Present:
Seth Agranov *
Kevin Greene *
Brian Bell *
Doug Fremming
Kelly Blevins
David Harris *
Kristen Carr *
Troy Davidson
Absent:
Richard Renton
Sheri Hixson
Mark Wise
Jim Yockel
Bob Bemis
Adrese Roundtree
Steve Wede
Mary Frances Adams
Kevin McQueen
Francisco Aguilar
attending the April Meeting
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Agenda:
1. Purpose of WG diff with marketing
2. Long term goals
Kristen gave a background on how Education evolved out of Marketing to address the needs from an operational standpoint to manage the "business" side of RETS to include:
- contracts
- policy / procedures
- licensing models
- administration and compliance management
We want to keep the meeting "take away" document going so that first time business side attendees to RETS meetings have something to take back to their organizations
Also, a goal we have to put together "RETS in a box" which is a tool kit of document templates that cover agreements, policies, procedures, training materials, etc.
Need to address the need for business side support when RETS administrators have operational questions
Kelly mentioned having a business side specific Knowledge Base.
Seth was concerned about how to handle the broad range of operational issues different MLSs with different business rules with a small set of templates.
Kristen mentioned that RMLS attorney Daurghity(?) has offered her agreements, Ed Newman at Northstar has theirs on their site, etc.
Kristen wants this group to help out the organizations that do not want to commit alot of resources and staff to get RETS up and running.
Kristen will get CRT to set up education@rets.org as the official email address.
The GG was set up for confidential discussion of issues brought up. None of the information mentioned can be used outside of the group.
David suggested having education@rets.org route to the Education GG for all to see. Kristen is concerned about the load of emails. Most of the group wants to leave it going to the whole group.
Designate the official respondent to each issue raised to the EdWG.
We will continue to host weekly meetings until the April meeting
Education will be involved if the NAR policy is to require an MLS to offer RETS to their members, not just have a server that works, but no one can access. BUT we are not a decision making body, just support those seeking certification.
Some discussion was had concerning the scope of the education workgroup between the business and the technical education needs. Since this group was formed under the business side we will be able to generate the business oriented educational materials "in house". But the concensus seemed to feel we needed to ensure that the technical educational requirements are being met by working closely with the technical groups so that they will understand that a communication and explanation process must occur outside of their meeting concerning their progress/revisions/clarifications. Some ideas were to summarize them either as a readme type file or audio/video clip.
Part of Education is to set up a system by which each workgroup reports back why certain changes/decisions were made. David suggested to have each scribe send us their notes so that we can cull out the items that are important to the education effort of the RETS community. Kristen suggested that we should make a form for the scribes to fill out in the window between submitting their minutes to the BOD and the resultant approval. The group felt that the form is the better approach.
Action items:
1. Kristen and David will develop a reporting template for all WGs to Education
2. set up education@rets.org to go to gmail account and then forward to the GG email address.
3. Kristen volunteered to write the take away document for the business sessions for April
4. Kristen will write an email to send to Vendors to send to user groups.
5. Have a volunteer be a liason for each of the other WGs by next call
6. Develop a communication plan to get education@RETS.org out as the official place to communicate your issues about the operational aspect of a RETS service.