Blog

My Fractional Life colleagues, Piers and Tracey, and I are just back from staging the first Fractional Summit USA in Miami. Now the jet lag has cleared it's becoming plain we've launched something special which should go on to become an important fixture in the fractional real estate industry calendar.

We had around 170 delegates at the event, which was held at the InterContinental hotel (which has a huge Henry Moore sculpture in the lobby, pictured below) and there was a real buzz around the event. Our team's experience of putting on b2b conferences in London paid off as the Miami Summit ran smoothly and generated lots of really positive feedback.

Our delegates found the experience valuable, the sponsors are happy, and the fractional jungle telegraph has been beating to the extent that we already have a new sponsor confirmed for next year on the strength of the reports he heard about this year's event.

When the networking events at the hotel were over, Tracey and I were treated to one of the best dinners I can remember at Zuma, a Japanese restaurant in downtown Miami. We sat at the sushi counter and chatted with the chefs as the dishes just kept coming: black cod and prawn dumplings, scallops tartare, yellowtail sashimi, sea bass with truffle oil, pork belly – the list goes on, each one impeccably prepared and bursting with flavour, and all washed down with ice cold sake.

The next day I was lucky enough to stay at the splendid Ritz-Carlton on South Beach and had most of the next day free to explore. I was up early for a run along the boardwalk, along with about 100 other joggers, but even at 7am my English constitution was struggling with the heat and humidity. I was bemused to see several slightly dotty looking old ladies out at that hour leaving little piles of cat food for South Beach's considerable army of feral, but very healthy looking, moggies.

A couple of hours on the beach with a good book, interspersed with regular dips in the stunning azure sea, were just the ticket to set me up for the flight home (diverted around Hurricane Earl which was spinning viciously off North Carolina), and gave me a chance to reflect on what we'd achieved. Our efforts were warmly welcomed by the American fractional real estate sector, for which we are very grateful, and we look forward to returning next year, which will hopefully be bigger and better.

In the meantime, we're keeping busy with this month's Fractional Life Expo, our first conference in the Middle East in November, and our London event in February 2011.