The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR) — the professional industrial and office real estate association — hosted its annual Fall World Conference in Chicago last month.
The international conference drew 950 SIOR members, sponsors, exhibitors, and other industry professionals from 20 different countries to The Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
For the 76th year, top commercial real estate brokers and experts, SIOR leadership and members, and many special guests, gathered to discuss the most pressing and relevant topics facing the real estate industry today.
Major topics of discussion throughout the event included: corporate consolidations and relocations; micro and macro investment trends; threats to and opportunities for brokerage; and capital markets.
The Fall World Conference kicked off with Geoffrey Kasselman, SIOR’s Immediate Past President, officially instating Del Markward as the new SIOR Global President.
“With nearly a thousand of SIOR members and affiliates assembled in Chicago to discuss the latest trends and developments in commercial real estate, business and politics, the 76th annual Fall World Conference further proves SIORs embody the spirit of this organization and serve as community and industry leaders,” said Markward, SIOR’s 2018 Global President.“I could not be more excited, or more proud, to serve as the new President of SIOR, whose members continue to raise the bar for their peers in the real estate industry.”
Special guest speakers included psychologist Amy Cuddy, former senior US Government Counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, who also served as the first ever Special Advisor on Cyberspace Security to the President of the United States, and Jonathan Pearlman, a former executive at Buzzfeed and Google.
Highlights of the special sessions included: Chairman and CEO of KDC Steve Van Amburgh leading an education session on the motivating factors behind corporate consolidations and relocations – the who, what, where, and why – and how the massive shift in corporate ideology is affecting markets around the country; a two-part session led by the MIT Center for Real Estate which examined both macro and micro markets here in the U.S. and selected international markets to see what’s working and what’s not, and uncover new, transferable ideas to make more deals; and former Amazon executive and current Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Colorado State University, Zac Rogers, discussing how technology disruptors impact supply chain decisions and the brokerage community.
“SIOR’s Fall World Conference in Chicago was one of the most well-attended events in this organization’s history,” said Kasselman.
