Program Overview

Realcomm first introduced AI to the real estate industry at Realcomm | IBcon 2016, when a reporter named Cade Metz shared his observation of Korea’s 18-time World Go Champion being defeated by Google’s AI machine, AlphaGo. At the time, the real estate industry wasn’t paying much attention.

Enter ChatGPT. Over the last few months, a global obsession has begun. From dire warnings from its creators to AI-generated art, music and business intelligence, the world is chasing the potential of this new technology. It seems clear AI will have a profound impact on our industry, touching everything from market and portfolio analysis to AI-generated cyber-attacks. This segment will showcase three industry relevant demonstrations of this powerful and somewhat controversial new technology.

This segment will focus on innovation from a corporate campus perspective. Walmart, a people-led, tech-powered omnichannel retailer with a mission to help people save money and live better, continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy, and employment opportunity. Located in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart's new home office campus will sit on roughly 350 acres of land and include ~3.9 million square feet of new office and amenity building space.

Led by Cindi Marsiglio, SVP, Corporate Real Estate, the team is shaping the new campus in a way that is connected to the community, weaving in the natural beauty of Northwest Arkansas, focusing on Walmart's roots, and digital transformation to attract the future generations of talent.

The United States has long enjoyed a leading competitive advantage when it comes to emerging and critical technologies. The modern technology revolution started in the mid 1960s in Silicon Valley with organizations like Hewlett Packard and Stanford University and has enjoyed being the epicenter of innovation for 60+ years. That began changing over 20 years ago when large nation states began implementing a strategy that would look to unseat the United States as a global leader in technology.

This strategy was formulated on rapid intellectual property theft, aggressive government subsidies and a comprehensive high technology education campaign. Leading experts on the topic speculate that if the current trajectory continues, industries such as Artificial Intelligence, Advanced 5G+ Communications, Quantum Computing and others, could be overtaken by large, non-democratic nation states by 2030 and the results could be disastrous.

Liza Tobin, Senior Director of the Economy for the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a new organization formed by Eric Schmidt, former China Director for the National Security Council and China specialist for the US Government and Aaron Brown former Army Ranger, CIA senior Operations Officer, and Co-Founder of 2430 Group, a nonprofit and consortium of companies defending the US public and private sectors against foreign economic espionage, will discuss the growing threat to the economy and national security as it relates to the built environment, and the risks of digital tracking and technical surveillance.

In today's technology marketplace, with an abundance of options, overlap of capabilities and things changing at an unprecedented speed, digitally transforming an organization is no easy task. The most successful projects usually represent a collaborative environment between client and vendor in which both partner to create the best result. The partnership culture allows for best practices to be identified with a full understanding of current and future trends. Altrio will bring experience and insight to this very important topic.

Welcome and introductions, Day Two.

IBcon Smart Building Best Practice Showcase
The 12th annual Smart Building Best Practice Showcase returns to Realcomm | IBcon. For this super-session, we've assembled some of the world’s most progressive and successful implementations of smart buildings, portfolios and campuses. These projects represent the next generation of open, interoperable, integrated and IP-centric buildings.

In this showcase setting, attendees will have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with representatives for each project who will share their strategies and address topics such as energy conservation, operational efficiency, enhanced occupant experience, sustainability achievement and financial optimization.

Realcomm Process Automation Showcase
There are myriad processes and prodigious amounts of data involved in developing, operating and transacting commercial real estate.Although we have increasingly sophisticated applications and platforms that help us collect, format and report on that data, we often still need to resort to manual data entry and manipulation to get the required results.

In our second Realcomm Process Automation Showcase super-session, we’ve assembled some of the world’s most creative and innovative examples of commercial real estate process automation. The case studies you see here will enable you to learn to shave thousands of hours from existing workflows. In this showcase setting, attendees will have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with the technology architects for each unique automation project who share what they did and how they did it.

Despite many advantages of hybrid workplaces, such as increased access to remote talent, hybrid models also have the potential to reveal and exacerbate inequity in the workplace. As many professionals are no longer commuting into the office five days a week, technology plays a central role in keeping employees connected and creating a company culture that supports both in-office and mobile workers. This valuable session will address creating an equitable, enjoyable and valuable collaborative experience for both in-office and remote employees and meeting participants. Innovating solutions to creating collaboration opportunities and equity in hybrid environments will be showcased.

As we transition to blend operational technology with information technology for our commercial real estate portfolios, we need to make sure that we’re aware of opportunities to embrace and apply alternate approaches to the smart building technology stack by looking outside of the traditional industry supply chain. With a vast array of open-source products like IBM’s NodeRED, InfluxDB, Grafana and Github, along with a global community of developers, this panel session will discuss the pros and cons of going open beyond just the protocol uncovering a real-world example of fast, cheap and secure access to data.

5G technology is designed for forward capability and supporting future communication needs that seem to be increasing exponentially. As of today, 5G and private networks promise to enhance mobile broadband, mission-critical communications and support the ever-expanding IoT, thus significantly improving network performance inside buildings. But how does it play into your in-building wireless strategy and how do DAS and CBRS fit into the picture? The panel will address some of the most critical questions surrounding 5G DAS and CBRS, highlighting their impact on the building environment and the potential for your portfolios. Technology reviews, timing, financial considerations, owner investments, carrier involvement and more will be covered in this important session.

The future of real estate is driven by technology. Venture capitalists work with some of the most exciting start-ups in the space, often identifying new trends and opportunities for innovation. In this session, top VC firms share their insight on trends in the built environment. Representing venture capitalists that support early-stage to more mature start-ups, the panel will provide their take on technologies that have the potential to reshape the way we design, build, operate and experience buildings. From current workplace and space demand debates to the use of artificial intelligence and experience-focused designs, this session will address some of the most controversial trends.

A modern data and analytics infrastructure is critical for building owners and operators to optimize operations, minimize energy use, reduce their carbon footprint and meet tenants' dynamic needs while complying with an ever-changing regulatory environment. In this session, we will hear from NYSERDA's Real-Time Energy Management Program and the technology innovators using artificial intelligence for automating building systems and energy demand with real-time occupancy data, and the property owners, Rudin and Cadillac Fairview, who have implemented these solutions. Discussion points will include grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) as a resource for the grid (and as a resiliency measure for buildings), messaging protocols, case studies and more.

Digital twins are a digital representation of a physical building with a data overlay providing real-time data on building performance. These complex models ingest thousands of data points on a unified platform to offer visualization and integrated analysis. Planning for digital twins at the concept and design stage of the build process allows for simulations that can assess different scenarios, saving time and construction cost. Throughout the lifecycle, a building’s performance can be measured and modeled against other similar structures, but also against its own potential – for continual commissioning, process improvement and financial optimization. This instructive session will explore the digital twin’s part in overall smart building strategy and share leading-edge case studies.

Faced with a global IT and engineering workforce shortage, many real estate organizations have been struggling with employee retention, staffing or skills training. This workshop will provide detailed instructions on applying smart facilities workforce best practices to your organization. The facilitated session will introduce a framework that will allow you to assess your existing workforce so you are aware of skill gaps and needs within your organization, determine work capacity requirements to enable you to execute current work requirements, and augment and staff your team to the correct level for optimal operational readiness so that you can support future work requirements.

The pandemic triggered owners and operators to increase situational awareness. Now our playbooks for return-to-work and school emphasize Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). Why? Because peer-reviewed research concludes that air direction and airflow patterns play a key role to prevent cross-infection between occupants. They also have cognitive effects on adults and children, such as decreased absenteeism in K-6 students and improved mental clarity, engagement, test scores, and well-being. Advances in IoT sensors, real-time and predictive analytics, and intelligent building management systems enable meaningful KPI monitoring. This results in higher-confidence decision-making for Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). This interactive session will highlight lessons learned from implementations in elementary schools in North America during and post-pandemic.

Advancements in wireless technology have fundamentally changed the way individuals and societies communicate and engage. While WiFi has been around for 15 years, WiFi 6, the most recent iteration of the WiFi network protocol, promises to be faster and more secure. As owners and developers develop or improve their communications infrastructure, managed WiFi solutions that enable organizations to outsource tasks involved in designing, procuring, installing, maintaining, monitoring and/or upgrading a WiFi network need to be assessed. This session will highlight the benefits of managed WiFi solutions, touch on other communication protocols (such as LoRaWan, NFC and BLE), and address how it can integrate into a comprehensive infrastructure for voice, data and IoT.

As diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging – collectively known as DEIB – receive more attention, organizations in the traditional real estate industry are focusing on their workforces and opportunities to enhance workplace environments. Defining and developing a comprehensive DEIB initiative involves more than just policies and headcounts and relies heavily on data collection/analysis and a compliance strategy that aligns with business objectives. This instructive session will assess the role of technology and innovation in creating an inclusive DEIB strategy and successful examples of DEIB strategies in the industry will be presented.

The United States and specifically, Silicon Valley, has held the top spot in technology and innovation globally for over 50 years. This dominance has led to exceptional prosperity and the ability to lead the world in a positive and democratic way. Over the last 30 years, China, Russia and other more authoritarian governments have significantly increased their technological capabilities and could potentially surpass the United States and the West in emerging strategic technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, 5G and other advanced wireless technologies, quantum computing and others. This breakout session will follow the General Session discussion on the topic and will allow attendees the opportunity engage in the conversation.

As digital buildings become more widespread, open data standards have arisen in an effort to establish a common framework to improve data quality, and streamline data access for efficiency, flexibility and interoperability. While in the late 1990s and early 2000s much of the Building Automation System industry has coalesced around BACnet, progress towards an open data model for buildings has been more convoluted. But with the rise in popularity of Brick Schema, Project Haystack, RealEstateCore and ASHRAE 223P, the industry now has a solid foundation of open-source semantic models on which to build. Join us for the FIRST EVER live panel bringing together all the major building data standards to discuss how they will underpin future growth in the industry!

Identifying, accessing, exchanging, and making use of high quality, reliable data has never been more important within the smart building environment. However, significant differences in how data is identified and made ready for the different stakeholders who use it continues to present a challenge. Achieving a common dataset for all users enables better business decisions, reduces errors and helps ensure the overall integrity and governance of the data. This process is intricate and labor-intensive and has given rise to an expanding data-as-a-service market. Outsourcing data management frees up time to concentrate on the core business of operating and managing a building, automates efficiencies and reduces overhead costs. This session will explore data-as-a-service and its place in an overall data strategy and data management plan.

For optimum operational efficiency and increased asset value, one must start with the foundation. A common network infrastructure that is fully connected to include all systems is still just a dream for many struggling with disparate, vendor-specific, legacy systems and equipment. Strategists must also determine how to integrate evolving telecommunications requirements with different coverage options. Often, they even have to educate vendors on how their systems will perform on one converged network. This session will assess the challenges in achieving a comprehensive base building network and pinpoint how to leverage current innovations.

Once the basic communications layer in a building is established, it's time to address plans for the BAS and IoT platform. Does the data reside in local closed environments? Is it sent to the cloud? Can it be shared or integrated into other applications? Should it be a single stack or part of an open, integrated point solution ecosystem? Who owns the data? Is it cyber secure? Can we safely and securely affect command and control? As we plan the next generation of smart, connected, high-performance buildings, the capability and type of BOS becomes even more critical. This comprehensive session addresses all relevant issues on the topic.