There’s always something to howl about.

The Odysseus Medal: “Something is going on up in Saskatoon…”

I love this thing that we’re doing — the Web 2.0 thing, the social media thing, but especially the weblogging thing. The world is awash in expertise, and we have wasted ten millennia, at least, trying to effect our concentration, our innovation, through filters — would-be gatekeepers on the human mind. The smartest of the bunch of them have torn down their gates and used the iron to build bridges. The rest stoutly defend what’s left of their ravaged redoubts in a world increasingly devoid of walls. How stupid is that?

Witness:

I swear to god these dinks think their value comes from wearing Oxford shirts or trading secret fraternity handshakes.

Here’s a sniggling little clue: If you know something worth knowing and you can communicate it in a timely and useful fashion, you’re our friend. If you decide to sneer your way into our hearts and minds, things might not work out as you’ve planned.

In fact, there is work that professional journalists can do that we cannot do as well for ourselves. But if they’re not willing to actually do that work, then what good are they?

Take careful note: Jay Thompson has been all over the management crisis at Point2 Agent. Since Friday, he has been the nexus of communications on the subject, reporting what he could discover and eliciting amazing anonymous comments from surviving Point2 employees. If you read Jay’s posts and the comments threads, you’ll be more richly informed than you could ever be by a news account.

How much more richly informed? At least 100%, since there haven’t been any news accounts about the Point2 diaspora. Where are the supposed “professionals”? Polishing their pince nez and practicing their superior poses, I suppose.

Here’s what so much worse: Who feels like they missed out on anything? When all you bring to the party is redundancy — often erroneously and always incompletely — and when show up late anyway — who needs you?

Learn how to work our way or learn something else. There’s nothing worth paying for in what you’re doing now.

But I am happy to send a virtually-cast medal, if not a minted coin, Jay Thompson’s way. For his extraordinary coverage of the Point2 Agent reorganization, Jay wins this week’s Odysseus Medal:

People find blog posts here on a regular basis when they search for terms related to “Point2 Agent”. That would be because I’ve made several posts about Point2 — my website provider.

But something unusual began happening this week.

On Tuesday, 4 people found this blog by searching “Brendan King Resigns“. Brendan is the Point2 COO. This search term leads to a post I wrote about the Point2 CEO resigning on Sept 20. Though it seemed quite odd, I brushed this off as people confusing the COO and CEO.

But the visits from that term continue to roll in…

And they have been joined over the past couple of days by variations of these search terms:

Point2 managers resign
Point2 exodus
Point 2 agent resignations

all of which return some Point2 related post written here.

Hmmmmm……. this sure sounds like something is going on up in Saskatoon……

In his testimonial for Monster.com, my pappy said, “I couldn’t even spell engineer and now I are one.” I have come to laugh at my posture toward vendors, with whom I have a relationship that runs the gamut from icy contempt to a warm and intimate ambivalence. And yet: Now I are one. Brian Boero takes this week’s Black Pearl award for Let’s call it Zulia. The only trouble is, Brian is missing about 80% of what can be done with this idea. I worked this out in detail about six months ago, and I can show you how to do something like what Brian is suggesting in such a way that it will put you completely beyond competition. There are only two problems: First, what I’m talking about is easier to do than it is to explain. And second, now I are one: I don’t plan to explicate this strategy until the BloodhoundBlog Unchained conference. Meanwhile, here’s Brian’s idea, which rocks notwithstanding:

I’ve been thinking that if I were to sell real estate in my neighborhood, one of the things I would do would be to create a comprehensive database of images, sales histories and notes on every single home in the neighborhood (in my case, about 1,200 homes).

In other words, I’d create my own private Zillow or Trulia — or, really, something even more valuable to my clients and prospects. Maybe I’d call it Zulia.

The data would be impeccably accurate, the images would be clear street level views, and it would be frequently and meaningfully updated. Each home would have its own page. Heck, I could even run this on WordPress. Every home would be a post.

But — and the real value would lie herein — all of the data, all of the images, would be complemented by my own assessment of the home. This might include observations taken on a broker tour at some point in the past (“next door neighbor raises German Shepards”; “living room gets very little light in winter”), or notes on sales prices that would make such data much more meaningful than a list of out-of-context comps. I might, for example, note that an unusually low sales price could be attributed an out of area listing agent, not a marker of a market shift.

The People’s Choice Award voting was spampaigned again this week, and it’s really put me off my stride. It’s plausible that the folks — never more than one a week — who are spamming their address books don’t stop to think that they are cheating. But if they did stop to think, I don’t see how they could avoid the conclusion. It a simple idea: “How would I feel if I were bested not by someone who worked harder and did better, but who had a larger warm network?” No one has any trouble identifying injustice when they’re on the receiving end. In any case, I’m not going to name a People’s Choice winner this week. And starting next week I’ll put would-be spammers on notice every week.

Nota bene: If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should. And as always, if you trip on something so fascinating only a professional journalist could miss it, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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