With the ongoing global Coronavirus outbreaks, technology conference organizers are prudently reviewing individual business, attendee and health officials concerns regarding the risks of travel, along with any community spreading of this virus. Further, with the increasing realities of many businesses now banning non-essential travel for employees, it has become more obvious that large scale conferences may not draw expected audiences.
This week, Oracle communicated that the enterprise, Cloud ERP and Cloud SCM focused technology provider has decided to postpone the planned Modern Business Experience Conference scheduled to be held from March 24-26 in Chicago. 
This particular conference combines three different former annual conferences, including the once termed Modern Supply Chain Experience Conference. Instead, Oracle MBX incorporates separate dedicated conference tracts focused on HCM, Customer Experience,  Cloud ERP and Cloud SCM technology applications areas. Thus, this event served is the one de-facto conference addressing major applications focuses for Oracle’s customer base.
With this week’s announcement, Oracle is postponing the in-person component of MBX in Chicago, to now be incorporated in the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference scheduled for September 21-24 in Las Vegas.
According to Oracle, all MBX registrants will either receive a pass to the OpenWorld 2020 customer conference or be granted a refund upon completing a refund request. Further information can be accessed at the Oracle MBX conference web site.
However, scheduled MBX keynote speakers will be featured in an online broadcast occurring on Tuesday, March 24, starting at 11 am ET/11 am PT. Webcast registration information will soon be made available to registered MBX attendees.
Readers may be aware that Supply Chain Matters has for the past few years, featured full blog coverage of the MBX event, and indeed, we had plans to travel to Chicago to cover this year’s event.
This week, we have been in direct contact with Oracle, and have instead agreed to provide blog coverage of both the online event featuring keynote speakers, and planned interviews with Oracle SCM development and product marketing executives that were scheduled to make conference presentations. The interviews are now in the process of being scheduled and as we complete these interviews, this blog will be highlighting key ERP/SCM product technology or applications announcement highlights that were planned to be shared with conference participants.
Supply Chain Matters readers can therefore look forward to ongoing coverage of the event’s messaging and application development takeaways over the coming few weeks as we complete our interviews and reach outs.
Bob Ferrari, Executive Editor
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