The REBNY TECH Committee is constituted to solidify and highlight New York City’s role as the nucleus of the global PropTech community. Our mission is to identify problems faced by our industry and highlight digital solutions designed to directly solve these problems. In addition, REBNY TECH assesses gaps in existing solutions and offers thought leadership on how these can be addressed. Many of us, regardless of where we are in our own digital journey, face similar problems and by sharing knowledge we can accelerate this educational process. Our goal is education, to educate REBNY TECH Committee members, the larger REBNY membership as a whole, and the broader PropTech community – encouraging the development of solutions that REBNY members care about.
Looking back on 2020 the committee worked hard to accomplish these goals. A series of articles were published in Connected Magazine under the moniker of REBNY TECH TALKS. In July we discussed the recent action by the FCC to accelerate the deployment of 5G networks in built environments around the country, August brought us a primer by David Rose on Blockchain, Sandy Jacolow educated us in September on the crucial issue of Cyber Security and how our OT networks need security as much as our IT networks. Crystal Fisher and Michael Rudin co-wrote a revealing article on “How To Run a Successful Pilot” in October which was followed by Carlos Valverde’s great piece on how to become the next construction tech unicorn. Looking forward to 2021 we want to focus on procuring renewable energy and carbon accounting, delve more into cyber security and discuss new tools available to both residential and commercial brokerage.
The highlight of our efforts in 2020 were showcased on November 16 and 17th when we held our 2020 PropTech Challenge Demo Day in partnership with Connected Magazine and their virtual event. This was the fourth year in a row that this challenge was held. The goal of this effort was to identify problem sets that PropTech companies could respond to and show REBNY members how these organizations successfully solve the outlined problem sets. Over 50 companies responded to the three categories of Building Operations/Sustainability/Wellness, Design and Construction, and Leasing and Brokerage. Of the 53 responses, 30 were targeted towards operations, 9 to design and construction and the remaining 14 to leasing and brokerage. Problem sets included identifying the best platforms that help owners meet the mandates of LL97, solve IAQ issues and help owners and tenants purchase renewable energy. As we move forward the goal is to create a digital library that REBNY members can access to drill down into these demos and contact the companies that responded. Great work done by Sandy Jacolow, Chris Beach and David Mock on making this all happen.
In April, we will partner with NYSERDA and their Tenant Energy Data Challenge. The goal here is to identify best practices and examples of owners and tenants working together to share data, decrease consumption and the production of carbon. We are excited to highlight this topic as we believe the solution to decreasing our carbon footprint must include owners and our customers working together.
2021 cannot come too soon. The REBNY TECH Committee will continue our mission to educate our members, identify new digital solutions to relevant problems, and bring PropTech companies together to meet the market head on. We are excited about these prospects and extremely excited about strengthening the relationship we have started with Rich Berliner and his fine publication.
