n 1994, John Reilly and I met on the Internet on real estate list servs and “Bulletin Boards” such as the AOL (America Online) Real Estate forum managed by Peter Miller (OurBroker on AOL).
Both John and I had spent 20 years in not only the business of real estate brokerage and law, but also in the business of real estate education.
John was a practicing attorney and published author (The Language of Real Estate, Agency Relationships, and others) and an instructor of real estate Principles and Practices and license and Continuing Education (CE) courses in Hawaii. His participation in those early online discussions showed his expertise in areas in which I was also interested, and John’s social capital rose quickly in my eyes.
I was creating and teaching licensing and CE courses for Anthony Schools in San Diego, in addition to owning a real estate sales and property management company, and a tax and financial planning business. It didn’t take John and I long to realize the publishing power of the Internet, and we were very excited about it.
In 1995 my wife Janie and I traveled to Honolulu, my hometown, to do a program on Buyer Brokerage and Buyer Representation. John had written a book on “Consensual Dual Agency.” It was on that trip that Janie and I met John and his wife Patty in person.
John was gracious in bringing me up to speed on the local real estate laws and forms for my Hawaii presentation; after all, we were “old” Internet buddies. We all had dinner together at the Pacific Club one evening and realized that we were on to something.
John Reilly and Saul Klein at the Kaimana Beach Hotel in Waikiki discussing online community and the future
Janie and I traveled back to the Mainland and within a few months John and I created a company together, a Hawaii corporation dedicated to this new publishing phenomenon, the Internet.
This predated the popularity of the WWW and the IPO of Netscape.
In 1995 I was also providing consulting services for the new REALTORS Information Network (RIN) and became the real estate industries first national evangelist for the Internet, the WWW, and Listings on the Internet.
I was such a strong advocate for the establishment of an online real estate community that I was assigned the responsibility of building the community aspect of RIN.
John and I were then promised a contract by NAR to build and maintain a community for the closed online service RIN had developed. I was given the title “National Electronic Publisher” and on Labor Day Weekend in 1995…a group of my “online friends” met in San Diego to develop the plan for what I then called “RealTalk.”
Those in attendance are recognizable names to many of you. In addition to John Reilly and myself, there was:
Jack Harper, a California Broker and technology mastermind (Jack is now a professor and writer.
Mike Barnett, currently the CEO of Property Panorama.
Ron Rothenberg (an online and technology “guru” if there ever was one);
Richard Janssen (who went on to be THE driving force for Realtor.com);
Julie Garton Good (a prolific real estate author and teacher);
Becky Swann (who created one of the first and biggest online real estate directories, IRED);
Linda Yagger (the technology systems expert from Booz Allen Hamilton, RIN’s Technology Partner).
Over the long 3 day weekend in 1995, we came up with 160 “categories” of discussion and then went out to recruit a group of folks to help us “moderate” our online discussions and build our online community.
Attorneys, brokers, and educators such as Bob Bass, Russ Cofano, Kaye Evans, Dr. Don Bodley, Randy Van Reken, Diane Scherer, Monica Reynolds, Dave Beson, Pat Zaby, Bonnie Sparks, and of course, Terri Murphy. Terri went on the road with Mike and I for 2 years.
It was a great group and before we could really gain momentum, RIN ran out of money and the only viable asset, Realtor dot com, was sold to pay the debts of RIN. RealTalk was cut loose, a casualty of the time.
John Reilly and I were not willing to give up, and engaged the assistance of Ron Rothenberg and set up our first “RealTalk List Serv”. Ron graciously assisted in handling all the traffic and bounced message traffic. After about a year we moved the growing online community to our own servers.
One of the beauties of the Internet is that it allows what John and I refer to as “undiscovered talent” to rise to the top and share vast amounts of information with all the members of the online community.
Over the years, folks like Lee and Betsy Bowman, Jim Lee, Ann Cummings, Kerry Kidwell, Tom Early, Steve Finney, Karen Jeffery, Al Napier, Chris Newell, Wynne Achatz, Mitzi Romiti, Iggy Dybal, Vikki Morvant, Lenn Harley, William Thorne, Merv Burgard, Marylou Shannon, Michael Rahmm, Norm Fehr, Randy Hollister, Curt Hardee, Ken Deshaies, Steele V. Propp, Niel Thomas, Judith Lindenau, Bill Holt, Bernard Gibbons, Cec Daniels, Timothy Schwartz, Leopold Rodriguez, Paula Bean, Pat Farrell, Jean Allen, Jay Hytone, Ardell Coulter, Tom Scaglione, Bob Taylor, Fran Thorsen, Carolyne in Canada, Sally Hardman, David Slachter, Denny Elmes, Dennis Smith, Fred Salzer, Gene Carey, Jim Hicks, Stuart O’Niell, Juan (you`re the Juan) Junco, John Cleek, Larry Perry, Ronny Geenen, Karen Stefani, Larry Daniel, Rich Hudson, Bonnie Cox, Linda Grissette, William Johnson, Doug Whitehouse, Joeann Fossland, Martha Woodbury, Theresa Grant, Christine Pardo, Adorna Carroll, Cindy Chandler, Melanie McLane, and many more.
Some have passed on (RIP), but many are still wih us.
Or motto was borrowed from Kevin Kelly, the first editor of Wired Magazine…”Nobody is as smart as everybody.”
This content was originally published here.
