For the 18th year in a row, I just returned from the annual National Association of Realtors trade show, which this year was held in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The show which is huge - 30,000 plus attendees - can only be held where there are big convention centers along with lots of hotel rooms, so for the last several years this has limited us to Orlando, Las Vegas, New Orleans and San Francisco.

This was very interesting to me as a Realtor, and kudos to both our organization for not canceling the show after the hurricane, and to my peers who showed up in droves, and helped add to the economy of New Orleans.  While our show was centered around the Earnest Morial convention center, I also spent some time looking around and saw a lot of boarded up stores and restaurants indicating not all is well, even in that district.  But I think the most shocking thing to me was my room maid at the Marriott Hotel telling me that until very recently, she actually lived in my very room.  Apparently the Marriott had many families of their employees living there, kudos to Marriott ( and also for making all their hotels non-smoking, they have me as client for life).

Regarding the show itself, there were over 800 vendors with lots of new ideas and some rekindled old ones.  Being a techy myself, I focused on the technology tools I can use to better serve my clients and my team.  I think the better ones this year were making better use of wireless devices to work.  In particular the Sprint REV-A cellular modem which absolutely rocks.  I used this both in the hotel and in the convention center, and at the airport too.  It was like being on my home wireless network and faster than mid-day at my office !  The other was the database system I use now working on Blackberries and having a wireless sync so when Cathy on my team changes a persons phone number it instantly pushes to the phone.

As I do every year, I also spent all day Thursday with 49 other top selling Realtors and real estate speaker Bill Barrett ( www.billbarrett.com) where we spent the whole day sharing ideas.  I now have several ideas to add to help us sell homes faster and for more money.

As always, the food was fantastic, and I ate more than my share of Cajun shrimp.  I look forward to going next year to Las Vegas, but more so to seeing how New Orleans has changed when I go back again two years from now.