I’m delighted to be attending SAP Ariba Live as a Cloud Influencer on 4th to 6th June in Barcelona. In case you missed it, it looks an extremely exciting conference with amazing conference. I’m going because it aligns with my interests in a number of key ways and I’m going to point you to a few of my must-dos for the conference. The theme of ethics, diversity and leadership is present in many sessions, which is something I’m passionate about! Also, there are many great conference sessions, and I’m excited about learning a lot of new things.

SAP Ariba have invited Amal Clooney to give the keynote and I cannot wait to hear how she believes businesses can make things better for human rights through ethics and leadership. Make sure you’re in the audience when human rights lawyer, professor, and international law expert Amal Clooney gives the keynote address, sharing her perspective on how businesses can promote human rights. I believe that businesses can do so much more than think about profits and I believe in the triple-bottom-line for my own company and I do think about the full cost of doing business, including ethics, environment and social responsibility. There is a good mix of male and female speakers and that’s a sign that the conference is welcoming. Having run conferences myself, I believe that a good mixed audience brings about a better atmosphere since people try harder, and it gives the conference a good ‘feel’.

Following on from that point, there is also a Diversity and Leadership Forum on the topic of ‘Creating Balanced Leadership’ and I’m looking forward to it immensely. I’m glad that it has a mix of male and female panelists because people often assume that diversity just means women, but it does not. Diversity means everybody; we all have diversity in common. I am looking forward to learning a lot during this session.

I am definitely attending a session with Yves Mulkers, whom I admire greatly. I was lucky enough to meet Yves very briefly in Belgium a few years ago. I’ve been learning from Yves for a long time on social media, and I think he has a lot of good things to say on many topics.

There is an interesting session entitled ‘Mind Your Bias and Shift from Advocacy to Action‘ with Etosha Thurman, Head of Global Business Network at SAP Ariba. I think that this sounds a thought-provoking session and I’m looking forward to it. I think it sounds a good investment of time since it will provide insights on building and maintaining better teams.

I’m interested to learn more about how artificial intelligence can drive service and procurement business processes with conversational Artificial Intelligence solutions such as chatbots and voice assistants. This is a very forward-thinking topic and I am keen to learn about how SAP Ariba solutions and chatbots can help manage procurement processes.

On the way back home from Belgium this evening, I was reading a book about Adlerian psychology, and I was focusing on a part that discussed how we can’t let our pasts dictate our future. Then, going through the SAP Ariba agenda, I find this topic: Don’t Let the Past Dictate Your Future: Transform the Procurement Mind-Set and I’m sure it was meant just for me! I am interested in digital transformation and I think that this is a key session.

There are many other great sessions to choose from, but these topics are personal highlights for me. If you’re attending SAP Ariba Live, which sessions will you attend? Leave a note in the comments! On Thursday 6th June, the focus is on The Agile and Intelligent Enterprise, and I’m interested in understanding more how businesses can adapt to master and be successful in an era of massive disruption with changes in society, politics, economy, environment, and technology. Organizations must be agile to adapt and take advantage of technologies to future proof the business and become an intelligent enterprise, and I think that there will be lots of great learning and conversation on this topic. There are different types of breakouts for different learning and engagement styles, so you can have a browse here.

See you there! I’m excited to meet other Cloud Influencer such as Ronald van Loom. Here is the full list below!