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Finally, the tickets are reserved for my trip to the US this summer. The main purpose is to take part at the Inman Connect conference (23rd - 25th July) and the ReBarCamp the day before. But also to take some vacation on the west coast.
This will be my first visit to an Inman event and is really looking forward to it. The agenda looks great. Also looking forward meeting you all!
A tradition in the commercial property industry is to meet up in Cannés (France) in the beginning of March for informal meetings. The reason is to visit the annual MIPIM event. An event that brings 28 000 attendees from 85 countries (some 800 (!) from Sweden.)
More info about MIPIM
Click here for photos from MIPIM.
Great coverage on MIPIM is found at CNBC (special MIPIM coverage), PropertyWeek (UK based property magazine), PropertyEU (independent research site) and the blogs at bdonline (architects) and TheLawer (infosite)
A new traditon for IT believers
This year Datscha (where I'm the Product Manager) gathered IT focused professionals for a drink at our yacht. Even on a short notice quite a group showed up and it was a great gathering. It's always great to meet people that share a common belief. See you all next year.
It comes as no surprise that the Swedish start up Booli (a start up offering search engine for residential listings on the Swedish real estate market, earlier coverage) was going to create a debate in the market.
However, earlier this week Lars Kilander, CEO of Mäklarsamfundet (the Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents), made it easy for many papers this week to create selling headlines with the quote (my translation) "We don't believe it is better with more listing services, it just gets more complicated for the buyers".
I guess that there are few things that customers dislike more than being told what they like.
Press about the debate (in Swedish)
DN: the article by DN (the largest newspaper in Sweden)
Metro: here
DinaPengar: here
Realtid: two articles here and here
DagensPS: one
JönköpingsNytt: an article (with a slightly different approach)
From the blogosphere: here, here, here
The response from Booli
Is found here.
The letter
The background is that the press has found out that a letter has been sent to all members of Mäklarsamfundet asking their members "to protest" against Booli in order to keep their 'own' service Hemnet (read more) as 'the one and only' listing service (forgetting that there already exist another one in Bovision).
Today I attended the IT & Property fair in Sweden called 'Fastighetsbranschens IT-dag' (Swedish) which is arranged by SeminarDesign. This is the second year.
I hoped that it should have grown since last year, but the number of attendees (130) and exhibitors (6) is almost exact as last year. Hopefully it will grow in the future because I believe there is need for an event as this one. If not for our suppliers and believers to meet up an discuss 'war stories'.
It’s 3 am and I’ve just got home to Sweden after some hectic days at the PCS expo (a Property Computer Show) in London.
Being on panel for one session, attending another 5, get an understanding of 100 exhibitors and conducting 12 meetings in two days surely was surely a challenge…
My strongest impressions are;
More energy then ever – it’s my 3rd time going to this event and I haven't seen this much of energy before.
Finally the web has hit the property industry - almost every boot you went into was displaying their solution using a web page. Even property management systems have taken on a SaaS aspect (well kind of… more about that later)
The most impressive presentation was about e-Leases - Chris Lees from Calvis had a brilliant walk through of the project how one of UK's largest property owners has gotten four law firms to use Acrobat Reader documents to fill in and send the lease agreements (including over 200 data fields) using a PISCSES standard XML schema. Which has the effect that the data gets directly imported in to the owners property management system without re-typing any data.
Rewarding to meet other believers - One of the great benefits of going to an event such as this one is about meeting other believers. One needs that ones in a while.
In the upcoming week I’ll write more posts about my experience and thoughts about PCS.
If you're visiting the PCS Expo (Property Computer Show) in London mid-October, why not come by the session "The Property Investment Forum: 2008, the year of change"?
Bob Thompson, RETRI Group, will chair a session with John Glascock, Professor of Real Estate Finance Cambridge University, speaking on the risk in the property market. Nick Laird, Channel Rock Funds LLC, and myself will be on the panel.
For me it will be about commenting on the "... the challenges for those who provide information in this environment".
Will for sure be interesting.
See you all in London.
Talking about conferences, The Conference Board is gathering high-level executives from the real estate industry, in New York on the 18-19th of October, to cover the topic of information in a global commercial business environment. The name of the conference is "Corporate Real Estate Conference - Information and Action".
A friend of me, Peter Slatin (founder of The Slatin Report and writer at Forbes ), is Conference Program Director so no surprise that the agenda looks impressive.
However, not only is the trip from Stockholm a bit to far for a two day event, hopefully I'll be in London this week for the Property Computer Show.
Not only will Realcomm hold a conference in Dubai, they will also expand into Europe and Australia.
Great news for all believers.
Hopefully the Europe event in Janury 2008 will gather people from more countries than where show is held.
It would be great if there where an event like MIPIM for the RE.IT industry.
Great work Jim!
Are you an expert in the field of Intelligent Buildings or Property Asset Management solutions?
Why not apply to speak at the RealTech Middle East event in late October?
The people behind RealComm (read Jim Young) is expanding there business globally with an event in Dubai (for sure the place to be if we talk about building, see this video, or this one).
The conference topics are divided into two areas;
Intelligent Buildings Track
Defining The New NextGen Building Team
Tradition Meets The Future: Integrating BAS and IP Technology
Building Efficiencies with Building Operations Centers
Deploying Digital Signage to Enhance the Tenant Experience
Wireless: The Wave of the Future
Security / Access / Parking - IP Based Infrastructure
Business Solutions Track:
Evolving An Integrated Portal Strategy
Controlling Your Portfolio with Automated Asset Management
Driving Profitability with NextGen Budgeting and Forecasting Systems
Keeping Pace with the Market: Software Vendor Forum
Improving Business Processes and Identifying Best Practices
Business Intelligence - Turning Data Into Valuable Business Insight
Read more about the event here.
Are you neither at the Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco this week?
No problem, thanks to a number of believes you will be able to get a grip of what is happening over there.
Here is a summary of sources where you can find info.
What is Real Estate Connect? (website)
This is the main event in the USA (global?) if you interested in the use of IT in the residential part of the industry organized by Inman News. (For the commercial part Realcomm is the place.) For the 2007 event in San Francisco it will draw upwards of 1500 attendees. There are two of those events per year. The upcoming one will be in New York early 2008.
Focus for Connect SF 2007 (website)
The focus will be;
"Make sure you're "connected" and have the most up-to-date information on what you need to make your company a success by attending Real Estate Connect SF 2007." You find the (the impressive) program in PDF version here.
Videos from the event
Inman TV will air a number of videos from the event.
Starting of with "Glenn Kelman Keynote at Bloggers Connect". A great video about the behind the scene experience regarding 60 minutes.
Photos from the event...
...is found here, here and here.
Want to 'gather' with other people about Connect SF?
Check out there LinkedIn and Facebook groups.
Quite a few people also updates their Twitter for example here and here.
Bloggers reporting from Connect SF
Below are some of the blogs I've found covering the event.
Blogging systems
Is doing a tremendously work blogging, check this one out.
1000watt
5 observations after the first day.
Bloodhound
Greg is always worth reading, here a some notes from him on the Inman event.
BHI
For example, summarizing the key note session.
Future of real estate marketing
Joel, who is also running the show, has started to summarize the event. I'm sure there will be more to come.
Zillow
Reporting from the Blogger Connect and much more.
Oodle
A post about Re.net bloggers.
Realty Thoughts
A number of postings, for example one about the key session and NARs new strategy.
