So what trends will impact real estate? My friend Jim Young likes to ask rhetorically, "Do you want to be Southwest or United?" Young believes that the biggest changes in the future will affect operations. He highlights three: Mobile Technology (e.g., wireless connectivity to office systems), Job Re-classification (e.g., outsourcing and centralizing), and Building Automation (e.g., energy management via the Internet).

While owners and operators may derive huge benefits from more efficient building management, most individual brokers fly below the radar of "business processes." A broker's success depends directly on developing what I like to call personal business relationships. To many brokers, technology is an unpleasant distraction.

Yes, e-mail drives all of us a little crazy, yet we can't live without it. Yes, we're overwhelmed with information, yet we often cannot find the right answer. When is technology friction and when is it grease? After my presentation, we had a fun discussion about the right balance in our lives. It's an intensely personal choice, and there's no one correct answer. Thank goodness.

Announcement... Next year Jim Young and I will collaborate at Realcomm to present a discussion on trends affecting the industry (including brokers!). Stay tuned for further details on Realcomm, San Francisco, June 3-4, 2004.

--Peter Pike