The National Association of Realtors will debut a new technology conference next month that the trade group is billing as an opportunity to “define the future of real estate tech.”
The Innovation, Opportunity & Investment (iOi) Summit will take place at Bespoke, an event space in San Francisco, Aug. 29-30 and costs $250 to register. The tech conference will also include an artificial intelligence hackathon Aug. 28-29 and a “Start-Up Pitch Battle” for early-stage companies on Aug. 29.
Bob Goldberg
Nearly a year ago, when Bob Goldberg took the reins as NAR CEO, he promised to launch a world-class technology conference and said tech firms thought of as “disrupters” should be invited into the “tent” of organized real estate in the hopes of turning them into advocates for the nation’s 1.3 million Realtors.
“The iOi Summit fits with the mission Bob Goldberg laid out last August when he was named NAR CEO to find technology tools and advocates that are Realtor-friendly and help us achieve our members-first mission,” NAR spokesperson Sara Wiskerchen told Inman via email.
The agenda includes sessions such as:
- Real estate evolution: The key forces that will shape the real estate industry over the next decade
- The competitive landscape for innovation in real estate
- Venture capital’s opportunity in real estate
- Machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence
- From start-up to exit in partnership with NAR
- Regulatory forces affecting innovation in real estate
- Building an enterprise: innovators with successful exits
- The future of real estate search
- Disruptor, or innovator?
- Venture capital forecast: technologies and business models for the next century of opportunity
Speakers include venture capitalists, startup founders, Realtors, association executives, MLS directors, brokerage executives and technologists and real estate tech vendors.
As part of the hackathon, NAR is inviting software developers, data scientists and others to compete to build an innovative product that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to serve the real estate industry, the trade group said on its website.
Teams, which can have up to five people, can come from anywhere in the country and can start building their products on Aug. 1 at 7:00 a.m. PDT and must finish by Aug. 29 at 4:00 p.m. PDT. Teams will be judged on creativity, functionality and user experience, among other factors.
Suggested potential projects include realistic agent avatars and using computer vision to parse videos or images for applications such as creating accurate image descriptions to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, creating listing details in real time and creating a home price prediction model using only photos and listing details of a property and area. Teams can also come up with their own ideas.
NAR subsidiary Second Century Ventures will host the pitch battle. Real estate tech startups that wish to participate must apply by Aug. 1 and NAR will announce the selected participants on Aug. 8.
On Aug. 29, participants will compete with live demos in front of summit attendees and a panel of judges will ask questions and give feedback. The winner will receive “thousands of dollars in cash and prizes,” NAR said on its website.
In February, Goldberg said NAR was in active discussions with three of the four FANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google), but Wednesday the trade group declined to comment on whether anything came of those discussions and whether any of those companies will have a presence at the iOi Summit.
NAR declined to comment on how the iOi Summit would be different from its Tech Edge events, which operate monthly in different cities, including one held in Los Angeles two weeks before the iOi Summit and one held in Chandler, Arizona, two weeks after it.
