Michael Berger is a former Mac Genius who was so beloved by his clients and coworkers that they coined his style of support as “Bergercare.” As word spread throughout the web community about “Bergercare,” 37signals, dubbed one of the “rising stars of the Net” by Time Magazine, decided that they wanted Michael to lend his expertise. Now, Michael has joined the 37signals team, whose mission is to develop simple yet elegant web-based software for clients. In his role on the support team, he is responsible for delivering fast, friendly, and concise support for their international clientele.

Helping people and utilizing his knack for computers and emerging technologies has always been Michael’s forté. Over the last 5 years he’s worked for an ever expanding network of friends, family and small businesses in Chicago, where he was born and raised. In his spare time, Mike enjoys an always revolving lineup of live music, riding his Le Mond and grabbing a meal at one of Chicago’s many dining gems.

Eric Bryn came to Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LeadingRE) over five years ago after contributing to the success of two Chicago area start-up companies and a leading professional services publisher. He evangelizes and spearheads online initiatives for LeadingRE, including social media and Web 2.0 strategy, Propopoly®—a hosted blogging service where LeadingRE real estate professionals can blog via email and voicemail—and client relationship marketing and data analytics. Eric also manages all Intellectual Property related matters for the firm.

His passion is empowering entrepreneurs through strategic and tactical advice on how to leverage the social web for personal and professional growth and increased brand equity. Since he joined LeadingRE, he’s advised, trained, or coached real estate executives and agents regarding Internet marketing, blogging, social media, data analytics, and website strategies. You can follow his musings on Real Estate Relativity and LeadingRE’s corporate blog The Real Estate Beat.

Bob Stewart is Community Evangelist for ActiveRain, the largest Real Estate Social Networking site in the Country. Prior to ActiveRain, Bob ran a successful real estate brokerage, Brio Realty, that covered four states. Bob has an in depth understanding of using the emerging social networking medium to help real estate professionals market their business. Whether your goal is to use these networks to connect with your peers or to reach out to consumers, Bob is at the helm of a dedicated group of real estate professionals who are getting business done based on their ability to adopt and implement social networks and blogging into their daily business activities.
 

Christian Sterner is co-founder and CEO of WellcomeMat.com, the platform to create, publish and distribute videos celebrating all things local. A native of Northern NJ, Christian grew up within a large family of local business owners and began his own entrepreneurial escapades with a landscaping service at age 11. Christian’s obsession with media and technology began while attending the University of Colorado at Boulder. He began his career producing multi-media events alongside some of the brightest technology/marketing minds of Sony Electronics during the simultaneous collapse of the 1.0 web movement and rise of the “pro-sumer” media revolution.

Having had enough of the honking horns of NYC, Christian returned to Boulder, Colorado and joined Webroot Sofware, a leading internet security firm that outpaced Google in revenue growth for nearly two years. Christian lead Webroot’s Enterprise sales team, and was a founding member of their resale program, an initiative that grew to represent 30% of all enterprise
sales.

WellcomeMat is the video platform to create, publish and distribute hyper-local video content. With filmmakers in most US cities and a focus on “infotainment,” WellcomeMat represents an entirely new, powerful form of local advertising for business owners and professionals and the best way to connect viewers with your favorite people, hot spots, real estate, events and businesses. The site has over 11,000 real estate members, and is the video backbone for leading real estate firms such as ForSaleByOwner.com, Prudential Douglas Elliman and Halstead Properties.

Having worked in the real estate agent coaching role for over 4 years and prior to that, coaching the top 1% of financial planners in the United States, he brings a unique blend of skills and outside perspective to the agents he works with… HIS clients. He realizes that until he understands the You Factor of his clients, he is unable to properly assist in the construction of a successful marketing plan. That is why he asks, and more importantly listen to the answers of, specific questions on you, your business, and where you want to take it.

“My role at @properties is more than that of a trainer or a coach. It is a role that allows me to understand the agent, work with them to leverage their personal strengths, differentiate themselves in a competitive market, and work together to implement an effective and cost effective plan for continued success.”

– Matt Dollinger

His 2005 project chicagocrime.org, one of the original Google Maps “mashups,” was developed by reverse-engineering Google’s map technology. The site won the Grand Prize in the 2005 Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, but, more importantly, it played a small part in influencing Google to open its mapping infrastructure for all to use.

Adrian co-created Django, an open-source development framework that makes it fast and easy for programmers to build database-driven Web sites. It is used by tens of thousands of people around the world. Adrian cowrote the Django Book, published in late 2007.

He graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 2001. For fun, he plays gypsy-jazz guitar and posts YouTube videos.

For the last ten years Brock has served as chief Washington correspondent for MSNBC.com covering beats ranging from technology to civil liberties to legislative attempts aimed at taming the Internet. After 9/11 Brock created and developed the homeland security beat for MSNBC.com. His work on national security won him an award in 2005. Many of his stories exposed gaps in homeland security, prompting the government to take corrective action in the wake of his findings. Brock appeared regularly on TV as a correspondent for MSNBC cable and NBC Nightly News. He also served on a special projects team that won several awards, including a ground breaking multi-media project called “Rising from the Ruin.” This project chronicled the recovery of two small Gulf Coast communities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To report this story team members rotated into and out of the the devastated area for a week at a time, for an entire year.

Before joining MSNBC, Brock was the Washington correspondent for Wired magazine and its online counterpart, HotWired. Brock wrote features for the magazine and produced two columns for HotWired, Muckraker and Campaign Dispatch. The latter column was exclusively dedicated to his coverage of the 1996 Presidential campaign.

1:00am
Opening Remarks

1:15pm
The Rules for a Changing Game
Matt Dollinger – @ Properties

1:45pm
Conquering Real Estate via Mobile Apps
Michael Berger – 37 Signals

2:15pm
Video Takes Residence Online
Christian Sterner – Wellcomemat

(break)

3:00pm
Privacy + Social Media
Glenn Manishin – Duane Morris, LLP
Brock Meeks – Center for Democracy & Technology

3:45pm
Finding your Inner Blogitude
Eric Bryn – Leading Real Estate Companies of the World

(break)

4:15pm
Bob Stewart – Active Rain

4:45pm
Adrian Holovaty – EveryBlock.com

5:15pm
Closing Remarks

5:30pm
After Party