This is the time of year when it becomes all too easy to count down the days and weeks left on the calendar. By my count, we have about 8 solid weeks remaining – when you allow for Thanksgiving and the natural phase out towards Christmas. 8 weeks… that’s either good news or bad news depending on your perspective. If you are planning your procuremen...

Before I move into my event recommendations for this week, I want to look back at last week – Art of Procurement Mastermind LIVE was amazing, and it would not have been possible without the energy and expertise of many speakers and organizers. Thank you to everyone who joined us! If you are planning your procurement webinar schedule beyond this wee...

There are two very exciting ‘live’ events taking place this week – both of which I am proud to be involved in,,,  NESCON is taking place Oct 5-7 and features a very special keynote speaker: General (Ret.) Stanley A. McChrystal. McChrystal is a transformational leader with a remarkable record of achievement both on and off the battlefield.Art o...

As another month comes to an end, we can expect the schedule of events to pick up. There are 8 webinars and 1 virtual event taking place this week, including our next AOP Live session on Tuesday, featuring Source Day CEO Tom Kieley and Go Kamiyama from NetSuite. Join us if you’d like to ask questions about how procurement can help build supply chai...

Last week, I ‘worked the switchboard’ for an AOP Live session with Christopher Sawchuk from The Hackett Group and Vishal Patel at Ivalua. EPSNews did a fantastic write up on the event, and they captured the essence of the challenge procurement faces today in their very first sentence: “Disasters have a way of elevating procurement operations to sav...

I’m continuing to add new events to the calendar, both webinars and virtual conferences. While a virtual conference might not typically be your ‘thing,’ keep in mind that most of them are free to attend – meaning that 2020 is actually presenting us with opportunities to ‘attend’ events and hear from speakers that we wouldn’t have access to in a ‘no...

Now that it is September, the fall conference season is upon us. Even though few will have the opportunity to gather in person, we can still make the most of these virtual chances to connect and learn. There are two upcoming virtual conferences I want to call particular attention to: Mastermind LIVE: Art of Procurement’s Digital Procurement Event w...

Although we don’t necessarily have much more of a visibility horizon than we’ve had for months, things at least seem to be stabilizing. Events are starting to focus on next year, and they provide a sense of what is within our control. That is far more productive and positive than continuing to focus on everything that is out of control.

August hasn’t been as busy as June and July were, but the pace of new events is already picking up for September. There are already 12 events on the calendar for next month, half of which I added this week. If you are also a fan of Art of Procurement, run by my colleague Philip Ideson, you’ll want to SAVE THE DATE for AOP Mastermind Live: October 6-7.

I get a lot of questions about what events I list in the BMP calendar and how I decide what to recommend. I have always believed that the calendar needed to be an industry resource, not a revenue source. BMP receives no money for any of the webinar listings, does not guarantee that any events will be recommended in advance, and does not (knowingly) list demo events. If you have any questions about our listing and recommendation policies, feel free to reach out. Similarly, if you have a thought leadership-based webinar that you think the procurement community would like to know about, please send it my way!

It would seem that we are going to have a summer slowdown after all. There weren’t enough events to pick from last week, so I skipped my recommendations post, and there are only a few for this week but they are worthwhile. On the bright side, I already know there will be event recommendations for next week as well.

As we close out the end of July, webinars are just starting to post for August. If you look at all of this week’s webinars, there is a clear note of defiant optimism with the focus returning to supply resiliency, leadership, and automation over necessary but fatigued coverage of the pandemic. Next week also marks the release of the July ISM-New York Report on Business, so we’ll get another look at how the professional services economy is recovering from the various shutdowns.

Following is a list of the upcoming webinars that are worth of an hour of your (scarce) time. Some I recommend for the topic, others for the speaker, but all of them will give you something new to think about – and goodness knows, we can all use more good ideas to stand up to the challenges 2020 has handed us.

The events continue to roll in – I added another dozen new events to the calendar this week. In addition to the events listed below, I’ll be making the case that procurement is not the ‘enemy’ when it comes to sourcing projects for IT solutions with MyComplianceOffice.

Another week, another 9 new webinars. I think we’re seeing a meaningful shift this week from all-COVID-all-the-time to a longer term look at what’s next, whether that means the economy, changes in how we manage our supply chains, or significant industry restructuring.