December 2007 Miami Meeting

RETS Workgroup Meeting Agenda

December 5th – 7th, 2007

Miami, FL

General Information

Breakfast

Breakfast is provided on day 2 and day 3 of the meetings.

Lunch

Lunch is provided on day 1 and day 2 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 negotiates a group discount rate for a block of hotel rooms. Attendees are responsible for the cost of the hotel room and any other 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.

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.

Download Agenda

Day 1, Wednesday, December 5^th

10:00 – 10:15

All

• Opening Remarks and Agenda Review

10:15 – 10:55

All

• Robert’s Rules of Order for Anarchists or Simplified Rules for Meetings. This session will provide a common understanding of the most popular rules for managing a meeting. This will be an invited speaker.

10:55 – 11:00

Break

11:00 – 12:00

All

• Listing Exposure Explosion
  • Darity Wesley of Privacy Solutions will provide a perspective on the legal aspects of the dissemination of listings over the internet. She will also provide a perspective on the business side of data management.

12:00 – 1:00

Lunch

1:00 – 2:30

Track 1

• 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 to improve the introductory session

Track 2

• Compliance Testing and Plug-fest

2:30 – 2:45

Break

2:45 – 4:15

Track 1

• Implementation forum
  • An open session where implementation questions and issues are discussed.

Track 2

• Compliance Testing and Plug-fest

4:15 – 5:15 RETS Exhibition

Developers are given the opportunity to provide a short demonstration and talk about applications related to RETS. Unlike previous years, 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 years, 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.

5:30 – 7:00 Reception

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

Day 2, Thursday, December 6^th

8:00 – 8:30 Breakfast

8:30 – 8:45

All

• Opening Remarks and Agenda Review

8:45 – 9:30

All

• Introduction of the Board of Governors

9:30 - 10:15

All

• RETS Perspectives, Part 1. A session to provide attendees with different perspectives on current industry trends and needs. John Cirincione from the Appraisal Institute will discuss the work that occurs when Appraisers use an MLS system and some of the difficulties that they face. Mark Ladd from the Property Records Industry Association, representing County Clerks will describe some of the issues facing the Public Records sector of the industry. Representatives from both a small and a major Broker will discuss some of the issues that they face managing across different MLS operators and different software systems. A speaker will talk to the issues facing participants in data sharing regions.

10:15 – 10:30

All

• Break

10:30 – 12:00

Track 1

• Schema Workgroup
  • Interested parties will participate in a discussion around providing standardized data representations. This includes discussion of names included and identification of missing data elements that are common across multiple systems.
  • The updated extension mechanism, to provide region-specific data extensions to the data standard will be demonstrated and discussed.

Track 2

• Compliance Workgroup
  • Discuss the Change Proposal site compliance arbitration process.
  • Discuss the compliance renewal notice letter.
  • Additional steps to improve compliance

12:00 – 1:00

All

• Lunch

1:00 – 2:30

Track 1

• Change Proposal Question and Answer
  • Interested parties will participate in a question and answer session where the audience can ask questions of the sub-group presenting the change request.

Track 2

• Marketing Forum

2:30 – 2:45

All

• Break

2:45 – 4:00

All

• RETS Perspectives, Part 2. A session to provide attendees with different perspectives on current industry trends and needs. Dan Mills of Marketlinx will talk about RETS from a RETS service provider point of view. Andy Woolley will talk about RETS from a RETS service consumer point of view. Gregg Larson will discuss some trends in the industry. Paula O’Brien will provide a demonstration of a Schematron proof-of-concept business rules exchange. Audience participation will be encouraged.

4:00 - 4:45

All

• SOA will present their technical review of RETS 1.x
• A working paper from Chris McKeever of CRT will be discussed. The topic is providing alternates for migration and identifying working groups for RETS1/RETS2.

4:45 - 5:45

All

• RETS working groups report
• Change proposal voting
• Schema voting - Property
• Summaries and Day 2 Wrap-up
• Next meeting announcement and selection of December 2008 location.
• Interesting Applications Presentation

5:45

Adjourn

6:30

Board of Governors Dinner (Closed) - Location TBD

Day 3, Friday, December 7^th

8:00 – 8:30 Breakfast

8:30 – 8:45

All

• Opening Remarks and Agenda Review

8:45 – 10:15

Track 1

• Update Workgroup
  • Continuation of the discussions, including validation and rules.

Track 2

• RETS.ORG website
  • 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.

10:15 – 10:30

All

• Break

10:30 – 12:00

Track 1

• RETS 1 Technical Review Workgroup
  • Continuation of the review.

Track 2

• Security Workgroup
  • Continuation of the work on security.

12:00 – 12:15

All

• Trimester meeting wrap up and meeting adjourned.