This is the third ‘week before’ Inman Connect that the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate team has prepared for.The 2008 week before Inman was also the week before the official launch of the brand, and the week before welcoming our first franchisee to the network. That was a week I will never forget. I don’t remember sleeping much. What I do remember is it all happened. We launched a website, we launched an intranet site, we launched dozens of tools and services, and we launched a brand via webcast in San Francisco at the Inman Connect conference.

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.