August 2007 Chicago Meeting

Registration

Please register online here

General Information

Breakfast - A complimentary “cooked to order” breakfast is available at the Embassy Suites each day.

Lunch - Lunch will be provided on the all days of the meetings.

Dinner - Attendees are responsible for their own dinner arrangements. Typically, attendees gather in the hotel and groups head out to try the various restaurants in the host city. Don’t be shy.

Accommodations - NAR has negotiated a group discount rate for a block of hotel rooms at the Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown – Lakefront. Attendees are responsible for the cost of the hotel room and any incidental costs.

Travel - Attendees are responsible for their own travel arrangements.

Reception - NAR will again host a first evening reception for the attendees to the RETS-WG meeting. It is an excellent opportunity to meet new people in the community as well as put a face to the email name that you may be working with.

Track 1 - MLS Schema Workgroup

Final review of Person, Members, Teams, Participants, Offices schemas for adoption vote. Continued work on the remaining MLS schemas.

Paul Hethmon will demonstrate and discuss the work he has been doing on a SAML reference implementation for NAR. Working code will be demonstrated and an overview of SAML and this work will be provided.

12:15 – 1:15

Compliance Testing Debug Support

There are six 30 minute slots for either server or client compliance. These slots are assigned on a pre-attendance registration form. Walk-up compliance may be handled if there are open times.

Attendees:

· Participants should be on-site 30 minutes prior to their assigned time slot to set up.

· Client compliance tests must bring their client software already loaded on their laptops.

Additional slots may be added if demand exceeds the number of available slots.

Plugfest

The Plugfest is an open workshop for client vendors and server vendors to test their inter-operability. This is a popular event where some of the best technical staff from the industry meet to help each other connect using the RETS specification.

Server vendors will sign-up before the event to provide clients with an idea of who will be there to help.

Track 2 - New to RETS

A session where people, especially MLS staff learn about the meeting and RETS in general from peers. The second half of the session will be a working session used to improve the content of the introductory session.

BreakOut Sessions

Track 2 - Implementation forum

An open session where implementation questions and issues are discussed.

Developers are given the opportunity to provide a short demonstration and talk about applications related to RETS. This session will be the elimination round to narrow the field to two or three interesting applications that will be presented to the entire RETS-WG meeting for final voting for the most interesting application.

As in previous meeting, a small prize will be awarded to the application deemed most interesting by your peers.

A sign-up form will be provided to assist the presenter in organizing this event. Please check the appropriate box on the RETS registration form. Developers should expect 5 – 10 minutes to describe their application and to demonstrate the application running. This typically involves 3 – 10 PowerPoint slides and a few minutes of the application running.

An LCD computer output projector and an internet connection will be provided.

An open reception will be hosted by NAR for all attendees of the RETS Workgroup meetings

Day 2, Thursday, August 9th

Location - Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown – Lakefront 511 N. Lakefront Columbus Dr. 

8:30 – 8:45

Opening Remarks and Agenda Review

Interested parties will participate in a detailed review of the Transaction Management payloads. Participants are expected to have detailed knowledge of transaction management data elements and types and should come prepared with the current versions of the RETS schemas and their laptops.

Interested parties will participate in work to define an enhanced Update transaction. Work covers RETS1 and will review RETS2 to provide a transition path.

12:00-1:00

• The re-engineered http://www.rets.org site will be discussed. Active participation is desired to provide feedback to the changes and what additional features would be useful.
• Marketing Plan review
• NAR MLS Survey results
  

• Broker perspective - TBD
  
• Appraisal perspective – John Cirincione
• Data mapping perspective - TBD
• Migrating from RETS1 to RETS2
  

• RETS Schema Person, Member, Team, Participant, Office voting
• Workgroup Summaries and Day 2 Wrap-up
• Next meeting announcement
• Interesting Applications Presentation

Day 3, Friday, August 10th

Location - Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown – Lakefront

Track 1 - RETS 1 Technical Review Workgroup