Thursday night before the massive snow storm hit throughout Michigan, Karen Moorhead (@A2Karen) and I attended a Bar Camp in downtown Ann Arbor sponsored by A2Geeks.

I heard about the group on the FaceBook group A2Geeks. I heard about the venue change on Twitter because I follow @arbcamp.

The venue was at Cottage Inn Pizza in downtown Ann Arbor, which is a landmark restaurant and always wins the award for the "best pizza in Ann Arbor' voted on by the public.

When it was first posted, I had to get on a waiting list as over 100 Geeks signed up very quickly.

Ann Arbor Spark helped out with the change of venue so it was held at Cottage Inn. Ann Arbor Spark is responsible for bringing many new business to Ann Arbor and we are fortunate to have Michael Finney as CEO helping to spread the word about Ann Arbor Innovation.

Ok, sooooooooooooooooo after getting use to being the oldest one at the event and seeing 20 year olds with CEO's on their shirts we had a great time. Social networking is all about not just interacting on your computer but getting out there and meeting those folks.

Having attended the REBar Camp in San Francisco I was use to how they are run as many of you are. One thing they did differently was ask on the spot for people to volunteer to head up the different discussions.

There were no planned speakers.

One rule they had was if you get in a group and don't want to talk or feel you made a bad choice then let your feet walk....that means get up and walk to another group to keep the energy flowing.

One of the Geeks I met there was Ben Congleton who owns Hab.la. Hab.la is chat software that you can add to your blogs or web-sites. It is really cool because it allows your visitors to chat based on any chat application they use like meebo, pluggo, gtalk, aim, without having to change their platform to talk.

It is a really cool app that I already added to my blog Ann Arbor Real Estate Talk.

It is really easy to set up and they have a great tutorial to follow if you want to check it out. One more way to engage your readers.

The most important thing I have learned from Jeff Turner is YEO. You Engaging Others. (read Jeff's post)

Get out meet people.

Get out of your comfort zone.

Stop talking to people "just" in the Real Estate Industry.

Yea, I was uncomfortable being around 20 to 30 something year olds with PhD's who program in Php, write code for the music industry with widgets to promote their music, starting new companies like YouRateIt.com, starting companies like MotorCityConnect but.............

I did it

I grew

You can too

I met new friends to Twitter with and new friends for FaceBook

...and maybe someday I will sell them a home.

Maybe

Maybe not

That wasn't the point.

Yesterday, I ate lunch at Google in Ann Arbor.

Here is how it happened: At NAR in Orlando, Cyndee Haydon and I were walking around the Expo and Google had a large booth there.

So I go strolling up and met a guy named Payton Dobbs...I asked him to share with me the latest and greatest about Google.

Payton asked me if I was using Google Docs and I said yes we use it for each transaction. My assistant opens a new Google Doc for each file that is under contract. Then the buyer agent and Colleen can access it and add notes and conversations with our clients.

We also use Google Calendar and each of the Buyer Agents has one.

Colleen can overlay each Google Calendar and see what we are all doing that day. Google Calendar can be set up to send us appointments for the day.

So that was it and we moved on to look at other vendors at NAR.

Then I got an email

Hi Missy,

It was a pleasure meeting you at NAR and many thanks for stopping by our booth at Google.  As you happen to live in Ann Arbor I thought it'd be a great idea to introduce you to one of our team members from that office.  Steve Holden (CC'd) is a relationship manager who works with many of our top advertisers within real estate.  

I figured since you're already an expert using many of our products it might be nice to get more of your feedback on the products (as they relate to real estate) and help us better understand how to position them to our advertisers or others in the industry.  I'll let Steve follow up with more information and perhaps an informal chat or even lunch in the office.

 Regards,

 Payton

Payton Dobbs

Manager, Online Sales & Operations

Real Estate, Moving & Storage

Pretty kool, huh?

About 5 minutes later  I received an email from Steve Holden in Ann Arbor-Google to have lunch. I

t was a lot of fun, and I have a few photos but can't post them here because it is part of the terms when you go to Google and sign in at the Reception Center.

Here are my thoughts and feelings on the experience. The food was great and there is a coffee bar with snacks on each floor where people can go and relax and grab coffee or something to eat. We ate in Googles own cafeteria and were able to look out on the skyline of Ann Arbor.

Everything is bright and open, with a Mothers Room, Massage Room and conference rooms both big and small everywhere.

Each room is named after a different city in Michigan. There is a game room with a pool table, snack bar, pop machines and air hockey.What a fantastic work enviroment. There is even a small section where you can drop your computer off if you are having problems and some geeks will fix it.

Did I mentioned this is all FREE?

Steve and I then went into a small conference room and plugged in and he looked at how I use my IGoogle home page, the Ad word campaign I use, etc.  I will post soon on a new feature he pointed out to me, which I have not played with yet and want to make sure I got it down before linking to it.

One thing Steve pointed out to me about Google Alerts, which has been encouraged here on Activerain my many of us that I am changing right now. You can have your Google Alerts go into your RSS feeds.

Since I follow a number of Search Terms that I want Alerts on it can really fill up my email box quickly, so I will be changing to RSS.

Here is my question?

How are you using all the FREE Google Applications to run your business?

I told Steve, Activerain Bloggers were head and shoulders above your average Realtors so....

in your comments let's let Google know which applications you are using in your business.

Proof I was there, sorry for no photos.