17th SCN Int. Conference – Lisbon 2019

So, it was back to the “old Continent” for our 2019 17^th Annual SCN International Conference of SCN and the beautiful city of LISBON, PORTUGAL. A mixture of old world global charm and new world positive vibe. It proved to be a very positive choice.

Many members came a little early to enjoy  some time together on either the city tour or the golf tournament. The Tour was especially popular as a procession of Tuk-Tuks took us around emblematic parts of the city, before a pleasant lunch.

Tuesday evening was welcome cocktail time as the conference officially got on the way. The beautiful Dom Pedro Hotel came into its own with a beautiful venue for everyone to get up to date over a drink – we even dug up Vasco da Gama to start our Portuguese Annual Conference

Wednesday brought a full day of conference, with comments on the progression of the network and explanation on the new web, as well as some of the presentations of a growing number of new members, including presentations from Portugal, USA and India. Also new ideas from partners (Currencies Direct, Cargowise, Aramex, Neo Charter and xChange). We also had time for our focused discussion groups with our break-out specialities, this year focused on: Projects, Consolidation, 24/7, eCommerce and Perishable. In the afternoon, the one-2-one meetings gave members chance to connect individually with other members and partners of their choice.

Wednesday evening was banquet dinner time in Dom Pedro Hotel. Thanks was given to our many conference sponsors, as well as our Distinguished members:

Air System, (Germany)

OEC (South Korea)

Moldtrans (Spain & Portugal)

Norman Krieger (USA)

We were also delighted to be able to award the Members’ member choice for the year 2019:

Bati Innovative Logistics (Turkey)

Thursday was another full day’s conference, giving more time for presentations from our new members from Israel, Armenia, Romania, Georgia, Brasil and USA. We concluded the breakout specializations indicating the need for more member participation and indication of their focuses on the new SCN web – a lot to be expected there.

We also let it be known our intention to go to markets where we have a lack of representation, making it easier for new potential members to learn about SCN. We hope to start this with a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia in October 2019 to attract companies of that region.

SCN was also pleased to announce that it will be starting more activity with #SCNCommunity, including collaboration to help plastic waste problems in collaboration to Ocean Recovery Org. More news shortly on that, to get our community united and active in a good cause.

Thursday evening was time to let our hair down a little and escape the four walls of the hotel – Beer Museum, for some dinner together and a bit more chat.

The conference finished on Friday at lunchtime – except for a few lucky ones, who stayed on to wind down and exchange some more thought and happy moments during the weekend

Thanks if you joined us in making it so productive and enjoyable. If you didn’t this time round, you maybe should do next time

Once more, a hard meeting to improve on, but we’ll try it somehow!