Daily Archives: May 26, 2008

What I Learned From Conference Season I

Last week, a few of my fellow bloggers jumped the gun in their rush to share with you some of what they learned during conference season. Jason “The Prophet” Busch of Spend Matters was the first out of the gate with his post on Three Lessons From Conference Season where he suggested that:

  1. You don’t judge a book by its cover (or an event by past reputation)
    as both ISM and SAP Sapphire (apparently) put on a good show this year
  2. Your attitude is everything
    and the key to successful networking and learning
  3. You really can find examples of innovation at many events to take back to your organization
    and CVM Supply World, SIG, and even Ariba LIVE had numerous examples of innovation

This was quickly followed by Vinnie “The Deal-Maker” Mirchandani’s post on What I Learned From Conference Season on Deal Architect where he echoed Jason’s point about networking and how it generates the greatest value from these types of events. He also noted that the expo floor, which allows you to see many solution providers in a compressed time-frame, is also valuable. But his biggest “aha” was that his clients should also have tickets to the conferences and events so that they could take advantage of the events together, and not be on conference calls when they could be learning and networking on the expo floor.

And then Brian “Service Master” Sommer of Services Safari decided he just couldn’t wait any longer and offered up his humorous post on Traveling During Conference Season where he asked the Lord to save him from the “expert” travelers. (Who are the “expert” travellers? Follow the link to find out!)

But if you want to get technical, David Bush of eSourcing Forum and Tim Minahan and Justin Fogarty of Supply Excellence beat them to the punch with their learnings from reSource 2008 and Ariba Live. These can be found here:

reSource 2008 by David Bush and Michael Lamoureux

Ariba Live by Justin Fogarty and Tim Minahan

And then if you want to get really technical, Jason Busch and I have been blogging about conferences for over a month now!

Spend Matters Event & Conference Posts by Jason Busch

Sourcing Innovation Event & Conference Posts by Michael Lamoureux