The largest conference on the topic of (residential) real estate and IT is the Inman Real Estate Connect which was held this week in San Francisco 2008' . I guess there were more than 1 000 participants. Not only from the USA but also Australia, New Zealand, Spain and UK.
Below are the highlights of the week (in no particular order) from the perspectiv from a Swedish Product Manager.
Meeting up with all online friends
Meeting up all people whose blogs you are reading and the people behind many of the services in person has been indeed rewarding. Truly inspiring.
A demo of next generation websites
Tyler Davey from Infusion gave a preview of the new Radisson site that will be released in the autumn. Built in Silverlight and extensively using Microsoft Virtual Earth; the user experience was incredible. Tyler also mentioned that the incredible software Photosynth will be included in Virtual Earth. See this video and get blown away by the photosynth technology.
The Swedish connection
In the presentation "25 Online Real Estate Sites You Don't Know About But Should" Brian Boero, 1000Watt Consulting, started of with showing the Swedish real estate search engine Booli!
A demo of Trulia iPhone Application
Trulias very own Mr Social network Rudy gave me an demo of their iPhone application (YouTube movie). Very impressive. I believe devices with location functionality will have a great impact on the way we find real estate information.
Walkscore
You know that the Americans find the gas price high (still less then half of prices in Sweden) when services like WalkScore is being created. Nevertheless, a great service that measures the walkability of an address.
Webbased solutions to get rid of Excel
As a Product Manager of Datscha it is great to see that there are more people how believe that a web solution is better then the best Excel spreadsheet. At Inman I found two services in this area; T-rex (Property Management) and eRealInvestor ("Analyze your own property and investments and optimize your returns!")
The techiness of the attendees
As an official geek, it was great to see how many attendees that took their notes on a laptop and where present online even at the conference.
During the entire conference there was an active discussion on Twitter.
An example of the discussion.
Read the entire conversation here.
Next time you doing a presentation at a conference be aware that quite a few in audience could be twittering about you, google your facts and browsing through your LinkedIn resume. In other words, be humble and stick to the facts.
More Inman coverage
Below a some more reading about Inman.
I'm sure there is more to come.
The Orlando Condo Blog
Joel writing for Inman
Daneil for Inman
Drew about blogging
Matrix
Finally...
Thanks to everyone who made this conference such a brilliant experience.