As a young boy growing up, I used to envision myself in the cartoon Speedracer in a red jumpsuit or as Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder. Of course, I was neither an animated cartoon character nor a Hollywood heartthrob and hence ended up in real estate. However, I have been given an opportunity to relive that boyhood dream and you can as well. Come out to our first ever CCIM/SIOR Challenge. On April 3rd at F1 in Braintree we are going to face off and we need you to come out and race with us. Food, fun and networking are all on the race agenda so make sure to visit www.neccim.com to sign up and get all of your racing details. We also need a strong pit crew to help us with the food and drink so make sure to sign up today. Maybe I won't end up racing like Fast and the Furious but hopefully I can out lap Herbie the Love Bug.
In other CCIM news I want to congratulate the 35 or so students who went through the CI Intro course with instructor Joe Larkin. The CI Intro course is a great base for anyone who is in the commercial real estate field. Not only did the class get a chance to review indepth topics such as IRR and NPV, they also had a chance to be in Boston on St. Patty's day. Both of those I am sure were good times.
If you missed the intro course or would like a more in-depth course, look to May 5-9th when we are having our CI 101 Course, which is the first foundation course for CCIM. From there you can take 102, 103 and 104. Full info. on the CCIM program can be found on www.ccim.com.
Finally special thanks to our market update panelists who put on a great presentation to a sold out house at the Woburn Marriott on the 6th of March. Wayne Spiegel from NAI Hunneman covered industrial, Chris Angelone of CBRE/N. E. covered retail, Kristin Blount reviewed office and Jim McCaffrey discussed investment sales. Speakers like this make it easy to work as the president of this organization. Their attention to detail in the past year and their look ahead, gave us all incite on where markets have been and where they are going.

Chris Norwood, president of the N.E.CCIM chapter and director for NAI Norwood Group, Bedford, N.H.