The SIOR Fall National Convention was held from Wednesday, October 29th to Saturday, November 1st at the Hilton Minneapolis located downtown Minneapolis. Approximately 450 SIORs and guests attended. SIOR held its Opening General Session on Thursday, October 30th with Keith Ferrazzi who is the Founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight. The topic was Relationships for Revenue Growth and sponsored by Spectrus Real Estate Group. Ferrazzi is one of the rare individuals who discovered the essential formula for making his way to the top - a powerful and balanced combination of marketing acumen and networking savvy. Both Forbes and Inc. magazines have designated him one of the world's most "connected" individuals. He provides leaders with advanced strategic consulting and training services to increase company sales and enhance personal careers.
On Thursday afternoon there were four concurrent sessions; Dealing in a Recessionary Market; Wall Street and Commercial Real Estate; Business Development and Cold Calling; Sustainability/Green and US Trade Flow Dynamics: Identifying Warehousing Paths of Growth. The scheduled speakers include Everett Greer of Bank of America, Peter Quinn of Cushman & Wakefield, John Patelski of A. Epstein and Sons, and Jon DeCesare, World Class Logistics Consulting, Inc.
On Friday, October 31st, the General Session was held at 9 a.m. and featured Ray Zurzwell, the principal developer and inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print to speech reading machine for the blind, the first text to speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large vocabulary speech recognition. He has been described as "the restless genius."
Friday morning followed with Concurrent Specialty Practice Boards; Corporate Services and Distribution & Logistics/Tenant Representation. The Friday afternoon concurrent sessions included: Synergistic Sales Success; Time Saving Technology Best Practices and Taking the Risk Out of Working with Brokers in Europe: Enhancing the Relationship with your Client. Speakers included: David Blanchard, NAI Global, Angela West, CB Richard Ellis, Kevin Mersh, NB Real Estate, Frederic Sneider, NB Real Estate.
The Saturday morning program included: Brokerage Management; Investment and Land. The General Session featured the Annual Review and Forecast delivered by Peter Ricchiuti, assistant dean at Tulane University and the finance professor. He served a successful career on Wall Street and assistant state treasurer and CIO for the State of Louisiana. He shared his informative and entertaining perspective on financial markets, the importance of proper diversification, and the cynical nature of both stocks and investment sectors.