We wrote earlier this year about a new European procurement event making its debut this autumn – Digital Procurement World will take place 18-19 September in Amsterdam.
It will bring together the largest ever ensemble of digital procurement leaders in one space, and attract representatives from the entire digital procurement ecosystem: from the big tech firms to start-ups, VCs/investors, industry analysts, media and press, and of course, CPOs and procurement practitioners from every sector and industry.
Aside from a good mix of keynotes, breakout sessions, networking opportunities and its unique interactive learning labs offering a chance to ‘get creative,’ the event offers two main attractions, to our mind anyway. The first we have already written about – the Start-up Accelerator Programme called RiSE – a showcase-type arena for genuinely young start-ups, which you can read about here.
The second is also quite unusual in the events calendar: a hands-on ‘hackathon’ where (wannabe or accomplished) designers, developers and programmers of ‘yet-to-be-invented procurement technology solutions’ can get to be creative and bring their ideas to life. Like-minded people will spend 24 hours coming up with something new in procurement tech, supported and guided by digital procurement experts from the industry.
It’s an exciting opportunity and sounds like it could be a lot of fun – and no, you are not expected to go 24 hours straight with no sleep or food! On offer will be pizza and beer (not compulsory) to help keep the creative brain cells going during this intense collaboration, and, of course, a sleeping lounge. And there will be a prize for the winning team – what that will be we don’t yet know.
ProcureHack is open to anyone, no specific skills required, but you do need to be able to think outside the box. The first day of the Hackathon will be spent idea pitching and voting for the ones to be developed, then the teams will be formed and the technical workshops will begin, sprinting towards dinner and into a night of coding. Day 2 will be more workshop with pitching training, deck building and finalising – then the hackathon ends with a demo, the judging begins and the winners are announced. There’s also an opportunity to sponsor a hacker if you are interested – listen to this).
So if you are a budding developer, coder, interface designer, programmer or student of those, or simply have a great idea you’d like to bring to life, you can register your interest here.
Digital Procurement World will be upon us as soon as the summer holidays are over, so this might be a good time to register for the event as a delegate. The fee is quite reasonable and, in our opinion, value-for-money. There’s a comprehensive list of FAQs here to answer all your questions related to the hackathon, the start-up programme and other conference-related topics. Spend Matters will be there, so if you see us do come and say hello.
