I had the extreme pleasure of being invited to the Virginia Association of Realtors Convention in Baltimore, MD over the weekend. Yes, Virginia Realtors met in Maryland. No, I do not live in Virginia nor am I still an active Realtor. STILL. I drove a little over six hours to meet a bunch of completely fabulous people and it was WORTH it!

The Virginia agents invited many of us from outside their association and welcomed us with open arms. I got to sit in on a blogger session and visit the trade fair and learned about some pretty neat new ways for a real estate agent to be found and market their listings. The agents in Virginia have a special knack for using technology to their advantage, and they don’t mind sharing what they learn. I have some thinking to do!

But of course the best part of any convention is the PEOPLE. I want to thank the wonderful people of VAR08 for inviting me and helping me feel so at home — you guys ROCK!! Here’s a little peek at my time at VAR08 in (what else?) the form of a Real Estate Show.

Real Estate Shows moved back into the top 100 in the latest monthly ranking of real estate web sites released by Web metrics company Hitwise.

Inman.com reported the recent real estate rankings this morning, noting that “Move Inc.’s category-leading site Realtor.com, which is operated through an agreement with the National Association of Realtors, had a 7.3 percent market share of visits to the category in July, compared with second-place Yahoo Real Estate, at realestate.yahoo.com, which had a 3.06 percent market share.”

Other real estate category sties entering the top-100 list in July include: my.realtor.com, themls.com, realtyusa.com, movoto.com, curbed.com, circlepix.com, realtor.org and foreclosure.com.

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel made up of Jim Cronin (Real Estate Tomato), Dustin Luther (4Realz.net), Daniel Rothamel (RealEstateZebra.com), and Nicole Nicolay (MyTechOpinion.com).

If you missed it, here’s the video from Inman.

We’re happy to announce that Inman News has launced their new Web site. But we’re even more excited to announce that with the launch comes the official word that our very own Jeff Turner was invited to be a part of their new new Community section to write “lively blog posts and podcasts” each week. The new contributors are:

• Teresa Boardman, an agent and licensed broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real Estate Blog
• Kris Berg, broker associate with Prudential California Realty in San Diego, and blogger at the San Diego Home Blog
• Jeff Turner, president of Real Estate Shows in Santa Clarita, Calif., and avid blogger at ActiveRain
• Daniel Rothamel, an agent with Strong Team Realtors in Charlottesville, Va., and founder of Real Estate Zebra.