Anyone familiar with LinkedIn Groups know that their “features” up until this point consisted of you getting a nifty little icon for your profile. So, they did about as much good for connecting with colleagues and facilitating discussions as a bumper sticker on your car. But finally, last Friday they rolled out some legitimate Discussion capabilities so that members could begin tapping into the collective knowledge of their Groups.

In an effort to provide a place for spend management professionals to come together and share questions, best practices, events, news, blogs, jobs and whatever else can help add to our collective professional IQs, we’ve set up the following Groups:

• Strategic Sourcing & Procurement (links go to Group Profile and “Join Now” button)
• Supply Chain Finance
• Buyer & Supplier Contracts

Each of the Groups is already off to a strong start, with a broad range titles, industries, companies and geographies. I truly believe this could be a very powerful way to learn from each others’ experiences. Think of the Groups as ongoing conference roundtables, whose topics, tone and collective knowledge you can influence and contribute to.

So please join…and let the conversations (finally) begin.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.