By Katherine Tarbox, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

More than 1,200 hungry real estate professionals gathered for Real Estate Connect NYC, Jan. 5–8, at New York City’s Marriott Marquis to talk about the future of the business.

Real Estate Connect was more or less my formal introduction to the real estate business—I’ve been with REALTOR® magazine for just one month—and it was both a sobering and an exhilarating three days.

It was sobering because it was hard to find anyone who’d had a particularly good 2008, and many practitioners are uncertain about their prospects for 2009. Speakers said there was room for optimism in terms of the number of transactions expected for 2009. However, they warned that recovery prices would likely take the form of an L shape, not a V shape. Among the speakers were NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® chief economist Lawrence Yun, Yale Professor Robert Shiller, and New York Times business reporter and columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.

The exhilarating part was witnessing all the innovation that’s taking place in this business. The conference set a strong tone that it’s time for the real estate industry to embrace social media — such as Twitter, Facebook, and, most important, blogs — as a way to network and establish your expertise. In fact, the conference was teeming with social networkers who were blogging about the sessions and communicating through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online communities.

Several sessions were geared toward helping practitioners build international business during a time when exchange rates are still favorable for foreign buyers. One tip: Those who want to break into the international arena should list prices in foreign currencies and state dimensions in meters instead of square feet. Learn about NAR’s International programs at REALTOR.org.