Over the past dozen years, one of the best things I’ve done on the road is to gather top industry officials around me and have a freeform, on-the-record roundtable of industry issues.
The first one I did was with the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers, who were meeting in Rochester, N.Y., my only chance to visit that Great Lake city. It was a corker of discussion. I only had to ask one question and the brokers talked for two hours straight, animatedly (it made for great photos in Broker magazine, with them waving their hands around for emphasis).
My most recent one was just this week, at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Marketing Conference here in New York. My first question to the group, as it has been for the past four years, was “when are we going to see the return of a private secondary market?”
The consensus: none too soon. By the way, the secondary meeting will be in the same city and same hotel next year, and I thoroughly expect to be asking the same question again then.
Another collaborative road activity I enjoy is meeting with the editorial advisory board for Mortgage Technology magazine. This is not only instructive, but fun, as the guys and gals of our board take their advisory requirements strictly but never so strictly they can’t get off a good zinger or two. Occasionally we will put them on the record but usually it is their private counsel we want and get. We met with them just last month, at MBA’s annual technology conference in Phoenix.
When’s the next one? Probably for our Loss Mit Conference, in Dallas in July. Hot niche, hot topics.
How did I get myself sent to Dallas in July with those 105-degree temperatures? I must have been bad. That’s the only answer I can come up with!
