A listed company invites me as a 'blogger'

Last week I did my debut as a speaker, in my role as a 'blogger' (for my employer I've done 100's), at an event held by the Swedish commercial property company, Brinova. (I've done too many speeches to remember in my 'day job' as Product Manager at Datscha). 

The event

The focus of the event was 'The future of logistics' (since Brinova mainly owns that type of properties). In other words, not the property market itself. Among the 150+ attendees there were people from all the large players like DHL, Schenker and to customers like IKEA. 

The event was, by far, the most tech-savvy 'property event' I've been to. Just to mention two aspects of it, it was live streamed over Bambuser (no quality to talk about but hey, they were trying), and they had the attendees to do polls using their mobile phones (for example what the last topic should be about).

My presentation

I was invited by Brinova's marketing coordinator Jonas Hallström (LinkedIN and @JonasHallstrom) to talk about 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) in general (not commercial real estate specific). An invitation I of course couldn't turn down. 

Here are the slides: 

(Great slides make no sense without the 'sound'...) 

... and from the Bambuser recording. 

(I enter the stage at 1h 29m.

Unfortunately, the sound doesn't work until 1h 58m, and hardly even then.)  

Sum up

Everything went great and I got lot of positive feedback afterwards.

It seems to have sparked quite a few conversations. 

Which was the assignment.  ;-)  

RICS Paper: 'CLOUD COMPUTING IN COMMERCIAL PROPERTY'

"Cloud computing has fantastic potential to increase operational efficiency and, in times of cost pressure, to save money. For those bold enough to embrace it, reduced costs and increased agility will almost certainly bring competitive advantage."   /Remit Consulting  

RICS paper on the 'cloud' 

Last week, at a breakfast meeting in London, the RICS paper on 'The role of cloud computing in Commercial Property' was released. A paper written by my friends Andrew Waller and Bob Thompson at the real estate management consulting firm Remit Consulting. 

 

The focus

The writers aim to both give a background, potential but also the 'dark clouds' of the cloud based services and at the same time give 'real' examples of cloud services used within the UK property market. 

For example, did you know that CB Richard Ellis has deployed Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform to create their own management platform in order to simplify the management of a construction project? 

The launch

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to travel to London to be part of the conversation (I'm located in Stockholm...) but thankfully, there was a hastag for the event on Twitter! 

Great work @EEPaul. 

Read the paper

Take the opportunity to read the paper. Even if you're aware of the cloud trend, since the most interesting part is the examples. By the way The Financial Times write a piece on it.

Realcomm goes to London

There aren't to many conferences or events focusing on the benefits of smart use of IT in the real estate industry. But there are two,  Realcomm for the commercial part of the industry, and the Inman Connect Conference for the residential part. In a months time the Realcomm London will take place (20th October).

About the event

"Realcomm London is a networking and educational event for commercial and corporate real estate technology professionals. This unique “by invitation only” event will focus on global best practices that pertain to technology, automation and innovation in the property industry."

Agenda

The focus on the event will be “SHOW ME THE ROI: Using Technology to Increase Revenues and Decrease Expenses”. 

SharePoint: Real Property ITs Secret Strategic Weapon? 
Over the last 24 months, SharePoint has taken the world by storm, and the property industry is no exception. The versatile yet powerful platform has given organizations the ability to automate tasks never before considered while encroaching on applications traditionally developed by the vendor community. In this exciting session we’ll explore some of the new features of SharePoint 2010 and demonstrate some innovative applications for the property industry. 

The ROI for Smart Connected Buildings – Global Best Practice Update
Until recently the concept of a "connected" building was just emerging. Over the past year we’ve seen a significant number of positive signs in this space; major agreements signed, new multinational vendors joining the industry, vendor revenues matching GDP growth, but most importantly, a number of legitimate, quantifiable case studies. This update will showcase the most significant, smart, connected projects from around the world focusing on both the challenges and the ROI opportunities. 

Data Challenges for Global Property Organizations
It has become very apparent that large multinational firms with portfolios in different regions around the world have specific and complex needs. Issues such as master data management, integrating data from multiple property systems, and regional differences in data definitions often result in a lack of data transparency and costly, inefficient reporting processes. In this session we’ll discuss and debate options for building stronger transactional, management, and reporting systems in global property organizations. 

Leveraging Technology to Meet Carbon Reduction Commitment 
The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme mandated this past April will have a profound effect on all public and private property owners and investors in the UK. This mandate will require the half-hourly monitoring of energy consumption in buildings and will impact the cost of energy to both small and large portfolio owners. Managing energy in one building is complicated enough but the issues become even more complex as multiple buildings are added to the equation. This session will address the technologies required to manage the CRC processes and will also discuss the concept and implementation of a centralized command and control center. 

My thoughts

If you have the possibility you really should make it to this "complimentary “by invitation only” event that brings together commercial real estate practitioners to discuss and debate global best practices that pertain to technology, automation and innovation in the property industry".

I've been to four Realcomm events over the years and Jim Young and Howard Berger always manage to exceed my expectations. 

Unfortunately, I'll not be able to make the trip from Stockholm due the fact that I've a major release within days after the event. Will have go into crunch time the last week...

Wrap ups from Inman Connect 2010

Did you also miss the Inman Real Estate Connect 2010 conference in San Francisco last month? I did. But hereare some wrap ups I found.

THE INMAN SITE  

The people behind the Man show is making a brilliant job to make the speeches available online at the Inman site. For most of them you need a 99 USD subscription (which is fair).

Two examples of videos 'New kids on the Block' and 'Is Google getting into Real Estate?'.

REFLECTIONS OF ATTENDEES  

My friend Alistair from New Zealand writes about "the feeling that after 3 days you have been exposed to the largest mass of insight and emerging comprehension of where this industry is heading in the future"...  

... and Brian at 1000watt summarize the "perhaps the best Inman show ever" in five points...

... Rudy at Trulia describes some hectics days for the Trulia team (including a 3 mile run with clients)...

... Katie from Future of Real Estate Marketing is talking about her favorite session"building great web sites" (presentation at Slideshare)... 

... Peter at Business2 makes a great job on interviewing many of the exhibitors...

... and finally the Inman Contest Winners are announced including Innovator Awards.  

MY THOUGHTS  

Inman Real Estate Connect is a brilliant event if you're working in the area of residential real estate and technology (I'm more into commercial real estate so I have a had time to argue to go to the US twice a year...).

Furthermore, it's growing in international participants every year and it seems also to be thoughts about hosting Inman events in Sydney and Beijing (see Alistair's post). It's great news since I believe both in spreading the use of technology but also to learn from experiences from other countries. Keep up the great work the Inman Team! 

MIPIM is more than just regions & capital

MIPIM is the large global real estate event taking place in mid-march every year in Cannes, France. Two weeks ago, MIPIM 2010 brought together 17,300 attendees from 81 countries and 1,720 exhibiting companies. 

Development plans & marketing regions

The main topics among attendees are to present development efforts, market regions (my favourite region marketing effort (the middle photo above) was Invest in Mauritius), raise capital and network (an  example, there were at least 1500 (?) Swedes in Cannes last week).

More general coverage, take a look at PropertyWeeks MIPIM page or CREOpoints (1 and 2). Or why not take a look at the Twitter feed #MIPIM.

The few, the great

Unfortunately (?), not to many attendees go to MIPIM to see the newest developments in the field of smart IT solutions to make their companies more efficient. However, the upside of having so many C-levels around is to good to not take advantage of. Even Though it is hard work to find the right top 50 prospects among 20 000 people.

Some of the IT companies taking the opportunity last week was CoStar, Argus, Real Capital Analytics, HBS Research, Qube Global, CREOpoint, Reidin, Investment Property Search, Global Arena, MRI and Datscha (full disclosure, I'm the Product Manager at Datscha).

Some of us even gathered for a glass of Champagne. 

Delighted to see the energy and visions.
Keep up the great work.

Realcomm is calling for speakers

Interested in going to Las Vegas?
Apply to be on the speakers list at Realcomm! 

Calling for speakers

"Realcomm is looking for industry experts to speak at Realcomm Las Vegas 2010. If you are an experienced speaker on the topic of technology for the commercial and corporate real estate industry then we want to hear from you. Let us know if you have a story to tell about how to use automation to squeeze more productivity and efficiency out of a real estate organization. Our topics include, but aren't limited to: IT issues (applications, management, infrastructure, etc.), Building Automation, Energy Management / Sustainability. If you have a good solution to share that has demonstrated an ROI - come share it at Realcomm! For questions or more information, contact Howard Berger, Program Director, at 818.548.1818 or hberger@realcomm.com."

Find out more at the Realcomm site.

About the conference

Realcomm is the largest conference in the world focusing on the intersection of IT & Real Estate. This year will be the 12th gathering. Every year over 1000 people are attending the show.

I've had the privilege to take part of the show in 2004, 2005, 2006 and at Realcomm Europe 2009. Unfortunately, I'll not be able to go over this year. Have to go next year. It's always a pleasure to meet up with other believers.

Mark your calender for the "Fastighets IT 2010" event

The annual IT event focusing on the real estate industry, FastighetsIT 2010, is this year to be held on the 17th of March in Stockholm. (Unfortunately, then colliding with the MIPIM event in Cannes, France.)

The event is organised by SeminarDesign with the programme (PDF).

Focus

Being a one day event covering the topic "IT" for an entire industry one has to realise that the topics of the presentations are (unfortunately) to be all over the place. This event will cover everything from social media and "the cloud" to the status of the standardisation efforts regarding property data and property automation.

See coverage from the event previous years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Speakers

The list of speakers includes;

Two business consultants; Rikard Lindberg (LinkedIn) from Meta Fastighetsadministration and Timo Murberger (LinkedIn) from Computence.

A famous trendforecaster in Bengt Wahlström (LinkedIn) from Trender.net.

Representatives from property companies in Johan Thorberg (LinkedIn) from Jernhusen and Alf Pettersson (LinkedIn) from Uppsalahem.

Solution providers in Peter Löfgren (LinkedIn, Twitter, blog) from Redpill Linpro, Anders Moberg  (LinkedIn) from CAD-Q Fastighet and Stefan Ledenstam from High Performance Systems.

Finally, Mårten Lindström (LinkedIn) from the standard initaitiv OpenBIM.

My thoughts

I'm delighted to see that there is interest enough in the market from both customers, suppliers, thought leaders and organisers to run an event like this. Hopefully, the event will have a positive energy (like last year).

IT in the real estate industry has a tendency to quickly focusing on property systems and automation. Sometimes I would like to also see focus on topics like marketing (trends in website creation & newsletters), sales (CRM) or just plain normal 'office IT' (mobile solutions, wiki and so on).

Unfortunately, I'll miss this years event since I will be down in Cannes focusing on the marketing side of the business. 

A cloud conference in Stockholm

On the 2nd of June a cloud conference will take place in Stockholm.

"The cloud is a major technology shift that creates new business and technology ecosystems, Gartner group sees Cloud Computing as one of the key success factors for the CIO in the coming years. The event will highlight topics ranging from defining cloud computing to where is the payoff? The agenda will include keynotes from top independent analysts, end users experiences and showcases of real cloud computing solutions."

The speakers include:

Simone Brunozzi   (blog & LinkedIn)
Web Services Evangelist Europe   
Amazon Web Services 

Jesper Ritsmer Stormholt  (LinkedIn)
Head of Sales Nordic   
Google Inc.

Andy Mullholland  (LinkedIn and blog (co-author))
Global CTO     
Capgemini

Johan Zetterström  (LinkedIn)
Regional Vice President Nordics  
Salesforce.com

Organizer of the event is Conductive AB.

Beat a former French Prime Minister, but lost against the Mayor of London

That is talking about the list 'Overheard at JC Goldsteins 20th MIPIM' list...   ;-)

Read more at the CREOpoint blog, the international Corporate Real Estate network which is founded by Jean-Claude Goldenstein (a former Executive Director Global Solutions at NAI Global).

MIPIM - A great place for networking

Spent last week in Cannes (France) attending my 8th MIPIM event (with some 20 000 others). Once again it has struck me how brilliant this event is to grow ones international network (and meeting up with the 1000+ Swedes that are there).

Growing a network
Even though the fair has no IT perspective at all. I guess that less then 1% of the boots are IT related, but included RCA, Yardi, Qube, Reidin, HBS Research among others.

However, there are quite a few additional IT entrepreneurs around to meet up with clients. I'm happy to have been able to meet up with quite a few of them. Thank you all for great conversations!

Two types of people
This year at the MIPIM there really were two types of people; the ones discussing how little people there were at the fair, and those telling me that they were able to meet the right people.

Without any question the number of visitors were down from record year 2008 at 30 000, but there was still loads of potential customers. Quite a few of the exhibitors I was talking to were happy to being able to meet the right people, not just running demos.

Best new solution 
On the last day of the fair I visited the stand of HBS Research and one of the three founders Blaise Heurteux gave me a demo of their SaaS solution named LaPlace de I'Immobilier. Great stuff. A pure SaaS solution with a well thought user interface. Their service is created from data acquired from 20 different public records in France.

More reflections from MIPIM
Read more about the event at Steve Felix blogg, CREopoint, TheLawyer and Twitter (?).

See you next year.