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Editorial

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER:

A REAL ESTATE VISION QUEST

Jeff Kortis envision what this could potentially look like, I turn your
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Senior Solutions Architect attention to Kaggle. It is a platform designed around open
MRI Software datasets on thousands of projects powered by data scien-
tists and machine learning practitioners.
SCIENTIA POTENTIA EST… a Latin aphorism widely
attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, meaning Knowledge is A collaborative environment where real estate professionals
Power. I’d like to explore that ideology in relation to a real could pull data to help drive business decisions and have
estate vision quest. For those who have not seen the highly an information superstore at their disposal would have the
underrated 1985 movie starring Matthew Modine, this is same exponential impact on real estate that we saw the
an attempt to achieve a vision of a future where data is the open-source technology concept have on the software indus-
lifeblood of every organization and is shared freely for the try. Soon, there could even be competitions for best use of
betterment of the industry. data at conferences like Realcomm to reward the efforts of
those who have made the best achievements in the industry.
I hear it all too often, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
This phrase is one of the most common challenges Insights that can be obtained with an open-data platform
professionals face in their careers. Success in any job is can help save areas such as brick and mortar retail and
no easy task and is made exponentially harder when we highlight scenarios that can help us all forecast and prepare
are asked to perform that job with a handicap. That is the for events like the 2008 housing crisis or the COVID-19 pan-
root of that phrase, as answering any business questions demic. Just as with the pandemic data, organizations will
is a shot in the dark when we don’t have the information be sharing data in a secure and anonymized way to ensure
necessary to properly assess the question itself. This is that as we come across these scenarios, we are all working
a barrier that everyone faces and one that can be broken toward a solution and bettering each other while doing it—
down with a concentrated effort. while also ensuring the protection of the data owner.

Many organizations in the software industry have utilized The first to land on this new frontier will be an innovator,
the open-source business model, and as a result, some perhaps the likes of Google or Amazon, because—as we
of them are being valued at three to four times their mar- saw the way Microsoft saved Apple from the brink—elim-
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ket cap (from 2014) per this TechCrunch article. Making inating the competition isn’t the only way to win. The
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source code available to software developers and promot- world’s a better place when competition brings the people
ing a collaboration of bright minds has exponentially pro- it serves to new heights.
gressed the industry to new heights that may have taken
years to achieve prior. Jeff Kortis is a Senior Sales Engineer at MRI
Software. Starting with MRI Software in 2012 he
In the real estate industry, the ability to share data has has been on the front lines with clients and
clear advantages as well. Companies such as CoStar and prospects showcasing business intelligence
VTS are already starting to move the needle on this market, solutions and helping drive solutions for the real
and collaborating with real estate and technology organiza- estate industry. He owns a Data Science Professional Certifi-
tions through the partnerships can help the industry break cate from IBM with specializations in Machine Learning and
down the silos that exist in the current state of affairs. To Business/Managerial Economics.

1 Volpi, Mike. “How open-source software took over the world,” TechCrunch.com, Jan. 12, 2019. techcrunch.com/2019/01/12/how-open-
source-software-took-over-the-world/?guccounter=1
2 www.kaggle.com
3 Clifford, Catherine. “When Microsoft saved Apple: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates show eliminating competition isn’t the only way to win,”
cnbc.com, Aug. 29, 2017. www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-what-happened-when-microsoft-saved-apple.html

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