As the COVID-19 pandemic gains an ever-tightening grip on our daily lives, I no longer believe I am capable of delivering the largest tech event of the global procurement industry while also ensuring everyone’s health and safety, which is our first priority.
With no vaccine in place anytime soon and many corporations strongly advising staff to restrict travel, I know it is no longer practical nor ethical to continue with our annual conference.
Last year, DPW hosted attendees from 33 countries. As such a global conference it is important to me to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have DPW2020 without our international friends in attendance.
As German chancellor Angela Merkel said this week, “we are still at the beginning of the pandemic and walking on very thin ice, the thinnest ice even.” My personal prediction is that all large procurement events for 2020 will be canceled in the next month or two and that there won’t be any events as long there is uncertainty and people’s safety will be at risk.
What’s next for DPW?
We are currently working on securing the dates for our 2021 conference. As soon as dates are confirmed, we will happily notify you, and focus all of our efforts on making our event in 2021 even better.
With every crisis comes opportunity. Despite these challenging circumstances, now is the time to be innovative. Conferences won’t disappear in the future. But, instead they will be accessed by a click, not only by plane.
To that end, we have recently partnered with SaaS community platform Zapnito to build a virtual DPW community which will go live in June. Think of it as a Think & Do Tank for the DPW community – a natural extension of the conference that thrives all year round. I’m looking forward to sharing more about this soon, and how you can get involved.
These are tough times indeed. But no matter how serious and sad all of this is, the world is not ending, and there are upsides as well. We have to start thinking about what’s next, and what we can do right now to move forward. Thanks to COVID-19, I’m more excited and inspired than ever before about DPW’s future and our growing into a global powerhouse of digital procurement expertise.
Again, thank you for your continued support of DPW. I’m really sorry to let you down on what was meant to be the procurement event of the year.
Stay safe and healthy.
