This year’s Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference & Exhibition (DIHAD) will be from 7 to 9 April. The conference theme for this year will be: “Empowering Communities: From Disaster to Development“.
Like last year, they offer free accommodation, lunch, and gala dinner for procurement and logistics officials, under the condition that you meet at least four of the exhibitors. I can only wonder what accepting an offer like this would do to the credibility of a procurement officer in an organisation. We all know that the semblance of things can be at least as important as the substance of things, and accepting this will not do much good for this semblance — and would, in fact, impact negatively to at least some extent on our image. Procurement in aid organisations is subject to increasing scrutiny (with good reason); even the bare fact that DIHAD makes this offer will not help — and if you value your reputation, you’d better not take them up on it.