Mishcon de Reya: Mishcon de Reya Real Estate department host proptech seminar with Property Week, Leverton and KPMG
Property Week TechBytes - Big Data opportunities and threats
Mishcon de Reya TECHBYTES
Nick Doffman
Partner and Head of Real Estate, Mishcon de Reya
Today we welcome Property Week who are hosting the first in a series of seminars on TechBytes where we are playing our part in co-sponsoring along with Leverton and KPMG. The idea is to share knowledge of all things which are of a technical nature relevant to the property industry.
Woutter Truffino
CEO, Holland Con Tech & Prop Tech
Companies need to start working with prop tech, that’s the start and then you see that the smart companies will add different kind of prop techs together to start gaining new business. Just for instance, big data with artificial intelligence or IOT together with probably maybe 3D printing or all kinds of analysis. So the companies that can stick together a couple of technologies and create new business with that, they are going to be the winners of tomorrow.
You think innovation will change really, really, really really fast, but in the next ten years you probably underestimate the change that is possible. The technology is out there, there are a lot of new opportunities, do you dare to take them?
Panel
We are here today to have a look and have a discussion around data opportunities and threats.
Panel
The fact that we are actually having big data seminars I think says it all, because we are not there yet.
Mark Bruno
Managing Director, Datscha
We are many years behind other sectors like finance, but there has been a change in the last nine/twelve months and I think people are starting to embrace it now.
Richard Belgerave
Head of Europe, Leverton
I think the industry is waking up. I think big data analytics are there but I think everyone has been talking about the data gap i.e. do we have good quality data, do we have standardised data. Probably not. But I think the big challenge really is finding people that can bridge the two together so that is data sciences, that is people that understand or are employed or responsible for really understanding what questions businesses want to answer.
Dr Clump Chatkupt
Founder and CEO, PlaceMake.io
When you think about it, real estate and just about every other industry is essentially concerned with a signal detection. The better you are at exploiting data to identify hidden patterns and signals, the more successful you will be.
Panel
If there is any fear that we might see, there’s a fear on the side of implementation and there’s a fear on whether projects will be successful or not.
Panel
Talking about big data, I think we’ve come to the conclusion that we all need to get our data in order in-house and make sure that’s in a functioning manner.
Woutter Truffino
CEO, Holland Con Tech & Prop Tech
There’s a room full of people out there and that everybody is into, willing to listen, willing to adapt to new technology and willing to make some changes.
Mishcon de Reya
You’ve got to get started now. You experiment and you build, experiencing something it will stand you in great stead in three, six, twelve months’ time.
Mishcon de Reya TECHBYTES
Property Week TechBytes - Elevator pitch judging panel
Sam Zawadzki
Co-Founder and CEO at Property Technology
The property industry is a huge industry, but it can struggle to take on new technologies and new changes. Everyone is so busy running their businesses that it can be hard for them to find the time to research and understand and listen to new opportunities. Over the next couple of years we will see the technologies that are really beneficial for the property industry, they’ll shine through and I think there’ll be some big new brand names created in the next couple of years that will help the industry modernise and provide much better customer service across all aspects.
Wouter Truffino
CEO, Holland Con Tech & Prop Tech
The biggest question that start-up have right now is to gain new business. If you have a good plan, money is always there, is ready and waiting for you.
Mishcon de Reya
We’ve got four property tech companies that are going to come up on to stage and they are going to pitch their business and what they do to a panel of judges. So I am going to call up out first start-up which is Orbital Witness and invite to the stage Will.
Will
Orbital Witness
Now everyone knows that in the buying and selling of properties lawyers are heavily involved to identify transactional risks to their clients and to help understand the legal rights and obligations pertaining to this property.
Mishcon de Reya
Start-up number 2 is Hops Analytics and here is Owen.
Owen
Hops Analytics
We have invented and created a new technology for pedestrian analytics and people counting and enables retailers or property owners to measure the performance of their assets and therefore to improve it.
Mishcon de Reya
Start-up number 3 is Converge and here is Tom.
Tom
Converge
I’m going to try and explain to you why we built a system that monitors the real time strength gain of concrete.
Mishcon de Reya
So last, but by no means least, we’ve got Philip and Brendan from Burotech.
Philip and Brendon
Burotech
I’m sure it feels like digitalisation has permeated through every element of our world and industry at the moment. However research suggests that it is anything but and the value chain is about to be fundamentally changed in the industry as a whole.
Mishcon de Reya
Judges please put the name of the person you think has the most potential to interrupt the real estate industry into an envelope.
So, let me invite Tom up and come and receive your prize. Well done.
Nick Kirby
Managing Associate, Mishcon de Reya
I think today shows with the number of different industries that came along to the event that actually everyone is talking about it now. Everyone is interested in prop tech and people really want to see how they can use prop tech to transform their business.
Andy Teacher
MD, Blackstock Consulting
Today was dynamic, it was fresh and the output from it are clearly businesses that are doing stuff and that was really great to see.
Mark Bruno
Managing Director, Datscha UK
There is still a long way to go, but I think everyone is starting to pull in the same direction and it was great to see from the start-up competition the number of new companies starting to look at opportunities for technology in the property sector.
Susan Freeman
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
We managed to get together a really great variety of people from across the industry and from outside the industry so engendering lots of new ideas and things to, you know, think about and we are really looking forward to working on the next one.
Mishcon de Reya
Mishcon de Reya
Property Week TechBytes - Cybersecurity, The Hacking Threat
Nick West
Chief Strategy Officer, Mishcon de Reya
The way that we see technology really begins with the fact that technology is changing the world. So to think that we, as a law firm, are immune to those trends is just nonsense. It’s important for us that we can continue to serve our clients well and they expect us to be able to deliver services better, faster.
Nick Kirby
Managing Associate, Mishcon de Reya
We can use machine learning tools to help us analyse documents more quickly and we can change the way we collect information so that we can deliver it to clients more quickly so that they can make better decisions faster on the information that we hold for them.
Susan Freeman
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Being able to look at the innovation side of data and talk about that, then look at the security concerns around cybersecurity and hacking which is, you know, a big issue for all of us. You know really get people thinking.
Audience
How serious is the cybersecurity threat and is it escalating?
Panel
The reason you’re all here, as you’ve said, and you’ve all been here 10 years ago, is that it is serious. People are increasingly recognising it is serious. You know we are reaching a stage there will be no area of any sector that isn’t potentially vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Panel
And it’s not a lost cause. The opportunities to secure and innovate the way that we secure things are also increasing at a rate.
Panel
What used to be a fraud often carried out when you were sending letters, is now carried out as a fraud carried out via emails. I think the property sector is particularly vulnerable to that kind of intermediary fraud, but also in the, you know, when we look at the internet are things, we look at digitally connected buildings, building management systems, these kind of areas, that’s an area where the technology is poorly undisturbed never mind the security piece of it.
Andy Teacher
MD, Blackstock Consulting
Given that so many services are coming on line, there is such a greater pool of risk out there. There is a chain of risk that opens up every time you have an independent contractor doing the air conditioning for example. He can be hacked, that can open up your systems and I think there is a lack of awareness really with companies around almost this Swiss cheese of risk.
We are all moving, especially in commercial real estate, to putting more and more data into systems and then imagine for a second if that got attacked but actually it might just be that data gets encrypted then you get held to ransom where you can’t get that data anymore and suddenly that affects everybody.
Richard Belgrave
Head of Europe, Leverton
The industry just has to be careful. There are many anecdotes about businesses that have been on big data journeys that have failed because they haven’t really prepared properly, and that’s the really biggest takeaway.
There is this massive opportunity actually to transform IT. If you haven’t changed your technology for 20/30 years, what a fantastic time to try and reap some of the benefits of that change.
Nick Kirby
Mishcon de Reya
Today shows with the number of people from different industries that came along to the event that actually everyone is talking about it now. Everyone is interested in prop tech and people really want to see how they can use prop tech to transform their business.
Mishcon de Reya