MattL.com

I recently attended the Connect conference hosted by Inman News in San Francisco.  It's a once-a-year event for the Real Estate technologists to get together and talk about the geeky stuff that the rest of the Real Estate community doesn't understand.  Notably present were the major web-based mapping providers -- Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, and, of course, Microsoft (en force).

My two missions for the trip were:

1. Scope the announcements from the Big competitors, and
2. Build a strategy for adding mapping to our application in the next year

Mind you, I went through the same exercise last year, but the cost:benefit ratio didn't create a compelling argument for adding any sort of data-integrated maps into our service.  Now, however, the Big guys are offering integrated mapping, and the providers (especially Google) are offering a much richer object model than they did previously.

I most wanted to hear from Microsoft: I'm a Microsoft platform coder, I'm six-ways certified, and I actually enjoy writing against the .NET Framework.  I wanted the Microsoft guys to tell me there was a reason not to use Google.

I emailed Chandu Thota the night before the conference to check on his availability and whether he was up for a chat.  He was, and we did, along with Virtual Earth Program Manager Steve Lombardi.  I explained to them how the Real Estate information ecosystem works, and offered what we, the Real Estate vertical, need from a mapping solution.

There was one point that Chandu kept hammering on -- JSON:
"It's lightweight!"
"It's object-oriented!"
"It's cross-browser!"

It also breaks this Holy Commandment of Programming that has been pushed by every major platform vendor for the past five years (especially MS):

THOU SHALT NOT MIX INTERFACE DESIGN WITH CODE.

I learned XSL for a reason: It's the Right Thing to Do™.

So why, praytell, would I make this two-step-back advance to JSON?  Bandwidth?  C'mon, if you're sending 500K in data during a single action, then you have an application design problem.

I went on to prove this point by mocking up Google vs. Virtual Earth maps, with a single dataset through various methods of access (static JavaScript, JSON, XML/XSL, and JSON-to-XML/XSL), and y'know what?  The difference in over-the-wire data transfer and presentation methods was far less significant than the platform's rendering method.

Give back my Model-View-Controller holy trinity and stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

I have since coded up a JSON-based AutoSuggest for our service, and I remain utterly unconvinced:  oDiv.appendChild() should not be a design technique.

Closing on 2007 means closing a major turning point in my life.  In one short year, I've had another son, built a house, left one great job for another, gotten remarried, made new friendships, lost old ones, deepened my involvement with RETS, and set about building the best MLS in the country.  It truly has been a pivotal time in my personal history.

RETS, RETS, RETS

A good portion of my brainpower this past year has been focused on improving RETS, the Real Estate Transaction Standard(s).  It's simply fantastic to be involved in such a high-profile standard with so many great Real Estate technology professionals.  My thanks particularly go to the rest of the "core" Schema team: Paul Stusiak, Gina Accawi, Peter Spicer, Michael Wurzer, Gregg Petch, Eric Petersen, Sergio Del Rio, Chris McKeever, Joshua Vosper, and Jaison Freed.

It's also easy to overlook the wizard behind the curtain, but a great debt is due to Mark Lesswing.  In a single year, he's transformed a motley crew of interested participants into a gen-u-ine organization.  Beyond this, his grasp of the technology proposition to Real Estate is virtually unparalleled.  Regardless of his other accomplishments, it's hard not to consider him one of the great RE technology luminaries of this decade.

On a related note, Michael Wurzer (RESO Chairman and President & CEO of FBS) posted an open letter to the mass listing aggregators of the world.  Proving the value of the Web 2.0 world, enough responded that some sort of open discussion will take place at Inman's Connect NYC.  Mike's certainly shaping up to be a luminary himself.

<technical>
My consequential involvement with RETS is the Query language, dubbed RQLX (although it's a bit of a grandfathered name that lacks significant meaning).  Through numerous posts between myself and Sergio Del Rio on the RETS-DEV mailing list, I countered the necessity of a number of staid data archetypes (dictionaries and vocabulary) in RETS 2 that existed largely to resolve the problem of unique particle attribution in RETS 1.x.  The reality is that the RETS 2 Schema have evolved into a fairly monolithic namespace, which makes UPA a distinct reality without needing alternate representations of the data set.  My only wish is that I could learn ANTLR well enough to (quickly) write a functioning, provable grammar... but I'm getting there.
</technical>

How to Build a Great MLS in 10 Easy Steps

As if.  As much as my background may have prepared me for this effort, building the new, ground-up version a large-scale MLS is no small feat.  Amidst the travails of the past two months, moving 1200 miles and traveling nearly 20000 more for various professional and family events, I've also had to re-align and rebuild a development team for MLSPIN's next great release in 2008.  I have two open development positions if anyone's interested (or if you know someone) with ASP.NET and heavy MSSQL skills.

Thanks to Microsoft's [un]timely releases of VS.NET 2008 and, more significantly, LINQ, I also have about two weeks to decide whether we write against the (proven) ASP.NET 2.0 platform or the far more streamlined ASP.NET 3.5 platform.  Any insight or feedback is also welcome.

On the corporate side, I can't understate enough how valuable it is to have faith from your leadership: with Kathy Condon (my CEO) and Tony Mastroianni (my CTO) providing such solid backing, I'm confident we're going to release a monumental MLS system and make significant strides in raising the MLS bar.  To that end, I also owe a bit of thanks to Michael Wurzer (FlexMLS) and Colby Ackerfield (RealGo), both of whose candor and guidance is deeply appreciated.

Family Notes

Lucas is nearing his first birthday, growing into a character of his own by the day:  He's such a great baby.  Ben just started Montessori school and continues to amaze us with his intelligence and compassion.  Kerry is continuing to acclimate to the geography (New England's a far cry from the Southwest) and a new station in life as a stay-at-home mom.  I probably don't tell her enough, but she's held up wonderfully.  I couldn't ask for better kids or family, period.  Almost all of our Illinois houses are sold and that will be a great relief as we look to buy a house next Spring.  It's all coming together, finally!