Remember the elevator speech principle? You know, a short capsule on what you do, or why you want a job, or why a relationship is important to you. There are many applications. Here’s my e-speech for why you should attend the Santa Barbara Forum.
First, IAMC’s Professional Forums are in my experience the best events for meeting corporate real estate peers, catching up with service providers, making new friends, seeing old friends, and sharing work experience. The quality of the professional networking is as good as you can get. And this is what I look forward to at the Santa Barbara Forum.
Each one is different. And that coming up this spring promises unique learning experiences related to corporate real estate, general business and leadership (see IAMC’s website for details). I’ll highlight a few.
The Santa Barbara Forum will offer 15 CRE-focused professional development workshops, of which six are exclusively for Corporate Active members and nine are open to all attendees. Of the former, the Research Roundtable will feature a presentation on how new technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, could affect the brokerage industry and how CRE departments engage services in the marketplace. The Business Impact Interest Group session will feature a presentation on the IBM Tririga CRE and FM system. Both sessions will provide plenty of small-group discussion time.
The nine open-attendance CRE program topics include incentives packages, facility management, build-to-suit, lease flexibility, phase-1 Environmental Site Assessments, the permitting process and more.
On Sunday morning, IAMC’s two leadership offerings will be Dr. Relly Nadler on teamwork and Karen Hurt on building a personal brand.
This Forum’s featured presenters could set the benchmark against which future programs are measured. Journalist and business icon Steve Forbes will give the Monday morning keynote address. After lunch, Greg O’Brien, JLL’s CEO of the Americas, will give his vision for where the commercial real estate industry is headed and how it will change. IAMC regular Peter Zeihan will present Tuesday morning a session entitled “America on the Edge.” The Wednesday closing session will feature retired U.S. Astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman.
The icing on the Forum cake for me is often the networking events. Santa Barbara is full-blooded California and a unique American city. Sunday evening you can look forward to the Welcome Reception and Dinner at the highly regarded Santa Barbara Zoo. And the popular Santa Barbara Maritime Museum will serve as the harbor-edge venue for the Tuesday evening reception.
We’ve worked hard to stack the deck in favor of you deciding to attend this Forum. Consider the offerings: a rich array of CRE professional development programs, leadership training for professionals, keynote by a national business celebrity, high-touch networking in cool venues, and the city itself with its Mediterranean climate and laid-back life style. What else can we do?
Please register if you have not already done so, and spread the word to your colleagues whom you would like to see attend.
Best regards,
Charles Waltz
Chair, IAMC Board of Directors