In  1995  we submitted our Training and Publishing Plan to the National Assn. of REALTORS, which included our plans for our online communities as well as the plan for a Real Estate Portal for REALTORS. Now, in 2007, InternetCrusade is ready to launch the community software and real estate portal we have been developing in our minds for the last 12 years, and developing with our software engineers for the last 3 years.

Our new community tools are an essential part of our launch of RealTown, our real estate portal. Creating a real estate portal with concentration on Content, Context, Community, and Culture is our continuing Vision. We never lost sight of it since the submission of our Training and Publishing Plan to NAR 11 years ago on Christmas Eve. Some of you might have noticed over the years the reference to RealTown on our marketing and informational pieces, including the InternetCrusade logo itself which states, "RealTown's InternetCrusade."

When we began our journey many years ago, there were too few real estate professionals on the web to take advantage of what we were offering and proposing to offer, so we went on a  "Crusade" to get more people "connected" and online. Some of you may also remember that in the "early years"(1996-1999) we called our technology training programs "Getting Connected." My partner Mike Barnett and I traveled across the country (and Canada) addressing anyone who would listen. John Reilly was living in Honolulu then and only made it to the "Mainland" once a month to meet and plan with us. In those early years, Mike and I traveled together and shared the platform as we traveled from city to city, but I digress.

A major initial component of our real estate portal, RealTown, will be RealTalk. For those of you who are comfortable with the current method of receiving and contributing content to RealTalk, via e-mail, you will still be able to do what you have always done, but what you receive, be it individual format or digest format, will be easier and look cleaner. Our new community content tool has all the improvements, features and functionality that our participants have been asking us for years, without taking anything away from what they have been used to using.

We love the fact that so many of you have been loyal to us and our Vision over the years, and we cherish the title you bestowed upon us many years ago, "Tres Amigos." We are however, more than 3 guys running a business out of our garage and would like to acknowledge our capable staff of over 40 people (with a few more on the way), as the three of us could not have accomplished what we have accomplished over the last 12 years without the help of many people.

One thing that has been just the three of us is the approving of RealTalk posts, day or night, weekdays, weekends, and holidays ... everyday without fail ... that is actually John and I with Mike standing by, and that will continue, aided by the new software platform and a few other staff members to help us

The community tool you are using represents the most current manifestation of our Vision and what we believe can and should be done with the content created by an online community. Some have asked why we didn't just elect to use any number of applications available in the  marketplace. We are aware of and have tried many of the "off the shelf" technologies available for online communities and we are also aware of what we need to be able to do to manage and reposition the content as necessary, keeping in mind the time and resources as we advance our vision.

Personally, I have been participating in numerous online communities extensively since 1990 (remember sysops) and a crude form of community (newsgroups) since the days of the Star Trek Computer game (which I first started to play on the Dartmouth Princeton Time Share Computer System around 1970). Back then we used Terminals (hooked to the central computer "time share" system), and the terminals did not have a monitor. The game was played with results and tabulations being printed out of your running battle with the Klingons on rolls of yellow teletype paper. The Star Trek newsgroup was once mentioned as the first Internet Online User Group and I am proud to say that I was a big fan and player of that game as a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy in the early 1970s.

John, Mike and I are confident that we have expertise in the area of online community  development that has come to us by virtue of the fact that we have observed, participated in, and managed many communities over a 12-year period, and that we have as much hands-on experience in this area as any one we know. Our belief is that knowing what to do and what it takes to build software for an online community is kind of like remodeling a house. If one remodels their house the day they move in, they will not end up with what they want in a home. If one lives in a house for 12 years and then remodels, the remodel will be more extensive and the owners will end up with more of what they really want. Now, we will never have everything we want so our  programmers have job security :-)

Make no mistake, continued community development is a major part of our vision.

I have been talking about our Vision ... If you are unclear about just what that Vision is, take a look at the book NetGain by Hagel and Armstrong as it charts the path we have been on since 1994 and the path that we charted for NAR in that document we submitted called "Training and Publishing Plan" on December 24, 1995 (yes, we worked on holidays even then :-) .

John, Mike, and I also remain convinced that e-mail (push) still provides more participation and thus more content. That is why our new platform allows for both e-mail and a web based "bulletin board." There are a few more decisions to make on our roll out and at what levels people will begin to participate, but we will roll it out to RealTalk, AETalk, MLS Information, MLSTalk, PresidentsTalk, MLSTalk, EducationDirectorsTalk and the rest of our specialized online communities over the next 60 days. The new Community Tool has been in use by the e-PRO Module Lists for about 6 months now.

We will also make it available to anyone or any entity or group who wants to have their own online community ... real estate professionals, associations of REALTORS and MLSs who want to develop online communities and get involved and participate in what many are referring to as Web 2.0.

We will have many communities and members will be able to create their own communities. Blogs are just a part of the "social software suite" we will be using to create community content and make it available on the Internet, and syndicated.

A lot of people don't know this, but InternetCrusade is a DBA ... our corporate name really is Real Estate Electronic Publishing Company , a Hawaii corporation. We have had a vision of the publishing capability, unchanged, since 1994 ... community created content and its timely and convenient distribution. A fairly big name in the world of real estate publishing used to ask us ... "what is it that you guys do?"

Let there be no secrets about this, it is all in our corporate name.

Saul Klein
President/CEO InternetCrusade