What Happened at Valuation Expo?

Valuation Expo 2015 is in the books and because we changed the venue to the East Coast this year, we saw a lot of new faces. For those of you who were not able to join us this year, here is a brief glimpse at some of the events that took place.

Baltimore, MD had some pretty great weather for us, and attendees were able to take in the city on their free time. Many made it to Camden Yards to watch the Orioles play ball and there was a lot of gushing about the food from some of the great Italian restaurants in Little Italy a few blocks away. While everyone had fun outside the conference there was a lot of important work being done in the conference.

On Monday June 28^th we had the Wells Fargo Re-Boot Camp. The talented staff from platinum sponsor Wells Fargo taught appraisers in six separate sessions ranging from “Comment writing and effective communication” to “Comp Selection: making and supporting adjustments”.

The ACI Technology day took place on Monday as well. This series of sessions from platinum sponsor ACI covered different aspects of their new cloud based appraisal platform ACI Sky. On the final day of the Expo they also drew a name of one lucky attendee who won a brand new Quadcopter Drone.

The Collateral Risk Network met for their quarterly meeting. Scott Reuter and William Fall were kind enough to monitor the CRN Council Committee updates in the morning and in the afternoon Peter Wallison author of “Hidden in Plain Sight” spoke. Other CRN speakers included Nanci Weissgold, Peter Christensen, Ed DeMarco, and Lynn Fisher.

On Tuesday June 29^th, keynote speaker Josh Rosner kicked off day two with a bang. Josh is the co-author of NY Times bestseller Reckless Endangerment:  How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Created the Worst Financial Crisis of Our Time. We also had Gerry Kifer of VA, Bob Murphy of Fannie Mae, and Ada Bohorfoush of FHA speak in the morning. In the afternoon Rick Langdon of Wells Fargo was presented with the Valuation Visionary award. In a heartfelt moment, friends and coworkers lined up to tell the crowd about the different ways Rick had affected them and the industry as a whole in his career.

Wednesday July 1st, Jon Forrester, Bill Garber, Barry Shea, Michael Powell and Jim Park spoke on the Regulatory Update panel. In the afternoon we heard from Alan Hummel, Paul Chandler, Tom Allen, Woody Fincham, and Jerry Yurek on the Best Practices panel.

With most of the continuing education finished up we turned to the big excitement of the conference The Appraisal Bee. This year vendors had some absolutely fabulous prizes and some vendors were so generous they gave away multiple prizes. Here is a list of prizes that our sponsors donated and the lucky winner of each prize.

Exhibitor: Prize – Winner
Accurate Group: Pebble Smart Watch – Donna Parrish
Accurity Valuation: Apple Watch – Lisa Gilman
ACI: 1 Full year of ACI Sky for free – Danny Williams
Appraisal Foundation: – $100 gift card – Albert Mattheis
Allterra Online: 39” Vizio LED TV – Dwayne Jackson
Appraisal Insitute: $50 Gift Card – Ellen Andrews
Appraiser Genie: $100 Best Buy Gift Card – Pam Buckley
Appraiser Genie: A second $100 Best Buy Gift Card – Kim Napier
AXIS: $100 Visa Giftcard – John Cirincione
Bradford Software: Video Drone Quadcopter with onboard Camera – Ken DeFeo
Clearbox: 39” Vizio LED TV – John Meyer
Class Appraisal: Leica Disto – Carola Bock
CoesterVMS: Leica Disto, Meter, & Glasses – Tom Allen
DataMaster: $100 Amex Gift Card – Paul Marino
GeoDataPlus: $100 Amex Gift Card – Darryl Andrews
InHouse: Mini Bose Soundlink Speaker – Anthony Cherundo
Intercorp: $100 Staples Gift Card – Diana Meyer
LIA: $50 Amex Gift Card – Dave Statham
Metro-West Appraisal: Leica Disto – Trevor Peters
Narrative1: $50 Amex Gift Card – Elizabeth Damkoehler
Pipeline Pro: $50 Amazon Gift Card – Guy Hallman
Pipeline Pro: 1 year free subscription to Pipeline Pro – Joe Zazzetti
Platinum Data Solutions: $100 Cash – Kathy Turley
Real Wired: 8” Digiland Windows Tablet – Jim Beatty
SFREP: Jawbone Jambox – Danielle Aguiar
Solidifi: 39” Insignia HDTV – Daniel Walsman
Southwest Financial Services: Narrative Clip digital recorder – Jillian White
Treasure Valley Factors: Starbucks Gift Card – Virginia Wycoff
Trimavin: Leica Disto – Chris Kujawa
Trimavin: Sony Camera – Eileen Taylor
Trimavin: $100 Amex Giftcard – Mike Manganaro

We want to thank all of our sponsors and exhibitors who participated this year for donating such fantastic prizes and congratulate all of our winners again.

Make sure you are one of those winners next year and join us in Las Vegas, NV June 13^th– 15^th for Valuation Expo 2016.

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