Something new we’ve been wanting to try is highlighting staff or agents around the Enterprise Network that are making a difference in their organization and the Network itself. We asked each of our Members to nominate people they think deserve recognition as things happen in their organization. We talk to these nominees and find out how and why they are making an impact and try to uncover some of the things they are doing that others in the Network could learn from.

Congratulations to Tom Flanagan of Residential Properties for being the first person nominated! For anyone that knows Tom, you know he plays an important role at his brokerage and has lots of ideas and good information to share. Below is the interview we had with Tom – hopefully we can all learn something from him!

Name: Tom Flanagan
Title: Director of Information Technology
Company: Residential Properties Ltd.

Q: What are your duties on a day to day basis?
A: My duties include overseeing the entire website and web marketing. I also oversee the entire telecom infrastructure which involves anything from Servers, Mail Server to Voice and Data but really my expertise is in new media.

Q: What is your favorite thing about your job? Is there one thing that you really like more?
A: Developing projects. For example, I just developed and built the company’s intranet from scratch using an open source application which we are launching this week. That’s my favorite thing – being able to develop web based applications.

Q: What got you into the technology field?
A: Actually, I went to school for multi-media, so that’s what my degree is in. I was really into design and animation and that was obviously long before web 2.0, social networking and social media.

Q: Do you think that Information Technology is different when it comes to real estate than it is in other industries?
A: It is, yes. Real estate certainly has its individual needs. The entire industry is much different than any other industry. Right from the ground up you are dealing with independent contractors who don’t work a normal 9-5 job in front of a desk so that really changes the technology. A real life example of that would be that they need web based mail. They need not only web based mail, they need Pop3 and IMAP. They need Pop3 when in the office and they need IMAP on their mobile device. They also need access to files 24/7. Since a lot of the agents, especially the Ninjas and top producing agents, may need a PDF at 1:45 in the morning, you have to develop a portal or a wiki or an intranet to accommodate that. Those are just a couple of real life examples.

Q: What do you think is the biggest impact that you make on Residential Properties?
A: I would say just being there 24/7. Being able to accommodate everybody’s needs no matter how big or small 24/7 and I’m not exaggerating!

Q: You have an ability to talk to someone extremely technical all the way down to someone that is just starting out. Have you always been able to do that? Or is that something that you have learned along the way?
A: You know, I have learned that along the way and it certainly requires a lot of patience. I actually learn from doing that. For example a lot of the time and effort I spend now is focused in the user experience. I really wanted to bridge the gap between the engineer and the consumer because an engineer can build a great application like Google Maps or an API, but if a person is not utilizing the map to look for a home, then that person is not going to even bring up the browser. The engineer is not the one searching for homes, it’s the people that browse the internet one hour a day, when they are home after dinner. That’s who you’re really building the website for, the consumer, not the geek with the PHP degree.

When I go down and I am teaching somebody or I am working with somebody who doesn’t even know what a mail tool link is and doesn’t know the difference between outlook or outlook express, I actually learn a lot from them these days because I learn how they are using websites, how they are using software and how they are using applications. That’s the demographic that you are building these web applications for. So when I teach, I actually learn myself because I learn their behaviors on the internet, which has been helpful.

Q: How are you taking what you’re learning from them and getting it into your organization? How are you pushing that message on to Residential saying ‘this is how we need to do it and this is how we need to train those agents’? Or are you the one primarily doing the training?
A: Well, I do a lot of the training. We do have the corporate trainer Rich Epstein who is also in charge of the e-leads. First and foremost I try to build a foundation of embracing technology – don’t be afraid of it. I’ve tried to make technology fun. So for example when I’m trying to get agents into blogging and showing them why blogging is important we did something called Blogapoluza which was just a play on Lalapoluza. We had a whole two day festival up in the conference room where we got everyone set up on word press or blogger.com. We actually set up a template and created the blog on a sub domain name and had them embrace it. They had to write a blog post and then had each other comment on it. Just putting a fun spin on it and having people embrace it instead of hating it or being afraid of it has worked really well for us. That especially works well with the veteran agents.

Q: How are you going to try to keep the momentum of that going? How are you doing it on a weekly, monthly, even yearly basis?
A: I am trying to politely nudge people into technology. One way I am doing that is filming the meetings. One time it was a popular topic, it was short sales and so I filmed the entire thing. Then I broke it into five or six parts, ranging from 5-10 minutes. I am just using Vimeo, which is a little better than you-tube, to stream the video and I am going to send out an email that says, “Here is a sneak peak at the intranet. By the way the entire company meeting was filmed, and you can watch the video. Here is how to do it.” In order to learn from it they have to log into the intranet, they have to navigate toward the link and then they have to go and watch the video as opposed to just embedding the video in an email or something and sending it to them. So I am kind of leading them into, whether they know it or not, using web applications.

That’s one instance but as far as continuing education or continuing to keep the ball rolling; we’ve done webinars and GoTo Meetings. I am actually heading out to the weekly sales meeting and speaking on different topics, this week will actually be the intranet. We’re doing ‘learn at lunch’s’ where I do keynote presentations and in fact, I just did one on Social Media. We do that on a regular basis. Then I also have help with the corporate trainer Rich. He does great screen casts in the offices and he actually does one-on-ones where he does fundamental computing such as setting up outlook, setting up group lists, using Microsoft word, using a browser, etc.

Q: Are there any outside organizations, people, residential property brokers that have influenced the way you do things on a day to day basis?
A: It’s funny that you mention that. I belong to the Providence Geeks which is a group that meets once a month. It’s at a really cool, non-profit hot house that actually has nationwide networking. We meet once a month, they have a speaker and the speakers range anything from animation companies to programming companies to social media. It’s a great resource, a great community to reach out to because the people are educated, experienced and have a lot of knowledge in technology. If you ever have an issue, need a vendor, a piece of equipment or need some consulting, they are definitely the group to reach out to.

And as I’ve said many times, my other group that I reach out to, as you know, is the Enterprise Network. The Network is one of my favorite things about Active Website because the ability to reach out to somebody in the same industry, facing the same problems, is just a fruit of knowledge. Lance Smith of Kentwood gave me some great information on mail servers because we have a lot of issues with our in house mail servers. Ori and Scott at Helen Adams are great resources too. Just being able to reach out and bounce ideas and get real data from these people is great. For example, how much a piece of hardware or software is going to cost and what their financial investment is – that information to me is priceless.

Q: Where do you see technology in the real estate industry heading?
A: I think that technology is going to move away from the operating system. I think that everybody will be working in the browser and it’s going to be even more relevant than it is right now. For example I think we’ve seen a lot of how Vista really had a lot of backlash and it hasn’t worked. I think you’ll see all software, like Adobe, just put all their software on the Internet so you don’t get these DVDs and CDs that you have to download from anymore. Cloud computing will be extremely popular and the browser will be even more popular than it is right now.

I also think with the state of the economy and the unemployment rate, you’re not going to see a huge leap from 2.0 to 3.0 because the investment money is just not there. But I think you’ll see a lot of these 2.0 companies and mash ups just get better at what they’re doing. It’ll be 2.5 – you’ll see better, more tightly run mash ups. Video is also going to be very popular along with the lifestyle search. People want to search and look for properties that fit their lifestyle and they want to be able to watch videos, not just pictures.