Series: PropTech Chatter.
Show Notes
Summary: A deep dive with Dom Beveridge of 20for20 on the three most valuable events this Spring for ConTech.
Special mentions
Company: FIRE, PropTech Angel Group (PTAG), John Deere,
People: Steve Lefkovits.
Events: AIM, CES, RETCON, FIRE Summit, Blueprint, CRETech, RealComm, OPTECH, Apartmentalize, NMHC, FLEX Conference.
Transcript
(Disclaimer: Please be advised that this transcript may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate, and/or amusing transcription errors.)
[00:00:00]
Matt Knight: Hey, guys. Matt here. Another podcast episode, this time with my friend Dom, whose accent is much better than mine. But we’re talking about events. I thought this was timely to reflect this summer on what happens in the spring as we look forward to the fall, and he’s got a really interesting take on it that, is a perspective I don’t have.
So listen to this 15 or so minutes of me and Dom waxing on spring and other events
Matt Knight: All right, Dom. Thanks for being here, man. I appreciate the time. I know we saw each other a bit this spring, but I thought it’d be good this summer to reflect back on spring events in real estate construction tech and kinda talk about why those matter. How does that sound to you?
Dom Beveridge: Sounds great. Thanks for [00:01:00] having me.
Matt Knight: Yeah, man, I think this is important. If you’re young or you’re starting up a startup or you’re new to the space or maybe a student, I think it’s good context because, all of us have limited budget most of us have limited budgets, and so knowing which events are for whom and what they’ve...
how you can benefit from them and who they’re targeted towards and who shows up I think is super useful, unless you disagree with that
Dom Beveridge: No, I I agree completely. I I have quite a lot of conversations about that very thing as well.
Matt Knight: And maybe a good place to start is maybe run us through your spring lineup of events, and then I’ll go through mine, and we can talk about overlap and maybe reflect on what each one maybe strengths and weaknesses for the ones and where we think they’re best fit.
Dom Beveridge: Yeah. I tend to ration myself to events that I speak at, right? So I’ll usually go to some number of client conferences or, y- just user conferences for companies that I work with. And for the most part, I try [00:02:00] to focus on the public events, the commercial events that where there’s an opportunity to speak, to develop some content and so on.
And my... the first sort of big public event I do each year is usually AIM. AIM is a really interesting show. It’s been growing for quite a while. Very, a very tried and tested formula. It, it built its reputation around marketing, but for the last few years, it’s been growing its executive presence quite impressively.
They had a really good attendance this year, very interesting audience. And yeah they try to... steve Lefkowitz is the, probably the best curator at event content in the industry. He really pushes to have kind of very current kind of stuff. He wants he wants whatever is new in the industry to be on the stage at his show.
And yeah, he’s built a community around that that event. So it it’s fun. It’s a great place to go connect, but it’s also got quite a commitment to [00:03:00] learning about it, and so I like it for those reasons
Matt Knight: Yeah, I I’ve spoken at AIM, and I think very highly of Lefkoe and Dennis.
And I wanna come back to AIM ‘cause it’s... you mentioned something that I’ve had a suspicion about for a while. But for me, I’m similar in that I tend to filter for things where I either have a direct speaking or content line or I have something unique that I can add to it, versus just I need to go to Vegas again.
I don’t have time for that. But on the other hand, I do have things I go to where I’m trying to discover. With what I do with the foundation, I go to CES every year because I wanna see what’s happening in consumer electronics, ‘cause a lot of B2B companies are there and selling their hardware.
A lot of countries come to that, and here’s what’s innovation in Germany and Denmark and Korea. And so I do CES in Vegas every January just to see what’s even possible in the world of technology, and then it’s my job to bring it back to the real estate and construction industries. And then the very next month, there’s one called IBS, the International [00:04:00] Builder Show, which is a very similar flavor, but it’s all home building tech.
And so same thing, is how can I take what the most innovative home builders and suppliers and OEMs are doing and bring it into multifamily or office or retail or hotel, right? So I do those two generally just to see what’s even possible and how I can bridge the gap between those industries and our industry.
And then I also usually go to RETCON, which is a very, I would call it analogous to Blueprint and CREtech to a degree, but it’s in the spring. It’s a different company. It, it would have a similar vibe to those two, but it happens every spring. I think it was March this year. I don’t remember. But it was in Vegas again this year, and I did those three before doing my event in La Jolla right after AIM.
So that’s my spring is the two where I go scout. RETCON is a down-the-fairway PropTech company, and then my event right after AIM, which is in May. Those are my four, give or take.
Dom Beveridge: Yeah, no, I’ve been to RETCON before. The the problem with that show is I live in Texas, and [00:05:00] they always hold it during Texas spring break which which means it’s it’s less popular with with people from the Lone Star State.
But no, I’ve been there before and and have generally good feelings about it.
Matt Knight: Yeah, and with, to your point on AIM, I think the world of Lefkoe. He’s been in my angel group. He’s one of the greater minds in our space, and a great... He’s got a great voice, got a deep one. He doesn’t have your buttery British accent, but he’s got a really good speaking voice and a good presence, which I always appreciate.
And I was on the board of his MICA Conference when it was in Atlanta, and when he did the FLEX Conference in SF, I went to that. So I agree with you on the top-tier, thoughtful curation of content and people.
What I have hesitated is I’m not a marketing person, and of the stuff I touch, 10% of it is marketing. Top of funnel leasing strategy, website content, all of that’s great, but it’s 10% of the stuff I do. And so I’ve held off on going recently, but I’ve heard what you said is that it’s become a lot more than that, and I hear the same thing about Real Comm.
But I’d love for you to expand on that a little bit where, [00:06:00] yes, the CMOs and the marketing folks come, but it’s evolved into blank. What is that blank to you?
Dom Beveridge: Yeah. I’ve been going to AIM for probably about like 12 years or something like that. And so it always used to be...
So when I used to sponsor it as a, when I was the CMO back in the day, like I, I used... When I used to sponsor it, I used to primarily see it as a very good sort of see and be seen kind of conference. Like it was a, there was just this big social network around the the conference.
They’re not the people that ink deals if you’re a software company, but they’re but they’re people who are usually in the room when the when w- when your product is being discussed. So I had that kind of I had that kind of perspective on it, and it was worth doing for those reasons.
But nowadays, like where I tend to show up at conferences basically just to network, just to keep connected with with people that I work with or who I, who at some point I will need to answer to have them answer the phone to me. That’s the big objective for me in most of [00:07:00] these conferences.
What’s really happened over the last probably two or three years is that they’ve been running this C- a COO forum where they do I think like a half day of of behind closed doors meetings with a group of of operational leaders. And that h- is being increasingly successful because, when you flick through the attendee list for AIM, it’s now really good.
So again, for someone like me it’s now an excellent place to to go listen to a few new ideas, go to a few events by the beach, bump into multiple of the people that I y- that I tend to build my network around in this very sort of convivial y- event.
And so yeah, it’s it’s this combination of they’ve been making the audience more senior. They keep trying to push the envelope on content, so it’s not all about marketing. And the, just the the general level of enthusiasm for the event means that, y- social events are really well attended.
[00:08:00] And no it’s it’s a really great use of a couple of days in at the beginning of May each year.
Matt Knight: Never a bad time to go to Huntington Beach. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of Real Comm, but I’ve heard the same about Real Comm. Do you know that conference?
Dom Beveridge: Yeah, I actually, I spoke at Real Comm last year.
I did I did a session when it was in Savannah which is a great place to hold a a conference. I wish we could have more of that. But yeah, that, that was good, but it’s very much commercial real estate. Residential is very much out at the fringes of that event.
Matt Knight: Yeah, I guess s- to me, Real Comm started, from what I understand, as an IT conference, right? It’s Excel spreadsheets and CRMs and stuff that’s more for directors of IT. But that was, like, I... 20 years ago. That’s an older conference. Older in terms of prop tech, but not old in terms of all conferences.
Where it was procurement and IT best practices, and it’s evolved recently where a lot of startups say, “I gotta go to Real Comm,” which I think is usually in the summer. It might be right around now, here in June. We’re recording in [00:09:00] June. But I’ve heard it’s evolved into much more startup friendly, more forward-thinking, better content.
Not better, but more in my wheelhouse better. Does it, does that make sense? There’s no good or bad here, it’s just more- Yeah ... relevant to me on when you’re talking about AI and innovation and buying a startup or versus investing in a startup. Should I invest in a venture fund, right? Those are things that didn’t happen- Yeah, it was, at IT conferences 15 years ago
Dom Beveridge: Yeah. Yeah no, it’s it was it was a very sort of grown-up conference. It’s very well attended very credible sort of sponsor base and yeah, no like you say it was heavily tech-orientated.
Matt Knight: Got it. I guess if you were to advise someone and say, “Hey, I have a limited budget.
Where do I spend my budget on spring and maybe early summer conferences if May is summer and real come is summer?” How would you tell people to think about that?
Dom Beveridge: All right it all depends on your objectives. You’ve got a range of what these events cost. If I think about events like, for [00:10:00] example if I think about Retcon and Blueprint Blueprint I’ll be speaking there again this year.
I’m a big fan of that event. If I think about those two events, they for me feel like tech ecosystem shows. So you’ve got first of all there are multiple different food groups in terms of real estate, but it’s also, you’ve got everything from small startups to mature companies.
You’ve got both buyers of and investors in technology from the from the property management company side. I think the I think there’s a different kind of conversation that happens at those events. For for years we’ve had Optech, which has been growing steadily for, a decade or more.
Last year was the first time it shrank a bit, and they’ve changed it. I think they made it members only, and the effect of that was they lost some audience by doing that. It’s always in Vegas. Optech you have to be there, but because of when it is, it’s right before [00:11:00] Thanksgiving normally, it means it’s the last event of the year when salespeople get to make their numbers, right?
Where it’s the last time you’re gonna get to try and meet people you’re trying to close business with, which means you have this enormous attendance of vendors. And it just means that there’s this kind of form to Optech, which is everyone’s trying to pitch stuff at this... you’ve got roughly 2X the number of vendors to property management companies.
That, that number has been the same for many years. So people complain about it a bit, but it’s always the same, which means that the industry is largely comfortable with having this, 2X vendors to potential buyers attendance at the at the event.
And what it means is that you’ve got this subset of the audience who are property management companies who are constantly being assailed by vendors. But it’s a productive way to, to go and see, people will go and meet every supplier of this, say [00:12:00] it’s fraud prevention or something like that which has been hot for the last few years.
You’ll get people who will use Optech to go and meet with every single vendor of that kind of technology. And it’s quite a productive way to do it even if it’s a bit annoying that you’re, you’re constantly being pestered for various parties and dinners and and so on. So Optech is also...
it’s a membership event, which means that the content is organized in this sort of particular way. It’s good. Content isn’t as good as something like AIM, but it’s much better than something like NAA, right? It’s the RETTC people do take the content really seriously and try and make the program be really good.
And yeah, it’s generally generally popular. But if I think, if I contrast that event, which is the very much the mainstream technology event, to things like Retcon and Blueprints, I think there’s a slightly more, there’s a slightly more relaxed, slightly more mature conversation that goes on at those other events because first of all it’s nearly all senior people that go from the property management [00:13:00] companies.
They’re not going there purely to listen to pitches, which is mostly what Optech tends to be about. They’re looking at potential investments as much as they’re looking at technology that they might want to use which means the nature of the conversation is different. What I hear from suppliers that I work with is it’s a very relaxed, quite grown-up kind of conversation that you have around the the show and you get really high quality sort of meetings there.
So I actually think, blueprint is the lens that I tend to look at this through ‘cause I’m, I’ve been heavily involved in this for a while, but I I think they bring something very positive to the to the industry. I would be an advocate for that.
Matt Knight: And you brought up, Apartmentalize, I think that’s what you’re saying, with NAA, and that one maybe you can help disabuse me of a stereotype, but when I think of Optech versus Apartmentalize, ‘cause they’re both tech conferences focused on the multifamily space, right?
And what I think about in Optech is it’s smaller, but it’s very senior, it’s members only, a lot of [00:14:00] decision makers. Apartmentalize to me seems much bigger. John Deere shows up and roofing tile guys show up. It’s not all tech people. It’s not all tech in general content. It’s 14,000 people or something this year.
How do you compare and contrast those two if you say, “I want to be in multifamily, I care about innovation. I’ve got to pick one of those two ‘cause I only have the budget.” How would you think about that decision?
Dom Beveridge: So first of all if you think about the audience it’s not a technology conference, right?
It’s an educational conference, which means most of the attendees are act- people who work in multifamily communities. So it’s, there’s a lot of maintenance people there, there’s a lot of community managers and regionals that that show up to it. And so it’s a real mixed bag of content, right?
It’s not, you’re not just there to learn about technology. In fact, most of the sessions tend to be about, more HR kind of motivation, how to avoid burnout, all of these kinds of more sort of personal development, HR-orientated kinds of kinds [00:15:00] of sessions. So the sort of mission of the show is very different.
If you think about it from the perspective of a tech company, again you’ve got to be there. Now, it’s the biggest trade show in the industry, and what happens at the trade show in at NAA is that loads of people just do their meetings wandering around the trade show.
So for me, I’ll spend a few hours at the trade show one, one day of the event, and I’ll just be texting with people, say, “Okay, where you at?” And, you’ll spend a couple of hours just meeting with people, and it just becomes this... it’s a zoo. It’s crazy busy chaotic atmosphere.
But it’s quite productive if you think about it that way. I always, again, if I go back to the days when I was I was responsible for the budget for a software company I viewed the booth at NAA as a cost of doing business. I just I thought, I I do think we’ll get some business done at this event, but it’s more like I simply can’t not be on that trade show floor, because I know that [00:16:00] everybody at some point is gonna be spending some time wandering around just connecting with everybody.
So in the context of the way I see shows nowadays, NAA is very different from the others because I essentially see it as a social event. You basically go there to connect with, 30, 40 people around the middle of the year who you haven’t seen for a few months.
You go to a few parties. For me i’ll watch a few of the sessions, but candidly it’s the least curated program of content in the industry, right? So they have this slightly odd way of building their program, which is they open the program for submissions.
You’ll get something like 250 different proposals. They have a committee structure where people score each each session, and that determines what gets into the show. Of course, what happens then is you’re all over the map in terms of quality. If you look at the program overall the balance between different topic areas is quite random.
Because you don’t have an ultimate sort of [00:17:00] curator of the event because it’s this sort of democratic way that you do it, you don’t have the equivalent of Lefkoe who’s saying, tell me something that’s gonna blow my skirt up,” to get on the stage.
Yeah, instead like this year, if you look through it, you have tons of t- tons of sessions about sort of policy, about like I said earlier, about how to avoid burnout, about how to motivate your teams, and fairly samey topics, but there’s not really a good way to avoid that because it’s like I said it’s largely a democratic process that that, that picks the sessions.
I’ll go and find a few things that look like they might be interesting so that I’ve, I find it a really good discipline at shows to, to try and find something that’s interesting about them, and then I write about them just because it helps me collect okay what did we learn last week at this at this show?
And yeah, and other than that, NAA, it’s most it’s mostly I would say a social event. And one, one that you tend to have to be at if you’re a if you’re a supplier. But yeah the technology part of it is not [00:18:00] the main point of the show in the way that it is at Optech.
Matt Knight: And to play devil’s advocate on the content side, to your point, you have to have some content, one, that Gives, gives credence to your sponsors, right? Sponsors pay to be on stage and want to hear their products talked about. Fair enough, right? You also have content that caters to the first-timers. Oh my gosh, you can use AI in property management?
No way, right? You and I are gonna roll our eyes at that because we’ve heard it 986 times. But the first-timers need to have cool stuff to listen to. So I guess the thing that maybe you and I are agreeing on in, in terms of Lefkoe is I think he does a good job of “Here’s the things we need to revisit.
Here’s some intro stuff, but here’s things you’ve never heard before.” And I think that’s, as someone who manages his own event, that’s a challenge to do as an event coordinator. And, I think as our last question- Yeah ... ‘cause we’re out of time is if I were to, restrain you and say, “Hey, you can’t speak at any of these events, but you gotta go to three.”
I’m curious. You can pick fall events, winter events, whatever you want. Pick the three that you can’t miss even if you’re not [00:19:00] getting on stage talking and doing thought leadership. What would your three be?
Dom Beveridge: I would I would probably say I’d probably
say Optech definitely, NAA, and gosh, depending on what kind of company you’re representing, I would say either NMHC annual, just ‘cause it’s a very senior and very well-attended event or I would say Aim for the reasons discussed earlier.
Matt Knight: Nice. I appreciate you doing this.
Thanks for walking us through some of the spring schedule and how you view these events. I think it’s gonna be very helpful to some young people in particular.
Dom Beveridge: Awesome.
