Thursday, June 29, 2006

Conference Time

The past two days have been filled with conferencing at the North Raleigh Hilton. We had 201 people sign up and probably 180 or so in attendance which was a great crowd and the largest ever for our conference. It was much better than I anticipated going in and it seemed like most people enjoyed it, especially the property managers that usually don't get to do stuff like that.

My session went well and it was almost on autopilot so I didn't have to do much, though I had several complaints about the architects being kind of boring. It was intersting to learn how much costs have increased the last two to three years in the construction industry and actually hearing about two almost indentical projects three years apart made a big impression on folks. For example, in 2002 an apartment complex was built for $48,000/unit and in 2005 the same exact project on a very similar site increased to $65,000/unit or so; a pretty big jump in a few years and it's only gotten worse since last year.

Last night my boss, a co-worker, and I took three developers from a very large non-profit we've started working with out to dinner at Michael Dean's and we all had some great seafood. They seemed very appreciative and it was good to get to know them. I like the wining and dining, you get to enjoy great food and meet some new people. It's also good practice for my conversational skills.

Today was the annual property manager's game show which was modeled after Family Feud. It was very entertaining and a great way to wrap up the conference. I was going to post a few pics below but Blogger is being stubborn so here they are in gallery form: Selected Conference Photos.

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