ISM - Day 1: The doors open

May 7th, 2007 at 10:56am David Bush - Iasta

We opened up the ISM conference yesterday and initial impressions are top-notch. First of all, the Sunday early session was very well attended and the extra attendance is noticeably different. It is nice to have a lot of customers now because we are always busy talking with people that already use our software or have been told that they should be. Personally, it has been nice to catch up with many of my consultant friends and fellow technology brethern. The average supply management professional is so much more educated and versed in software solutions compared to previous years (especially a few back) that makes it very gratifying and interesting to have conversations with people. Already today, we have spoken to a large number of attendees that are not asking questions about what the functionality does, but rather, questions about how to increase usage, plan roll-outs and get budget approval with business cases. This constitutes a much higher starting point for client interaction.

Also of interest, is the now omni-present nature of our blogosphere. I had a very interesting conversation with some one that mentioned a post I wrote many months ago about the Hackett study on supplier diversity which was picked up by Jason Busch on Spend Matters. In Jason’s post, he went into great detail about reverse discrimination which elicited quite a debate. I was told that this particular conversation thread (100% blog generated) was a topic of conversation at one of the most attended workshops at the SIG conference last week. Apparently, this was quite a spirited and passionate subject and whatever the each person’s opinions are regarding the topic, it is great to see the blogs impacting the debate and generating dialogue.

No question about it, this was the busiest Sunday I have ever seen. Between being in the exhibit hall and multiple off site meetings and introductions, I was not at a loss of things to do. My only initial concern about Vegas as a location was whether people would spend all their free time in the casinos and neglect the exhibitors. This has definitely not been the case. However, it has been pretty entertaining to walk through the Bally’s casino and see over half the slots occupied by people with little ISM badges!

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