My Brief Nostalgia on Inman Conferences

As a consultant in the real estate technology industry, we go to a lot of conferences each year. The time leading up to a conference is always very busy for us. We leverage conferences to meet perspective clients, and deliver work to our existing clients. The effectiveness of having 8 to 10 “in-person” meetings per day is über-efficient.  Conferences are the great gathering places of the industry.

I was trying to think back to my first Inman Conference – it must have been sometime in the 2002 – 2004 era. Barry Diller was buying companies like crazy and selling leads through LendingTree. Everyone loved him (excuse me while I clear my throat). Regardless of how you feel about buying leads (it is still being done today – but it is called “online advertising”), Barry’s passion and vision for connecting consumers with real estate professionals was genuine – but his model was seemingly distasteful. He was joined by Reply!, NextTag, Homegain, ServiceMagic, and others. Yet what was really cool, was the ability to engage Diller on a personal level in an intimate setting.

Around the same time, I met Steve Ozonian. He was working for Bank of America then. He shared his observations of a disjointed industry, ripe for consolidation. I admire Steve a lot – his beliefs were as true then as they are true now.