Fast forward to the week before Inman in 2009. The team was busy putting the finishing touches on a project we coined “Next Generation Real Estate Brokerage,” which Sherry Chris unveiled as the next generation project on the main stage of the conference.. Over the last year, there have been dozens and dozens of blogs, hundreds of Tweets and a countless number of conversations in the industry about what the future of the real estate brokerage model should and shouldn’t be. This is exactly what we had hoped for.

There are several highlights from 2009. One of which was attending with several of our franchisees. In twelve months we had grown from zero to over 2000 agents. We were on our way to fulfilling the vision of the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brand.

And here we are the week before Inman 2010. We have lots of great stuff planned this year. We continue to stay committed to sharing and learning with our colleagues in the industry.

We start the week off at the first ever Agent Reboot on Monday. Sherry will be discussing life style branding strategies for agents.

I’m honored to be facilitating the Brokers Summit on Tuesday morning. We have gathered some of the brightest and most innovative operators in the business together for a morning that promises to be full of ideas and insights.

Sherry will hit the main stage on Wednesday as part of a Leaders panel and again on Thursday to unveil the next chapter in Next Generation Brokerage. We’ve been working hard on bringing some new and interesting perspectives on the future of the industry.

In between all that, we’ll be hanging out at our booth in the trade show, in the Premium Lounge and if you can’t find us at either of those locations search for the nearest Starbucks! We’ll need the caffeine.

We hope to see you there. But if you can’t be there in person, please follow along with us here, on Twitter.com/BHGRealEstate and on Facebook.com/BHGRealEstate.

In other news, online video advertising has shown tremendous growth lately, as 94 percent of ad agencies plan to increase spending in the medium this year. This is perhaps a smart move, as another survey showed online video ads have a 65 percent general recall, as compared to 46 percent for TV ads. Considering online is often less expensive and can allow for specific audience targeting, it could be a good opportunity for some of you.

As with all things, the key to social networking is consistency. Even CEO’s will need to know how to use this growing form of communication effectively by 2025. According to Forrester Research, no excuses CEOs. For those of you who consider yourself social media savvy, how do you keep up with it?

In the past, I have talked a lot about the baby boomer and echo boomer demographics. But what about the middle boomer? The demographic, aged 52-58 years, has not yet felt “old” age set in and still has enormous spending power: one-third of the group has achieved or is on track to achieve their retirement goals and another one-third is only somewhat behind on their retirement goals, given the recession. For those of you in retirement states, what are you doing to attract and cater to this important, yet often neglected, group?