And just like that Solid Earth and the Greater Louisville Association of REALTORS have been business partners for 10 years. This is a special event for me personally, since my bride and I have been married for the same amount of time.

Incidentally, according to the Internet, the appropriate 10th anniversary gift for married couples is Tin/Aluminum (traditional) or Diamond (modern). You just know that someone in the diamond lobby invented that last one. Diamonds for a 10 year? Have we even paid the wedding off yet? So, sadly we won’t be buying our clients in Louisville any diamonds. Maybe something for the 20th (Platinum). I’ll start saving now.

So I was in Louisville yesterday providing a little “state of the company” presentation which included a brief tour of Spring, the new MLS platform to which this blog is dedicated. To underscore our need for a shift in approach to MLS, I showed them this bad boy:

Blackberry 6750

That my friends was the first Blackberry with phone capabilities. It launched in 2002, the same year we installed LIST-IT in Louisville. It was quite an advanced piece of hardware. By the way, the Treo 650 ($499 retail), also released that year. I remember seeing no fewer than 7,000 of these at Midyear in 2003.

The purpose of this show-and-tell in GLAR was to illustrate to the group that while we’ve certainly enjoyed our run with the existing platform, it’s definitely time for a change and not only in the ways they expect. Yes, LIST-IT has seen hundreds of adjustments since the launch, but as illustrated by the Blackberry, technology has clearly moved varying directions since 2002 and it’s time we responded – together.

Stop for a moment and consider all that’s happened since 2002 that has had impact on the way you interact with others, the way we do business, even the way a real estate transaction progresses.

Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, regionalization, data security, syndication, VOWs, RETS, Facebook, 3G and 4G, the mass-proliferation of WiFi, the iphone, ipad and amazing advance of mobile devices… the list goes on.

Now consider the astounding compression of this advancement. More has happened to affect the real estate industry in the last 10 years than might have happened in the previous 100 years. The pace is amazing.

By the way, the iPad 3 launches in 3 weeks.