Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org meets with Ubertor founders

My business partner and I took a quick day trip down to San Francisco for a few meetings today. We left from Vancouver early this morning and returned on the evening flight out of San Francisco. We had a few meetings scheduled throughout the day and had the opportunity to meet with a couple of real estate moguls.

I had the opportunity to have lunch with Pat Kitano of www.TransparentRE.com. He and I met up at Zuni Cafe in downtown San Francisco. Zuni is a hot San Francisco cafe overlooking Market Street. It was great to finally put a face to the guy on the other end of www.transparentre.com. Pat and I have emailed back and forth for a while now and I have enjoyed reading his blog. Pat runs free blogging seminars on “why blogging is the next generation real estate marketing tool for the Realtor’s online presence. With very pragmatic steps Realtors can create a successful, marketing-oriented, lead generating blog.” Anyone interested in reading a great real estate blog take a look at www.TransparentRE.com. (pictured on the right: myself, Pat Kitano)

Later that afternoon Mike and I had the opportunity of touring the Craigslist.org offices with a tour from Craig Newmark himself. Craig and I have emailed back and forth for a while but have never had the opportunity to meet in person. Craig was great to make some time for us in his busy schedule to show us around the Craigslist operation, meet some of his team and learn more about the inner workings on Craigslist. I did ask about their policy of adding more cities as I constantly get asked from Realtors about why Whistler is not included. I mentioned it to him and he said that it is up to Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist.org, and when he wants to add more cities. He did suggest that the cities that get more attention are the ones that are discussed in the Craigslist.org forums. (pictured on the left: myself, Craig Newmark and Mike Stephenson)

It was interesting to see the Craigslist.org operation. They run out of a house that has been converted into offices in downtown San Francisco. The house for the most part looks like a house. The programmers are downstairs, the customer service team in the kitchen, Craig and Jim Buckmaster are in what could have been a bedroom and there were a few other staff members in rooms at the front of the home. (pictured on the right: Craigslist.org Offices)

All in all an excellent day.