site Visitors / Separate: Google Analytics
Front Office / Educate:
Team / Streamline Processes:
Owners / Reports & Goals: Google Analytics

Identify Processes

Front Office / Tools: Basecamp, Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Gather Content
Team / Appraisals, Photography, Videos: Gravity Forms, Samsung Camera, Google Hangouts, Google Glasses
Owners / Reporting: Google Analytics
CMS / CRM?: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine