Give or take a couple of technology glitches, some agents not being up to speed with audio players, and a few other unforeseen yet expected problems, the 2002 National Real Estate On-Line Convention and Exposition, closed its five-day doors on the first online training and technology convention for real estate professionals.

Hosted and planned by the Real Estate Cyberspace Society, the online convention attracted 20,783 real estate professionals from 36 Countries.

Real Estate CyberSpace Society Convention director Angela Portosa, says, "They made 93,738 Booth Visits and contacted exhibitors for more information 33,478 times."

• 11% of the attendees purchased a product or service at the Expo.

• 31% intend to purchase a product or service they saw there and

• 75% are going to look into buying a product or service they saw at the convention.

• 37% of attendees indicated they are going to tell a friend about a product or service they found at the convention.

"Overall satisfaction was high with a 93% satisfaction level (67% either extremely satisfied or very satisfied with the on-line convention overall)," says Portosa. "The remaining 7% were probably affected with the few glitches you might expect with any first of a kind event of these proportions.

The convention featured live and archived interviews and talks from some of the most recognized names in the business.

Keynote speaker Michael J. Russer, aka Mr. Internet, did a live telephone broadcast with Real Estate Cyberspace Society founder Jack Peckham. Simultaneously, Russer showed slides over the Internet to attendees, making access to the renowned speaker as good as "being there."

"Overall, I think it went exceedingly well," says Russer. "Were there some things that could have been better? Yes, but I think for the first time doing something like this, that it was a great experience for everyone. And if I know Jack Peckham, next year will be even better."

With a 20-second delay, Russer's keynote was moderated by Peckham, who interacted with Russer providing a richer, discussion format.

"It is a great venue, it doesn't replace conventions, but it is an acceptable alternative," says Russer. "Right now the technology just isn't there to accommodate multi-point recipients. You have to have more bandwidth to do a visual presentation, and there are still a lot of agents who are dialing in on 28.8 modems. But we got a lot of great feedback that the agents thought it was cool."

"We think that we introduced a lot of folks to both live and archived "sound on the Internet" and the biggest complaint we had was about "no sound" or "no visuals" and that came mostly from those who were either not familiar with MS Windows Media Player or Real Player Audio," explains Portusa. "Other than that, an occasional slow down and one additional brief crash because of the crowds, most attendees were pleased and showed it with their almost embarrassingly complimentary comments.

Comments about the convention are available at the Post Convention site. Keynotes will be available through May 15, 2002.

Published: May 2, 2002

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