The scenius on Swallow Hill Road: A brief gloss on BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando, November 7th, 2008

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When we put together BloodhoundBlog Unchained In Phoenix, last Spring, we were gifted with the magnificent beneficence of Zillow.com. In consequence, we spent money like a college freshman with a Visa card. We knew Unchained in Orlando was going to have to be a leaner affair — and after this fall’s market collapse, it got quite a bit leaner than we had expected.

We knew were were going to have five or six Bloodhounds presenting, so I resolved to rent a house to save us all money on hotel rooms. We got a five-bedroom seasonal rental, in a community I choose to call West Disney, for $621 — a smokin’ deal for what turned out to be 5 dawgs plus Teri Lussier’s husband, Jamie.

Brian Brady with Teri and Jamie Lussier.

Emphasis: My objective in renting the home was to save money. That’s all.

Unintended consequence: The scenius on Swallow Hill Road.

Say what?

I’ve talked about the idea of a scenius before. A scenius is a kind of communal genius. When deeply-passionate, passionately-informed people get together to share what they know, the synergy of their interaction can throw off vast quantities of new ideas. This is what happened with us at our house on Swallow Hill Road.

The Unchained event was a rockin’ success. It was better than Unchained in Phoenix had been — which surprised no one more than me and Brian Brady. It’s unfair to say we topped ourselves, though. It was the speakers who made Orlando a killer event.

Here’s an example, a brief clip from the keynote address by Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate CEO Sherry Chris:

Brian has other videos, so we’ll see if we can get those posted in the next couple of days.

Sherry was great, but all of the speakers were at the top of their game. I don’t want to take anything away from anyone by saying that Kelley Koehler and Mitch Ribak were off the charts excellent — rich presentations full of practical, ready-to-implement techniques. John Sabia took voluminous notes that I’ll be linking to tomorrow, so you’ll be able to reap the essence of the day’s presentations.

Plus which, we have audio recordings of some of the sessions (but not Kelley Koehler’s, alas!), and we’ll make those available later this week.

That much was great — better, I think, than anyone expected — the kind of geyser of information we love to deliver. On Saturday, Brian, Eric Blackwell and I did a brief presentation for the CyberProfessionals group, an NAR-affiliated group of web-savvy Realtors. We a wonderful time exploring the benefits of database versus SEO versus organic marketing, and quite a few of the CyberPros were ready to follow Eric home, just to savor his every observation. We ended our talk with a room full of people who are eager to sign up for BloodhoundBlog Unchained University in Phoenix, coming in May 2009.

Brian, Sean Purcell and I made time for the NAR show floor:

The NAR occupies a vast and relatively empty trade show floor.

Eric was already on his way home by then, and Teri and Jamie had sense enough to go to Cocoa Beach instead.

Brian wanted to take a well-deserved victory lap at the HomeGain Party. He was accompanied by a big dumb doofus who looks way too much like my father:

The shirt was a gift from Daniel Rothamel, The Real Estate Zebra.

But as much as we got done in the world beyond BloodhoundBlog, we got so much more done in our scenius on Swallow Hill Road. Starting Thursday night, we stayed up until 1 am talking.

Friday after Unchained, we ate together and then stayed up very late planning the curriculum for Unchained University. I finally went to bed at 1 am, but Brian, Sean, Teri and Eric stayed up until 3 in the morning sharing ideas.

We had time to work again at lunch on Saturday, then Teri, Brian and I stayed up again until 1 am last night.

Even today, rushing around to bug out for our homes all across the continent, we continued to work through the ideas we had been exploring all weekend.

And that by itself is just time. It was the scenius of the thing that made it work so well. We’re all tuned into the same frequencies most of the time, but it was the exploration of our differences that made all of us smarter. We live that idea here every day, but in real-time, at the speed of life, it’s a much more powerful phenomenon.

This is what we want to bring to BloodhoundBlog Unchained University in Phoenix in May. I’ll be talking more about this tomorrow, but the essence of our plan is very simple: Replicating the scenius on Swallow Hill Road for as many people as we can bring together for three very intense days next Spring.

We learn by sharing everything we know. BloodhoundBlog was built on that principle, and Unchained is our expression of that ideal in the real world. We knocked the ball out of the park this weekend in Orlando, and we’re not shy about saying so. But the event we’re planning for Phoenix will be nine full innings of home runs — a complete overhaul of your marketing in one very busy weekend.

But just so you don’t think we do nothing but work, here’s something Teri Lussier set up for charity. I don’t think this is quite what was wanted, but it’s as close as we’re going to get, so I hope the donors will make with the dough.

The Fonz with Pinky Tuscadero.

More tomorrow and in the coming days. I’m toast, as you might expect. If you’ve posted on Unchained in Orlando, send me an email with the link and I’ll put together a compendium of links tomorrow. Our thanks, always, to the people who are gracious enough to lend us their minds. We love to teach everything we know, but, even better, we love learning everything you know.

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