T3 Tech Summit

I had a chance to attend the T3 Tech Summit in Newport Beach, California. A few people have asked me online how the event was so I thought I would do a quick post on my experience.

All in all Jack and team did a great job and would definitely want to attend again.

The event was held a the Vea hotel in Newport Beach, CA. The hotel was recently remodeled beautifully. I believe Marriott still manages the property but it was more of a resort vibe than the old Marriott that stood there. This is a signature of T3 events, where they like to hold them in upscale and sometimes unique properties. The best thing was it was only about 15 minutes from my house. : )

The event kicked off on October 31st with a short keynote presentation and a welcome reception. I think that may have hurt them a bit (along with being just a week before NAR Annual), I had to leave the welcome reception early to go spend Halloween with the kiddos, so I’m sure a lot of people either didn’t attend or arrived the day after due to the conflict.

I really enjoyed the keynote. The speaker was Dr. Ayanna Howard. She was at NASA’s JPL working on the Mars rover and is now Dean at the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. I think this is also a trademark of T3 events, really unique keynote speakers. I sense someone over there is a space nerd too, so loving that thread. Dr. Howard was super smart and spoke about AI.

They had a bunch of other speakers. I really enjoyed Wendy Purvey, President, and COO of Pacific Sothebys International. Wendy has been in real estate for over 30 years and did a great job explaining where brokers’ headspace is at now and how companies selling technology should be approaching them in this market.

I also enjoyed Jimmy Mackin from Curaytor. His presentation about the metrics from high-producing teams and how brokers can win by duplicating Zillow (I’m paraphrasing here) was amazing.

There was also a mix of speakers from T3 Sixty highlighting their services (another staple of T3 events), which feel a bit long, but hey, you gotta pay the bills!

One of the features T3 Sixty was highlighting before the event was the “experience rooms’. Basically these were rooms with large displays. The “experience” part was dependent on the vendor, so they were a bit hit or miss. But I do appreciate T3’s goal of bringing innovation and a new experience to your standard vendor alley (pardon the pun).

They also gave out the “EXHIBIT” design awards for brokerages. They split the country into 3 parts, West, Mid-West, and East Coast. I was less impressed with the choices here. For instance, I don’t care what you show me there is no way Baird & Warner beat out West + Main for best brokerage design.

I loved, loved, loved the “pitch battles”. Three vendors (per product/service segment) got up on stage and had a limited time to pitch their product/service. Then a group of three judges of industry peeps (Sean Wheeler, CTO of Lone Wolf is pictured in the middle seat) gave their feedback and favorite along with audience voting.

I didn’t get a chance to attend day 3 of the conference, the fuel pump in my VW Beatle failed on the way to the event (long story).

During the event I caught Stefan watching intently from about the 4th row, stage right. I can imagine him taking mental notes, and his other thoughts having commanded the stage for so long. I’m sure more than once he would have loved to jump up on the riser himself. But I don’t think you have to worry Stefan. The boys (and girls) are alright.

Thanks again to Jack and Travis and the rest of the T3 Sixty team for their wonderful hospitality and looking forward to next year.