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April 2008 Philadelphia Conference
Minutes
RETS Conference Agenda
April 9th - 11th, 2008
Philadelphia, PA
General Information
Breakfast
Breakfast will be provided on Thursday and Friday.
Lunch
Lunch will be provided all three days 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 negotiated 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 Welcome Reception On Wednesday night for the attendees to the RETS Conference. 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.
Day 1, Wednesday, April 9th
10:00 – 10:15 - All
· Opening Remarks and Agenda Review
10:15 – 12:00
Business and Technical Track
· 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.
Technical Track
· RETS Standards Workgroup (Closed). The Chairs of each workgroup will meet to discuss versioning of RETS.
12:00 – 1:00 - Lunch
1:00 – 2:30
Business Track
· Implementation Forum. An open discussion where MLS operators, Associations, Brokers and Vendors talk about business processes, procedures, and practices in implementing and supporting RETS.
Technical Track
· Compliance Testing and Plug-fest. See description above.
2:30 – 2:45 - Break
2:45 – 4:15
Business Track
· RETS Solutions. A session to provide attendees with presentations and information on interesting and current RETS solutions in production now. Invited Speakers TBD.
Technical Track
· Compliance Testing and Plug-fest. See description above.
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 - Welcome Reception
An open reception will be hosted by NAR for all attendees of the RETS Conference.
Day 2, Thursday, April 10th
8:00 – 8:30 - Breakfast
8:30 – 8:45 - All
· Opening Remarks, Agenda Review and Board of Directors' Report
8:45 – 10:15 - All
· RETS Perspectives. A session to provide attendees with different perspectives on current industry trends and needs. Audience participation will be encouraged.
10:15 – 10:30 - Break
10:30 – 12:00
Technical Track
· Syndication Workgroup. The Syndication workgroup will meet.
Business Track
· Certification Workgroup. Attendees will participate in defining the RETS Certification process and receive an update from the Workgroup regarding the progress the group has made in supporting the June 2009 NAR MLS Policy change.
12:00 – 1:00 - Lunch
1:00 – 2:30
Technical Track
· 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.
Business and Technical Track
· Compliance Workgroup. The group will discuss the methods to ensure that systems are certified including ddditional steps to improve compliance
2:30 – 2:45 - Break
2:45 – 4:00
Technical Track
· Transport Workgroup. The Transport Workgroup will meet.
Business Track
· Marketing Forum. An open forum to discuss ideas to promote RETS in the industry.
4:00 - 5:30 - All
· RETS working groups report
· Change proposal voting
· Acceptance voting - Media Schema
· Acceptance voting - RETS 1.8 document
· Summaries and Day 2 Wrap-up
· Next meeting announcement and December 2009 location.
· Interesting Applications Presentation
5:30 - Adjourn
Day 3, Friday, April 11th
8:00 – 8:30 - Breakfast
8:30 – 8:45 - All
· Opening Remarks and Agenda Review
8:45 – 10:15
Technical Track
· Update Workgroup - Continuation of the discussions, including validation and rules.
Technical Track
· 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 - Break
10:30 – 12:00
Technical Track
· Schema Workgroup
o 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.
o The updated extension mechanism, to provide region-specific data extensions to the data standard will be demonstrated and discussed.
Technical Track · Security Workgroup - Continuation of the work on security. · Trimester meeting wrap up and meeting adjourned. · Box lunch
12:00 – 12:15 - All