The Final Wrap — ERE Expo

Part-time Con­fer­ence Attendee

Pool view from ERE Expo

I attended  por­tions of the Fall 2009 ERE Expo that was held at the Westin Diplo­mat in Hol­ly­wood Florida last week.  I had to miss quite a few of the ses­sions as I had other meet­ings to take care in the Miami area on this visit.  This pro­vided a bit of a dif­fer­ent dynamic for this con­fer­ence over some of the oth­ers I have recently attended.   This was due to the fact that a lot of the con­nec­tions and dia­logue that I par­tic­i­pated in at the con­fer­ence was with small groups of peo­ple in infor­mal set­tings, rather than fol­low­ing the big­ger dia­logue of speak­ers and groups in the sessions.

There was a large social media pres­ence at the event with plenty of live blog­ging and tweet­ing going on.  You can find a sum­mary of the tweet stream here.  Great reviews of the con­fer­ence have been writ­ten by Jonathon Good­man, Leanne Chase , Shar­lyn Lauby,  my amaz­ing friend Stephanie A. Lloyd, Jason Buss,   Jason Buss,  another “Jason” — my buddy Jason Blais,  the swanky and elo­quent  Jen­nifer McClure, and the always scin­ti­lat­ing Lau­rie Ruettimann

While I would have enjoyed watch­ing the ses­sions, I still found the con­fer­ence to be a very valu­able event.

You can find the slide decks and video record­ing that are avail­able in the same place I did, which is here.  One of the most dis­cussed pre­sen­ta­tions that I did get to see was given by the “2 Steve’s from Adi­das”.   You can see it below.

Employ­ment Brand­ing at Adidas

Here are my ran­dom thoughts on my per­sonal high­lights from the conference.

Break­ing News in Recruiting

Lau­rie Ruet­ti­mann announced that she will be lead­ing the ses­sion at the Social Recruit­ing Sum­mit in New York City which will be held in on Novem­ber 16.

Joel Cheesman of Cheez­head and Aaron Matos of Job­ing announced the acqui­si­tion of the Cheesman Group by Jobing.

Cool stuff mak­ing for great cock­tail party fodder!

Fab­u­lous Net­work­ing Opportunities

The dudes at ERE Expo and their clients know how to rock a party!

I only paid for one drink in three days, and was invited to at least half a dozen full on soirees over the span of the show.

The first con­fer­ence net­work­ing event was a “near the pool/beach”  recep­tion with rov­ing servers deliv­er­ing canapes, a hot food bar, and a nice selec­tion of liquor, wine and beer.   I would esti­mate atten­dance at well over 150.  I met many peo­ple for the first time, and enjoyed renew­ing long run­ning con­ver­sa­tions with many others.

We then moved upstairs for a mar­velous net­work­ing oppor­tu­nity that also offered an oppor­tu­nity to donate to a char­i­ta­ble cause.   This was a Texas Hold’em event put on by the ERE Foun­da­tion. I may have “lost” $35 dol­lars, but that was more than made up for with fun and awe­some net­work­ing!  Spe­cial thanks to Sarah White and Jeremy Lang­hans, who helped put the event together.

It was like being on the red car­pet on Oscar night for evening num­ber two.  I started out at a recep­tion on the main show floor, hang­ing out with a bunch of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, includ­ing Christina Tier­ney from Bernard Hodes, Jason Blais from Job­sintheUS, Shan­non Seery Gude, Stephanie A  Lloyd of Radi­ant Verac­ity, Jen­nifer McClure, and many others.

Then I moved to the NAS party that I had been invited to by the charm­ing and gra­cious host­ess, Tara Repucci where we enjoyed sushi and Kirin Ichiban beer and some great conversation.

Next it was off to Rivals for the Indeed.com party where there were so many peo­ple I can’t even count them all.  It got wild and crazy.  I spent a lot of time talk­ing to new friends like Jenny DeVaughn, Miriam Salpeter, and Melyssa Berstein.

Then it was time to go off to the best event of the night, the Glass Half Full Wine Tast­ing event put together by Maren Hogan and Jason Davis of Recruit­ing Blogs and HCI.   It was an amaz­ing event in a suite over­look­ing the Atlantic Ocean from 23 sto­ries and filled with smart and tal­ented peo­ple like John Sumser, Gerry Crispin, and Kevin Wheeler, just to name a few.  I felt priv­i­leged to be allowed to hang around and chat with them and all the oth­ers that were there.

Social Media and Twit­ter at ERE

Social media once again played a major role at an HR con­fer­ence, despite sketchy wifi ser­vice.  Peo­ple were tweet­ing and blog­ging.  This ele­ment totally changes the dynamic of a con­fer­ence for those of us who can access the “hid­den audi­ence”.  Show plan­ners need to learn to fac­tor this in and take advan­tage of it!

Here is a long list of peo­ple I knew before ERE or met for the first time while at the show.  I know I left some out.  Please ask to be added to the list if you are unin­ten­tion­ally ommitted!

Shan­non Seery Gude   @Seerysm

Jason Davis @callmes­louch

Robin Eads @imjustagoyle

Tracy Deveau @Devoted2HR

Jen­nifer McClure @Cin­cyRe­cruiter

Shar­lyn Lauby @HR Bar­tender

Glenn Gut­macher @gut­mach

Irina Shamaeva @brain­gain

Tara Repucci @tararepucci

Lexy Thomp­son @lexythomp­son

Chris Hoyt @TheRe­cruiter­Guy

Sarah White @sarahw79

Maren Hogan @maren­hogan

Mike Quale @tall_geek

Jason Buss @jjbuss

Lau­rie Ruet­ti­mann @lruet­ti­mann

Mary Ellen Slayter @SBWork­force

Eric Wine­gard­ner @ewmon­ster

Shally Steck­erl @shally

Kevin Wheeler @kwheeler

John Sumser @sumser

Dave Pritchard @PritchATL

Gerry Crispin @Ger­ryCrispin

Jason Blais @Jason­CBlais

Amy Renz @AmyRenz

Aaron Matos @Job­ing

Katie del Guer­cio @KODAus

Scott Baxt @Scot­tBaxt

Stephanie A Lloyd @StephanieAL­loyd

David Man­aster @Dmanaster

Leanne Chase @Lean­neclc

Melyssa Bern­stein @MelShel99

Jenny Devaughn @Jenny DeVaughn

Miriam Salpeter @keppie_careers

My next post will be about Recruit­ing ris­ing to the occa­sion and will dis­cuss how the recruit­ing field is dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing itself from the rest of Human Resources.

Related Posts:

• Social Media and Mar­ket­ing at Social Fresh Tampa
• Global Warm­ing is a lie!
• DOH! Stu­pid Sta­tis­ti­cal Para­doxes anyway!
• Why I spend my week­ends at the bar
• 17 hot but­ton issues for labor unions on Labor Day

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