YASC DC Day Two

Highlights, humor, and more

By Leah Etling on May 23, 2012 in News | 6 Comments

We’re back for another great day of learning and insight at YASC DC 2012. Everyone seems very excited for another full day of training and opportunities to meet with Yardi experts and fellow real property professionals. Miss any of our Day One highlights? Check out the full Tuesday recap.

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to break away from the busy conference schedule to check out some of the beautiful Washington D.C. neighborhoods right outside the Hilton. I took a quick run around Dupont Circle and over to Georgetown early this morning, and happened upon the Old Stone House, which was built in 1766 and is the only surviving pre-Revolutionary War building in the capital.

The house, which was built by Christopher Layman, sits on one of the first 80 lots that were surveyed in the Port of Georgetown in 1751. 260 years later, it’s down the block from an American Apparel. This simple two story home, with a beautiful garden in the back, is a great example of how real estate is one of those universal points of interest, no matter what industry vertical you represent or where you may travel. What’s the most interesting building you’ve seen in D.C. so far? The blocks around Dupont Circle are comprised of beautiful older homes with stately architecture. They’re interspersed with embassies representing countries from around the world.

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8:30 a.m. – Heading into our first round of sessions this morning, there’s a very diverse selection of offerings to choose from, many focusing on solving particular technical challenges relevant to your vertical. In the “Evaluating Your Business Processes,” Yardi Atlanta GM Don Rogers is leading an open flow discussion that aims to brainstorm solutions to participants’ unique business problems. So far the conversation has centered around correspondence tools to communicate more effectively with clients and prospects and within the home office.

As you’re planning your day today, be sure to plan on not skipping lunch. Rumor has it that our friendly emcee Bryant Shoemaker will be leading a trivia quiz of sorts with some great giveaways if you can come up with the right answers to his question. Sounds like it’ll be a pretty entertaining meal. And speaking of entertainment – did you hear that there’s going to be a special performance at dinner tonight? “Cirque du Soleil style entertainment” is the word on Twitter – now that sounds very cool!

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9 a.m. – How do you monitor the performance of your assets at the property level? One client with 800 properties utilizes a “property scorecard” that reviews on-site management teams, portfolio-wide, each quarter. Scores are based on a variety of indicators, including meeting budget targets, accounting accuracy, reporting timeliness, leasing results, and more. Properties can earn awards for top performances. What incentives do you use to motivate your site managers to great performances?

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9:30 a.m. – When it comes to going green, how are you handling investor statements? This vital quarterly information sharing can be a huge paper drain. Best strategies for moving this process to an online-only one are being discussed in the Evaluating Your Business Processes roundtable. Some tips? First, have plenty of advance lead time and advise your investors that the change to online-only reports is coming. Send them a portal link and log in with your past reports already available for them to view. If they want to continue to receive paper reports, send them an opt-in form that they’ll need to send back to you to continue with a quarterly mailing. What other tips can you offer to streamline this process? Orion for Sharepoint offers great business solutions to address these challenges.

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10 a.m. – It’s interesting to see what technology the real estate industry’s technologists have brought along to YASC. We’ve been casually observing what devices people are using to communicate with the home office, take notes in class, and distract themselves with during breaks. From the smartphone perspective, iPhones are far and away the most popular. We’d estimate that we’ve seen up to 70 percent of conference attendees on an iPhone. Androids follow, then Blackberries. As for note taking, good old fashioned pen and paper still trumps a device during meetings, but we’ve seen netbooks, smaller laptops, and at least 4-5 iPads per meeting. Here’s guessing that by October’s YASC in Santa Barbara, the number of iPads showing up for note taking will have doubled. Interesting to note that we’re not seeing any competing tablet devices being used.

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10:30 a.m. – Just a couple of funny “heard in the halls” quotes that we had to share. Just now: Think your technology is lagging behind? One YASC attendee jokes she’s “still using typewriters, and carrier pigeons,” to get her job done.  Are you not only your company’s designated IT professional, but expected to fix the office coffeemaker when it goes on the fritz? “Everything that has a power cord, I get called on,” said one IT manager. That reminds of one of our recent blog profiles. John Caputo, in our Glen Head, NY office, fixes everything from his coworkers’ iPhones to their cars.

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12 p.m. – Speaking of technology trends, one of the best roundtables we’ve been to so far at YASC was the new technology roundtable. A standing room only crowd, mostly IT experts, threw down tough questions and trending advice about their best practices for residential and commercial property management.

How are you managing your mobile devices? Many companies are moving to the “Bring Your Own Device” alternative – and some are offering stipends for employees who purchase their own phones and then bring them to the office for work use. However, there are some drawbacks – like when your leasing agents spend their day listening to Pandora or playing on Facebook. Many companies are instituting strict controls on how those BYOD phones and tablets can be used.

“If you bring your device into our environment, you’ve got to play by our rules. We’re pretty evil. Angry Birds is history, dude,” said one manager. Some employees are compromising by carrying two phones, one personal and one professional.

Another topic was how to handle the payments for employee-purchased phones. One company has discovered an alternative to monthly expense reports – AT&T’s corporate copay plan allows companies to contribute a monthly stipend to pay for the employees’ phone bill, but they get a bill for the rest. Several companies said they have turned away from Blackberry as an option for their mobile communications.

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1 p.m. – We collected some great feedback at lunch on what YASC participants are enjoying about conference so far. Here’s a few quotes direct from the mouths of our Yardi clients: