softRealty.com will be attending Inman Connect NYC 2010 (ICNY) as a sponsor in Startup Alley. Our founder and CEO David Carroll will also be featured as a speaker on the topic of Lead Capture. This will be our second time attending Inman Connect (we were fortunate enough to be able to attend San Fran last year).

I think the fact that attendance is up in a down economy verifies that agents and brokers are looking to technology to carry them through these tough times.

Here are a few things that stand out to me on the conference schedule:

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Internet Marketing Workshop (Wednesday)

Keynote Address by Vanessa Fox: Home Buyers are turning to Google first…

I will be interested to see how agents feel about Google Base and see if this topic comes up or if Vanessa will solely focus on SEO and the benefits of optimization.

Sam Sebastian, of Google, will also be on hand Thursday to speak directly to this topic.

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Startup Alley (Wednesday)

The energy in Startup Alley was really strong in San Fran and after looking at the list of folks for NYC, something tells me it will be even better this year.

I am particularly excited to check out Stik.com and agent’s reactions to what they are doing. As popular as facebook has become in such a short time, it will be interesting to see how agents can use their personal relationships to gain an even bigger footprint in that social space using tools like Stik.

With all the familiar faces on Startup Alley, it will be nice to see how technology is progressing within each business. We met entrepreneurs last year who had bar napkins and I will be curious to see if they are back with apps this time around.

Sidenote: United Lane has moved out of Startup Alley and has a booth nearby. I noticed them for the first time in San Fran and as I walked by their booth I proclaimed “That looks like Sketchup on crack!!!”. They got a kick out of that.

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Consumer Empowerment (Thursday)

Max Ventilla, of Aardvark, will address the conference about how buyers and sellers will use the social Web and advanced data models to make decisions. Very interesting topic.

Sidenote: I have been using their app now for about 3 months or so and I have mixed feelings about the usefulness. There are clearly some advantage to being able to connect to people in niche areas of interest but with so many other venues that exist already, I will be interested to see how they set themselves apart even further moving forward. BTW: I like the fun titles they use (Max Ventilla. Zoo Director). We do something very similar (David Carroll, Founder Dude).
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Tech Trend for 2010
Sam Grobart, of the New York Times, will most likely clue us in on what to look for in the coming year as far as gadgetry goes. My guess is that he will focus on the “wireless future”.
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RPR (Realtor Property Resource)

I have far too many questions about what the RPR could mean to the industry…
Brian Boero wrote a great post back in November that sheds some great light on the topic. I am hoping that ICNY will do a good job of explaining how the 900 MLSs will be effected…
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How to Make Leads and Influence People (Thursday)
Our fearless leader @softrealtydude will be on this panel. Need I say more.
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Wrap Up
That about wraps it up. We will most likely be shooting tons of video and talking to great people. Hopefully, we should be able to post that content during the conference but maybe not until right after…;)
From all of us at softRealty: See you in NYC!