(8/8/2011) BMP's Event Picks of the Week
You can view all upcoming events on our site in a weekly listing or on an ongoing basis in our monthly calendar. 
We visit over forty sources to come up with the listing so you can check one central place to see who is hosting webinars, conferences, and more. We don’t help run the events or have any affiliation with the hosts. We see this as a valuable service we can offer to you. One other helpful thing to mention is that if you come to our calendar and click on an event that you are interested in attending, we’ve posted all of the registration links so you can sign up for the event directly from our site.
If you'd prefer to LISTEN to an update, we also do a weekly Blog Talk Radio update on Jon Hansen's PI Window on Business program. Click here to listen to the latest episode. Please note that each Monday the update plays at 10pm EST. We will update the page with the newest episode is available.
We provide this update every Monday to accomplish two things:
- To let you know what events are being held each week, and
- To help you decide what to attend.
Our focus right now is on webinars, but as we approach the fall conference season we will keep an eye on those as well. We also publish our own content – some of it is our opinion on current procurement topics and some of it is fact brought directly from third party resources. I don’t think you’ll find it hard to tell the difference.
As far as my picks go, this week is tough.
The Gartner event ('SCM To Integrate And Manage Physical, Digital And Data Networks") sounds very interesting to me. Part of the appeal is the supply chain (versus procurement) focus. I think one of the keys to taking the procurement profession successfully into the future is making sure all procurement teams have a large enough perspective that they can consider themselves at least partial managers of the corporate supply chain. Because the event is from Gartner, you can expect an IT slant, but with broader generally applicable lessons as well, so I think this event is the pick of the week.
I’m also interested in the SIG event on 'Identifying, Vetting And Executing Supplier Relationships In China, largely because I can appreciate the risks and challenges of implementing relationships with suppliers anywhere, let alone across the globe and with language barriers and cultural divides. The panelists in the event are from MFG.com, the largest global online marketplace in manufacturing according to their website. They connect buyers and suppliers of custom parts, standard components, assemblies and textiles. What I like the most about their portion of the presentation is that they promise to cover difficulties as well as success stories from real life examples. In my opinion, there is far more to be learned from what went wrong than vice versa in case studies.
Finally, I will check out the Win-Win negotiations event, just because it is always good to brush up on those basic procurement skills. I can’t yet advocate that you go because Priority Management is new to me, but if this is a quality event there is the opportunity for more events from them in the future.
-- K.B.