Posts Tagged ‘iphone’

I saw this video clip doing the rounds on twitter yesterday.  It’s a clip showing how the magazine WIRED is changing their business model to appeal to the new consumer and stay ahead of their competition in the publishing World.

The iPad from Apple is due to be released at the end of this month.  We as an industry need to start thinking like WIRED, embracing new technologies and changing our business models to stay competitive.The iPad can change the way we do business if we let it, and why wouldn’t we? If it can do this for a magazine just imagine how it can benefit you and what it can do to help push the boundaries of your business.  Most REALTORS® are still trying to come to terms with Social Media and understand how it can change their business, they are not ready to take on another potential game changing device.  I am and so are all the other tech savvy REALTORS® I know through twitter and other social media sites. We are excited and ready to include the iPad in our arsenal of tools.  I  urge software developers to develop real estate specific software for the iPad so we can use this device to it’s full potential.  I want the ability to have a more dynamic listing presentation in my pocket / briefcase and to promote my listings with interactive software to buyers using the iPad.

Are you ready for the iPad, how do you think it will change the way you do business?

Prospect Neighbourhood Canmore

It was a beautiful morning in Canmore on Boxing Day.  I was out for an early run

Looking from the Bow River towards Three Sisters Mountian

before we headed to Calgary to participate in the Boxing Day shopping madness.  The images of Canmore I captured on my iphone from the morning run kept me sane while waiting in the longs lines in the stores and fighting through the crowds at the malls.

I’ve lived in Canmore now for 11 years and this was the first Christmas I haven’t either been working on Christmas Day or visiting family in other parts of the Country and World.  It’s been a wonderful Christmas in Canmore and even the Boxing Day madness in Calgary was fun, in part, because we as a family have not had the opportunity to experience that kind of shopping before.

HIking Trail along the Bow River

Today is a day for relaxing at home, building the rest of the boys lego star wars and lego Indiana Jones set, skating on the local pond and maybe even finding space to put all the new gifts away form underneath the tree.

Enjoy the rest of the Holiday season and have a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Winter seems to have finally hit Canmore this weekend.  On Friday we received roughly 10cms of snow in town, no doubt bucket loads more at the ma0r ski hills in the Mountains (I haven’t had the opportunity to snowboard yet this season as I was preparing for and am now recovering from recent shoulder surgery).  Rarely do we see it snow all day without a break but Friday was one of those days where the weather was completely socked in and the ski hills were more than likely the large benefactors of such traffic stopping conditions.

The rivers, lakes and ponds are now freezing over nicely and should be ready for some awesome skating conditions just in time for our Christmas season.  Overall the ski hills have had phenomenal conditions since the very start of the season which will hopefully translate in to a stream of Europeans jumping on planes in the new year to come and enjoy all the great snow conditions in our winter wonderland. The snow certainly makes for some great pictures which in turn adds to the allure of the Mountains.  The local winter festivities have started, we’ve seen the Winterstart festival and the two World

East End of Rundle Mountain

Cup Downhill Ski Races at Lake Louise and the Santa Claus parade in Banff.  Skate with Santa, the long standing event hosted by RE/MAX in both Canmore and Banff is being held December 17th in Canmore and December 19th in Banff in support of the local food bank.  I took some pictures of the Bluebird day we had in Canmore today that I wanted to share with you.  If you have more photo’s of Canmore that you’d like to share please post a comment with the link to the photo’s at the bottom of this post.  I look forward to seeing you at Skate with Santa in a couple of weeks.

I get this question a lot, daily in fact, or some other question asking the same of me – why do you waste your time on twitter?, why do you tweet?, what are you hoping to achieve on twitter?, how is twitter going to help your business?

All of these questions, and more, come from colleagues in the office that are getting sick of hearing the chirp of my tweetdeck every 10 seconds – and don’t understand what Twitter means to me. On a larger scale they don’t get why I spend my time on twitter or social media sites in general and cannot fathom how it could help grow my business. I tell them I don’t ‘tweet’ for business, I don’t ‘facebook’ someone for business, I tweet and facebook people I have, or want a connection to socially or with people I share a similar lifestyle interests with.

Over the past several months on Twitter I’ve had the priviledge of meeting some incredible people and join in some amazing conversations with people I would never have had the opportunity to meet and interact with. I’ve learn’t more about technology, the internet, politics, sports, social media, search engines, social interaction, real estate, business, finance, World views, different Cultures – the list is endless, and I’ve made some great friendships.

As most of you know, I live in Canmore, Alberta, Canada – a town of about 10,000 year round residents located in the Canadian Rocky Mountains just East of Banff. In the past week and a half I’ve sat down and had coffee or breakfast with 5 local residents I met on twitter and been on bike rides with 2 more local’s I met on twitter. I’ve been invited to go on a winter camping trip with my family to the Elizabeth Parker Hut in December with 5 or 6 other families from one of these coffee discussions and been introduced to friends of friends of people on Twitter that share the same interests. I’ve been given advice about which camera I should buy to take photo’s of listings, marketing advice on how to further expand my reach on the internet, received referrals from new home builders who had nothing available in a particular price range for someone they were talking to and learnt about some of the different Countries of Origin that people who live in Canmore originally hailed from. I’m from the U.K. originally, I met fellow Canmorites this week from Brazil and Turkey and learnt lots about both of these Countries while having coffee.

I have become great friends with a Long Haul Truck Driver who takes great pride in his job, the pictures he posts of Western Canada and the people who follow him. He pulled into Canmore a few weeks back with his 53 foot trailer to stop and say hi to me and meet face to face. I had breakfast this morning with a 61 year lady from Ontario who I connected with on Twitter, she loves the mountains and wants to move here someday, but is over the moon that she is able to vacation out in the Mountains for 3 weeks in September every year and go hiking.

Will any of these friendships I’ve made on twitter over the past several months result in business?….maybe, some already have, but the friendships I’ve made, the lessons I’ve learnt and the sheer passion for the Mountains I’ve experienced through all these people far outweigh any reason for tweeting for business.

Twitter for me is truly social, it’s about the wonderful people I meet, interact with, talk to, meet in person and build friendships with. It’s not about generating business and promoting myself as a Realtor – I couldn’t care less, promoting myself as a person,living the lifestyle my family and I have chosen and spending time with my family and like-minded individual’s is far more important to me.