The 6th Annual PMAC/MeRC International Supply Chain Management Symposium is coming up next month. It starts with the 3rd annual Doctoral Colloquium on Wednesday, October 15 and the welcome reception that night and the main body of the conference is on Thursday, October 16 and Friday October 17.
This year, their keynotes are from Mr. Dean D. Loria from Shell Canada Limited, Dr. Terry L. Esper from the University of Tennessee, and Jason “The Prophet” Busch, the Spend Master of Spend Matters. Jason’s always an energetic speaker, Dr. Esper is rather well reknowned, and although I must confess that I don’t know the dude from Shell, I’ve never attended a bad presentation from a Shell representative. (Not that they’ve all be gems, but compared to some presentations I’ve attended, including an Ariba keynote from last year, they were never bad.)
In addition, they again have a number of tracks on timely supply chain issues that include green supply chains, health care supply chains, energy sector best practices, and remanufacturing supply chains as well as the old standby topics that include global logistics, procurement management, and negotiation. In addition, this year’s panels are on green supply chains, non-profit supply chains, and supply chain education.
As I noted in last year’s announcement, there aren’t a lot of good Supply Chain / Sourcing / Procurement conferences north of the border, and this is one of the few. So, if you’re in Canada or the northern states and do business in, or with, Canada, I strongly encourage you to consider checking it out. Plus, you get to check out Cowtown this year, which might be a nice change after five years of Hogtown.
For those of you who haven’t been to Canada’s wild wild west, you can check out the the city web site, the Tourism Calgary site, the Calgary Community Events Guide, and even the WorldWeb.com travel guide and vacation planner. And even though the event is not being held during the annual Folk Festival, Blues Festival or during the world famous Stampede, you can always check out the Calgary Zoo and Heritage Park and see how your average Canadian still lives outside of the big nine Canadian cities (which, from east to west are: Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver). In addition, you can also check out the Calgary Herald, the Calgary Sun, and The Gauntlet from the University of Calgary for the down-low on what’s happening. (And you music lovers can check out Calgary Music Lives here, Music Calgary, and the Calgary Music Special Interest Group.) And, for us bloggers, there is the Wild Rose Brewery and the Brew Brothers Brewery … so we’ll be just fine.