First Thoughts By Dan Gilmore – Editor-in-Chief Ok, I am thankfully at the end of the Spring conference season, after numerous straight weeks on the road. It beats me up, since I attend virtually every session available, do the daily video reviews, etc., but in the end it’s really worth it because so many readers enjoy these summary reports, I learn a lot, and I gain some topic feedstock for the rest of the year. This week, it was the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference in Scottsdale, AZ, and in general it was a very good event. This conference as many know is rooted in the same basic event that was started by AMR Research back in the 1990s. After Gartner acquired AMR in 2009, Gartner infused additional organizational and marketing muscle into the conference, largely to the good. I am sure the event is now much more profitable for Gartner than it ever was for AMR, with 1500+ attendees this year and an ever growing exhibitor and sponsor program. Gartner continues to get some marquee supply chain execs as speakers, though the event certainly has a much more of a "corporate" feel to it that it did in the more laid back AMR days. Gilmore Says: Kern made what I think was a good point in saying that "digital" offers some hope for breakthrough gains after companies like Cisco have squeezed about all they can out of Lean, Six Sigma, outsourcing, etc. I was there for nearly two full days, and saw a number of keynote and breakout presentations. The keynotes were all very good. The breakouts again this year were a bit more hit or miss. They are of three basic types: those led by Gartner analysts, company case studies (unsponsored), and vendor-sponsored sessions ( identified as […]