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Highlights from the 61st International Auctioneers Conference and Show

Update: the meeting time has been moved to 1 p.m. on Thursday.
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of the MaxaNet content management system and Internet bidding system for auctioneers. We’re excited that our friend Will McLemore is organizing a users group meeting to coincide with NAA Conference and Show in Greensboro this Thursday.
GREENSBORO, NC [...]

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The National Auctioneers Association is working with Michigan State University‘s Broad College of Business and Entrepreneurship Institute to present auctioneers with a survey to get a better understanding of the auction industry.
Unlike most surveys, the answers to these questions will remain anonymous. Here’s the copy from the email invitations, sent to multiple mailing [...]

We’re putting the final wraps on the 2010 KAA Convention at the Wichita Airport Hilton.
Thursday night featured a meet-and-greet honoring past presidents.
Lynn Langvardt was the winner of the Kansas Livestock Bid-call Contest held in El Dorado on Thursday night. Last year’s livestock champion, Charlie Cummings, won the KAA Bid-call Contest this year at the [...]

You’re sold. You’ve read something or heard something that tipped you off to the fact that netcasts and virtual meetings don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You’ve created your Dimdim account and are preparing for your first presentation. What do you need? What should you do?
Login early and install the screencaster plugin
Dimdim [...]

Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser that is popular for its security, third-party add-ons called extensions, and it’s speed relative to the current dominant browser Internet Explorer. Today we embark on a three-part series about making Mozilla Firefox usable.
Our biggest beef with web browsers today is the amount of space used by the browser. [...]

Windows has a very useful tool to monitor the programs and services that are utilizing system resources. In Windows Vista, this tool is the Reliability and Performance Monitor, shown here. In Windows 7, the tool has been upgraded and is called Windows Resource Monitor.
This tool lists four resources types of system resources – processor, hard [...]

Tomorrow marks the release of a new version of Ubuntu Linux, version 9.10 called Karmic Koala. This is your AuctioneerTech guide to what Linux is and why it’s more relevant today than ever before.

Operating system
An operating system exists between the application or program you’re running and the hardware you’re running it on. Microsoft’s Windows and, [...]

Social networking is one of many buzzwords that has recently risen to fad proportions. It seems that any time the subject of marketing arises, the topic quickly turns to importance of social networking.
The power of social networking lies in the creation of personal relationships. We’ve mentioned before that you should use social networking to increase [...]

Last year’s live blog from the Kansas State Fair worked, but we tried to go completely live using coveritlive.com last August for the regional competition. We weren’t impressed, mainly because it required Flash. This year, we’re going to try for both live and simplicity by using our favorite real-time device, FriendFeed. You’ll get the status [...]

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There is a device for your TV called a Slingbox. This device does what is called place-shifting, allowing you to watch your cable TV – that for which you’ve paid and normally watch at your home – on your mobile devices like your iPhone.
There is a device much more popular than the Slingbox [...]

Perhaps one of the most valuable benefits to being a member in the National Auctioneers Association is the networking and community of friends and neighbors in the profession. The ability to bounce ideas off of someone doing the same type of business as you are is invaluable.
Not every auctioneer knows the right auctioneer to ask [...]

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We’ve had our eye on recently-launched website theAuctioneerchannel.com for the last several days. A joint venture between Michigan auctioneers Scott Vander Kolk, Jr., and David Helmer, the site aims to promote the live auction industry through videos and blogs.
We caught up with Scott Vander Kolk and shot him a [...]

Overland Park, Kan.July 16, 2009 – The National Auctioneers Association (NAA), the largest professional organization for auctioneers and auction professionals, has elected a new slate of officers and board of directors to lead the organization for the coming year. The election occurred earlier today during the 60th International Auctioneers Conference and Show at the Overland [...]

July 15, 2009, Overland Park, Kan. – Three young auctioneers were selected to advance to the finals of the National Auctioneer Association’s third annual International Junior Auctioneers Championship (IJAC) competition.  The three finalists will compete for the coveted title at 8 a.m., Friday, July 17 at the Overland Park Convention Center [...]

We’re settled in at the Overland Park Convention Center, ready to officially kick off the festivities tonight. The unofficial kick-off held last night with the Aaron Traffas Band at the Mayo Auction Center went very well. We’re going to drop a little of the formalities over the next few days with perhaps more frequent updates, [...]

There is a disturbing trend in the auction industry. The availability and ease of installation of inexpensive or open source scripts that turn any website into an auction site [read: eBay clone] have convinced some trade publications and newspapers to try to be auctioneers. Newspapers and trade journals who try to be auctioneers by adding [...]

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We recently had reason to search for an alternative to the overpriced [read: not free] web conferencing solutions such as WebEx and GoToMeeting. A quick Google search revealed a relatively new service that claims to be “the world’s easiest web conference” and 10 minutes into our tests, we believe it.
Firmly grounded on an [...]

Tech startup Wakoopa this week released some intriguing findings regarding software trends. They have relatively-real-time data on the usage of apps like Facebook, Outlook and Firefox, for example, throughout the day. They claim to have logged over 525 million hours of software usage from their 75,000 users. How do they get their data? Why is [...]

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It’s no secret that we’re enamored with Twitter. Our AuctioneerTweet site has over 45 auctioneers listed and it seems we’re continuing to add several each week as more and more auctioneers join Twitter.
Twitter is useful. It’s replaced instant messaging and reduced our use of email and Facebook. Even [...]

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As an effort to build and grow the community of auctioneers using Twitter, we launched a new website yesterday called AuctioneerTweet at – where else – www.auctioneertweet.com.
The concept is simple. Any auctioneer with a Twitter account can join and have his or her tweets included in the AuctioneerTweet timeline. A member list on [...]

Hannes Combest, CAE, is the Chief Executive officer of the National Auctioneers Association. Yesterday, she launched a blog over at Blogspot with a series of articles about the Certified Auctioneers Institute, currently underway in Bloomington, Indiana. We’ll be covering CAI next week as the conclusion of our series on NAA designations, but head over to [...]

We have to admit that we’ve been following recent events at eBay with a little bit of schadenfreude. We’ve always held the position that someone who sells on eBay isn’t an auctioneer. eBay is the auctioneer that outsources the work of listing items to its sellers. Over the last few years, we’ve seen eBay shift [...]

Website analytics refers to the concept of tracking, measuring and analyzing the traffic to and away from a website. Google Analytics is the dominant player in this space, thanks to their purchase of market-leader Urchin several years ago. Google actually offers Urchin software for installation on your web server for $3000, but most users’ needs [...]

The NAA released the following press release on Wednesday. As the NAR continues to recognize the value of auctions for more than just distressed property, it’s good to have Bill Sheridan involved so directly.
REALTORS® Appoint Former NAA President to Lead Auction Forum Committee
Overland Park, Kan., February 4, 2009 – Michigan auctioneer and past president of [...]

As we were searching for the links for our coverage of the KAA Winter Convention, we were surprised by the almost-complete lack of designations listed with each auctioneer on his or her respective staff pages. While it’s possible that all of the auctioneers for whom we were searching simply didn’t have any designations, we [...]

2009 Hall of Fame Inductees
Marvin Knopp
John Shoemaker
2009 President
Dave Webb

2009 President Elect
Andy Conser, CAGA, AARE

2009 Vice President
Jack Newcom

New Directors starting 2009
Megan McCurdy
Byron Bina
Eric Bloomquist

Presidential Award of Distinction
Richard Garvin

Livestock Contest Winner
Charlie Cummings

Rookie Contest Winner
Mike Boesker

Scholarship Award Winners
Adam Pounds
Callie McCaffrey
Logan Fullerton

Vendors
Global Auction Guide Media Group
High Plains Journal
Lions Federal Savings
Rose Hill Bank
Country Custom RV
Auction Flex
Parks Motors
First American Title
Ag Press
Midwest [...]

We’ve received some search traffic from users searching for the phrase Auction Listing Specialist. As involved as we are with the National Auctioneers Association (NAA) and not ever hearing of such a course or designation, we decided to search it out as any responsible skeptic would.
It seems that Auction Listing Specialist is a course offered [...]

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We start the new year with an obituary for eBay Live Auctions, not to be confused with eBay Live!, the eBay convention for buyers and sellers held regularly in cities around the country. As of the first of the year, the website ebayliveauctions.com now redirects to www.ebay.com.
eBay Live Auctions was the division of [...]

It’s time for a little year-end housekeeping. With all of the top lists being created regarding the previous year, we couldn’t help but join in with a top list and a review of everything we’ve done so far. Here are our top six posts that we like.

ATS designation – Auction Technology Specialist for auctioneers
Today is [...]

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We’re QuickBooks fans. That is to say once a year, usually after the first or second extension on taxes, we spend a day or two entering all the checks and deposits from the entire previous year. About six months ago, we stumbled onto a service called Mint. Having used it religiously [...]

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Now that PDF is an ISO standard and no longer an Adobe product, it has value for some types of content distribution. We’ve mentioned the benefits of using Foxit Reader for all your PDF viewing needs in two articles and a podcast. Foxit is faster than Adobe Reader and takes up [...]

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In this time of giving and over the course of the next few weeks that begins the new year, many of us may be looking for was to give to good causes. As many of us may have difficulties giving financially during these times, we look to alternative ways to help others. If [...]

We discussed back in September how Internet bidding has been referred to as eBay style or static bidding, and we’ve explained why those are bad descriptions for this type of bidding. Features like automatic extension and staggered ending make most modern Internet only auctions nothing like eBay and they certainly are exciting and dynamic enough [...]

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Red Green and Blue recently posted an article about an activist who wrecked havoc at an auction by the Bureau of Land Management. The bidder essentially ran up the price on several tracts to knock out other bidders, while having no intent to actually purchase the properties himself.
We all have difficulties with bidding [...]

The National Auctioneers Association has recently posted Auction Answers on its home page. The document is a PDF with answers to many common questions, such as “What is the auctioneer really saying?” and “Why sell at auction?” Auction Answers originated in partnership with USA Today and its semiweekly feature, Auction Showcase, which advertises auctions from [...]

The Maine Antique Digest is running a story about Al Cardamone of Mooney’s Auction Service. According to the story, Mooney’s recently sent out a bulk email announcing a prepayment program in which prospective bidders can exempt themselves from the buyer’s premium, as well as obtain a $7.00 concessions coupon at each auction they attend, by [...]

Seasonality is the curse of all auctioneers. Even auctioneers in roughly the same geographic area can have consistent yearly downturns during several months each year. The goal is to manage those downturns so that cash flow remains as steady as possible.
One tempting solution used by many auctioneers is to hold events on or near holidays [...]

Rob Spectre left the following as a comment to yesterday’s article on the example RFP. It’s so good it deserves its own post. You can view his Gonzo blog at www.dreamnotoftoday.com.
1) Require a submitted portfolio with references. Five sites with traffic levels doing more than 40k monthly uniques you can verify with independent services [...]

I’ve spoken with many auctioneers recently who are at the beginning stages of a new technology project, usually a website redesign or new build of some kind. The questions everyone asks mostly revolve around the expectations they should have of the person or company being hired to build the website.
I’ve put together some content that [...]

I have a bachelor’s degree in animal science from Kansas State University. I have found myself filling the role of VP Technology for an auction firm. Having never taken a course in anything relating to computers since “keyboarding” during my freshman year of high school – which I essentially tested out of and spent my [...]

It’s time for a little housekeeping. In case you didn’t notice, the new resources page was published a few days ago. Its goal is to list various offerings from various companies and vendors serving the auction industry. If you don’t see a product listed, it’s due to an oversight and not an agenda. If you [...]

The latest designation from the National Auctioneers Association (NAA) is Auction Technology Specialist (ATS). A course written by auctioneers for auctioneers, it offers a comprehensive education for all auctioneers, including those who are self-described as technology-challenged.

The biggest misconception about ATS is that it’s designed for operational staff instead of auctioneers. Unlike the Auction Administrator Certification [...]

I theorized back at CAI in Bloomington, Indiana, last March that it would be possible to use WordPress to power a website for an auction company. WordPress is a remarkable, extensible and mostly standards-compliant website scripting engine that allows for very easy content generation without website coding experience. AuctioneerTech proudly uses WordPress, and I also [...]

I use several computers simultaneously during day-to-day operation. While it’s easy to connect multiple displays to one computer, the ability to use the best features of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux simultaneously is much more valuable than having additional screen area, or real estate, on one operating system.
While it’s possible, and certainly easier, to [...]

eBay recently announced that in late October it will be eliminating checks and money orders as valid payment options for eBay sales. Remaining valid payment methods are as follows.

PayPal, owned by eBay
ProPay, partnered with eBay
Credit or debit card payments direct to seller
Payment upon pickup

There are several categories that are exempt from the payment restrictions, including [...]

There are three main types of Internet bidding. Some Internet bidding providers allow some but not all of the types of auctions. I’ll cover some of the basics here, with future articles and podcasts building on these topics by discussing the combinations of the types of Internet bidding as well as going deeper into the [...]

I recently took part in the Kansas Auctioneers Association bid-call contest at the Kansas State Fair. This was my third time competing, having also done so in 2002 and 2006. I’ve also seen other contests, such as the National Auctioneers Association International Auctioneer Championship and the Oklahoma State Auctioneers Association competition.
The NAA IAC this year [...]

Twitter is a popular social network that can be called ‘micro-blogging’.
Think of it as a way to post updates about what you’re doing. These updates can be sent by text message to update your status on twitter.com. Through the use of various plugins, you can incorporate these status updates into Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Friendfeed and [...]

Using the Internet to take bids doesn’t mean that the item will sell to Guam or Kansas