It was the talk of Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2009. For some, the words “Developers, Developers, Developers” seems like a broken record. For others, it brings back memories of a viral video of Steve Ballmer. For most at Connect, it meant the 48 hour developer challenge. What will two teams made up of a handful of young, creative, and sleep deprived developers come up with in such a short time?
It was an interesting idea and a great challenge – develop an innovative and robust application of any sort is not an easy task, and to do it in just 48 hours seemed next to impossible. Admittedly, I set my expectations low. As someone from this field I have spent countless nights burning the candle at both ends and did not envy their position.
Alas the day arrives and the developer challenge is unveiled and two teams reveal their progress. The first group went the route of creating a customizable IDX solution embodying SoCal MLS data, Onboard Informatics neighborhood amenities data, and Zillow API data. All done within a 48-hour developer challenge? Early into the panelist discussions the team admits they spent many hours planning and working on frameworks prior to the event in “preparation” for the developer challenge and the actual code written during the challenge was for the visual side or “front end” of the webpage.
The second team put together an analytics engine utilizing the SoCal MLS data. Useful and insightful analysis and statistics such as the number of listings per year of an agent, or the average number of closings per year (buy side and list side ratios), average DOM, TFT to sold ratios, etc. were brought together. This team also admitted during the panel discussion they had spent many hours planning and preparing frameworks in preparation for the challenge.
All in all, I thought the developer challenge was a new and great idea for Connect. However, I can’t help but be left with a sour taste in my mouth with the way it was presented to the audience that these types of projects can be accomplished within 48 hours, as the technical level of the audience made it hard for the majority to understand that these types of technological creations are the result of weeks of work. It’s great to see Inman presenting technology solutions to the industry in a fun and compelling way – hopefully next year we’ll hear a bit more about the work that goes on behind the scenes to make these things possible.
Tei Baishiki
Chief Technology Officer
tei.baishiki@rwnc.net
