Was it the economy? the timing? the location? or the brilliant and good looking Forum panel? That will be for history (or you) to decide. What we do know is that is that the Institute of Business Forecasting’s ” title=”IBF Best Practices Conference in San Francisco, April 28-30″>Best Practices Conference in San Francisco, April 28-30, drew a large and lively audience, with particularly good representation from bay area companies.
Lora Cecere of Altimeter Group, fresh in from Milan, was there making the rounds. Maria Simos of e-forecasting.com covered the event and posted daily details on the IBF blog.
I particularly enjoyed presentations from two long-time forecasting brethren, Jonathon Karelse of Yokohama Tire (Canada), and Kalyan Sengupta of Chevron. Kalyan spoke of forecasting in the context of risk assessment and mitigation – a context too often ignored in traditional business forecasting. Jonathon warned against blind pursuit of the perfect forecast, arguing that the cost of inaccuracy must be weighed against the cost of forecasting improvement. (Jonathon also summarized his material on the IBF Blog.)
After a year or so in hiding, are the conference crowds coming back?