SHRM 2010 – My first 48 hours

Random thoughts from San Diego

I have actually been in San Diego for about 50 hours, but hanging out and around the SHRM Conference for 48 hours.   I haven’t been to a session yet.    I am trying to see portions of the conference from a different perspective.   So, if I am not going to session and building my professional credentials, what have I been observing and doing?

Lots of stuff, some of it even a little significant.  Here are my observations in no particular order.

Steve Forbes  as a Keynote was pretty boring after starting out with some humorous promise.  You would think that even in a recession a media guru rich guy like Forbes could afford to hire someone to help him  update and customize his old stump speech.  It was disappointing.  I had much more fun watching the twitter back channel from John Hollon, Laurie Ruettimann, and Jerry Albright, as well as others. Check #SHRM10 to see what I mean.

SHRM’s social media effort is taking place all around me here in the social media lounge, which is a nice work space, except they are also doing filming for Smartbrief/Monster in the same room.  This makes it sort of difficult to be very social when people are frequently shouting “quiet on the set”.  It is an efficient use of space and I appreciate having a place to work, but it is tough to talk.  The rest of the SHRM initiative is still too embryonic to assess, but it looks promising.

Conference attendance has made a fabulous comeback.  There are several hundred more people here this year than last year in New Orleans.

The exposition hall is busy and vibrant.  I haven’t grabbed much swag, but a lot of people are giving away Kindles and iPads.  It is a good showing.

Networking and Social Activity is good with a lot of small intimate dinners, hallway conversations, and interaction with people on the blog squad, or in the press room.

The weather in San Diego is kind of crappy, on a relative basis, with a lot of gray sky, called “June Gloom” by local residents.  I was expecting the legendary golden rays, so this is kind of a surprise, even though apparently normal.

Tonight is the first ever SHRM Tweetup, sponsored by the kind folks at Monster.  It should be fun and interesting to see how that goes over.  I will be getting there around 7:30 after going on a harbor cruise sponsored by Beyond.com.

More tomorrow.

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Tagged as: California, John Hollon, June Gloom, Laurie Ruettimann, New Orleans, San Diego, Society for Human Resource Management, Steve Forbes