Real Estate and Information Systems
I'm a freshman in college at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I'm considering a double major in real estate and information systems. I'm looking for advice from those in the industry. Would knowledge of information systems be valuable in your field? 
[{"id": "d7u2lo1", "text": "IT Director here for a smaller CRE firm (8 years now). I went to the building energy summit last year in DC that JLL throws. The future buildings will need IT to operate if the sustainability people have anything to do with it. The new building lighting runs over Power over Ethernet, which needs network switches and a pretty sophisticated network layout. There is \"building internet of things\" term being thrown around, with one IT guy claiming he has IP enabled monitors on the toilets to monitor the amount of water that they use. \n\nThe problem is going to be the price of these systems and how practical it will be to retrofit buildings with the newer technology. \n\nThe other issue is that this industry, on average, is about 10 years behind the times on adopting new technologies. I know of firms that are still outsourcing IT whose network is an absolute mess (basically break/fix). The point being that they have no clue how much they need IT, and they suffer major system outages because of it. \n\nRight now I work with vendors interconnecting EMS systems (hardening them as well), working on the backend of Yardi (major accounting software), and normal server/network stuff (firewalls, switches, email, file servers, backups, etc). I also have my real estate license and negotiate fiber riser leases with ISP's.\n\nBottom line: there is a future in it, but it's a pretty niche industry, and I kind of fell into this job. I don't know where you'd go to find a job doing this stuff. It is fun though. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]