My Post HRevolution post

Continuing the evolution of HR

I am just getting ready to check out of The Wit hotel in downtown Chicago now that the curtain has come down on HRevolution 2010.  I won’t rehash all the sessions.  I am not going to try and detail all the awesome conversations and personal connections I got to make or renew.  Those mostly speak for themselves.   So, what do I have to say?

The upside

There was a lot of upside to this conference.   Like what?   Well, like:

• unparalleled opportunities to network across the HR space
• vibrant locations, including downtown Chicago, the gorgeous meeting space at Catalyst Ranch, and the aforementioned the Wit hotel
• a great mix of track topics and track leaders that resulted in great discussions
• an ambitious attempt to extend the conference experience and the learning opportunities beyond the day of the conference, which we will need to wait to see the results of.

I am thrilled to have been part of two tracks, one on diversity with Franny Oxford and Paul Smith, and the second on blogging with Ben Eubanks.

Overall a awesome event with a lot of returns for the participants.  I’ll definitely be back next year, and would love to see the show come to Florida some time soon.

The downside

I am not sure that the event lived up to either the advance hype or my widely hopeful expectations.   To be fair, I am not sure it could have lived up to what I hoped to see.   In some respects, I feel this morning like Mark Stelzner said he felt last year after the first HRevolution:

“The event was great. What happens next?”

For some reason, I am left feeling uncertain and unfulfilled, mostly over my concerns about the long term impact of the event. I find this incredibly frustrating.   I wanted a silver bullet for HR, and frankly, there is no such thing.   We have a lot of hard work to do, and we have to do the work. 

Part  of this frustration is due to my complete dismay at the news of China Gorman and her resignation from SHRM.

Laurie Ruettimann and Lance Haun did what might be called the keynote closing of the event of the event,  with a track that was called Getting HR out of the Echo Chamber.  This track was intended to be a call to action to the people attending HRevolution.  They spoke about things that HR people can do to move what we are doing in the HR/ social media space deeper into the mainstream HR community. You can click the link to Lance’s blog to see a recap of what they talked about and didn’t.   The presentation was good, but I came away from it frustrated.

It wasn’t the silver bullet I hoped for, and candidly, they told us (me) to do a lot of things I am already doing.     They also left me vaguely confused when they began their call to action with a disclaimer:  “We are not in HR anymore.  We are industry pundits.”     While it is true, it caused cognitive dissonance for me.   Sort of, “I am not in the game anymore, but here is how you should play the game”.   Personally, I think that they are both still in the game since they spend their time talking about or speaking to the profession, but it is not my place to define their world view on this.  It still confused me, and I felt it detracted from the rest of their message.

What’s my beef?

I am not sure it is really a beef, but I did have few things I would like to have seen.  Not from Lance and Laurie specifically, but rather from the whole event:

• More tracks led by practitioners
• More time for small group discussions
• more time for personal networking
• Less consultants leading the discussions
• More  involvement of the crowd in crowdsourcing/brainstorming of the “moving HR forward, where do we go next discussion”
• More attendee involvement in selection of track topics

All in all, a great event with an ambitious agenda trying to push our field in new directions.  It wasn’t a home run, but it was a great at bat, and I can’t wait to see what happens the next time they step up to the plate.

Many thanks to Trish McFarlane, Steve Boese,  Jason Seiden, Ben Eubanks, Joan Ginsberg, Crystal Peterson, and Mark Stelzner for everything they did to make this event the success it was!  Great job!

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Tagged as: China, Florida, Jason Seiden, Lance Haun, Laurie Ruettimann, Mark Stelzner, Paul Smith, Social Media, Society for Human Resource Management