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Spring conference season this year is a bit more interesting than usual. It's mostly thanks to a couple of new conferences on the circuit that I think will further important industry conversations. A few weeks ago, the inaugural "Forum," Hosted by Funnel Leasing, established a new place to discuss the increasingly popular topic of centralization. Last week saw the inaugural REBA Insights conference in Vail, CO. There were parallels between the two events that I will discuss in this post. 

The inaugural Forum—the User Conference of Funnel Leasing—is in the books. I was privileged to take part in a hugely successful event that boasted an impressive attendee list last week at the stunningly beautiful Terranea Resort near Los Angeles. 

2024 seems likely to be a year of rapid acceleration in the adoption of AI in multifamily. The question is how rapid and what kinds of tasks will it be doing for us? During this year's 20for20 interviews, the 20 leaders were asked to speculate a little on the direction AI is likely to take. What the conversations revealed is that most leaders view AI as something you buy from third-party vendors specializing in this area. 

What is a trend? A couple of months into 2024, there's been a lot of talk about the prevailing trends for the year ahead, as there always is. Our brains are hardwired to look for patterns in everything that we see. As a species, we like to read the tea leaves.

It's a brand new year, and with it comes an opportunity for a fresh take on a familiar theme. Readers of this blog will be familiar with the view that multifamily technology vendors often approach their products incorrectly. Specifically, in their eagerness to identify the key selling points for their technology, they often overlook the main reasons why companies buy their products. 

It's December, which is the time of the year when I have the absolute pleasure of sitting down for 20 in-depth conversations with multifamily executives. For those unfamiliar with 20for20, it's an annual survey where 20 leaders (ten heads of operations and ten heads of technology) from leading multifamily companies share their thoughts on the year that is ending and the year to come. 

Thanksgiving week is a great time to reflect on what we're grateful for. I've been reflecting on a conversation with the founder of an impressive new multifamily technology company earlier this year. His company had identified a new solution to a long-standing problem (I will spare the details to maintain anonymity). But over the hour we spent on our zoom call, he made me reevaluate my priors on a particular area of multifamily operations. 

If you're getting back into the swing of things at work after an engaging few days at NMHC OPTECH, you're probably processing your way through an overload of information. It was a packed event marked by record attendance, the unveiling of a new renter preferences study, and—if you were lucky—a remarkable U2 show at the Sphere. Among the array of insightful conference sessions and side conversations, a few themes emerged, five of which I outline in this post.

NMHC OPTECH is just a week away, and I've been taking a look at this year's audience composition. At the time of writing, the total number of attendees has surpassed any previous year, making this year's show the biggest ever—congratulations to the organizers! Whatever economic uncertainty our industry is facing, the enduring popularity of NMHC OPTECH tells us that our industry's appetite for technological innovation is stronger than ever.

This week I had the pleasure of attending RealWorld 2023, RealPage's annual user conference in Las Vegas. It was an enjoyable couple of days that at once offered a glimpse of the future of an evolving industry giant and a trip or two down memory lane. I will share my thoughts on both in this article.