What I Learned From Conference Season IV

In my last post I shared with you the fourth lesson I learned from Conference season, that

  • Apparently, Conference Season Was a Bust!

Even though Alan Buxton of Trading Partners and Tim Minahan of Supply Excellence chimed in with a pair of posts yesterday, I’ve yet to be contradicted. In Allan’s post, he noted that there appears to be a renaissance in eSourcing providers, as he found more were exhibiting this year than he’s used to, and that “green” and “sustainability” were hot topics on everyone’s lists. However, neither of these observations were unexpected, as there’s been a series of press releases from a flurry of vendors in the first part of this year announcing new “solutions” to the marketplace, as well as a lot of buzz on “sustainability”, including the buzz here on this blog in the last cross-blog series.

In Tim’s post, he decided to bypass the primary focus of the topic entirely and instead give us a post on “How to Negotiate and Manage Best-Value Events”, using the latest analysis of fellow crusader Justin Falgione, that is available on Ariba (acquired by SAP) SupplyWatch. Now I agree there is some savings potential, as they found that 1% of a typical company’s sales is spent on meetings and events, but if you’re not getting anything out of them, why hold them at all?

Anyway, maybe next conference season will be better. And if you are organizing, or know of, an event that is worthwhile, please submit it for addition to the master directory on the SI resource site#! The site has been updated and you can now submit events for consideration through the site. In addition, the site will now be tracking (executive) roundtables, seminars, training sessions, workshops, and webcasts – so please feel free to submit them at your convenience. It’s to everyone’s benefit to get this information out there in one centralized site.

# The resource site was archived in 2017 and permanently removed in 2024.