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HR Florida Roundup Part Deux

This is going to be mostly random, because it is labor day weekend and I am working madly on a project, rather than picnicking or walking on the beach.

Speakers and Presentations

China Gorman was the keynote speaker for day two. China is a friend of mine, and this was actually the first time I got to see her speak.  Steve Harrison of HR Why wrote a really great piece about China and her involvement at the conference.  He called it Authentic Engagement, and that is exactly what you get with China.  She spoke at a SHRM student event about why it is important that students join SHRM as part of their career development. She attended the Monster Social Tweetup.  She paid to attend a pre-conference session on social media tought by William Tincup, hoping to learn some tricks to leverage social media in her job search.  She is the real deal, and it was great to see her relaxed and mingling.

Dave Ulrich presented a new session on HR Leadership and customers.  I was in and out of the room a lot, setting up signs, doing conference business, and fetching coffee for needy friends, but he talked about a lot about getting out and spending time with customers.  One idea he brought up I thought was great, giving a small portion of discretionary compensation to really important customers and let them use it to reward your employees who do the best job for them.

My personal find for the conference was actually someone I have known on Twitter and blogs for quite  while, Cathie Missildine-Martin.  She was one of the speaker, and gave a very engaging talk about companies who use a new mission statement to transform their organization, and drive their culture.  She has a great mind for human capital issues, and is fun to boot!

Randomness

There are 14,000 or so members of HR Florida.  There were 1,420 attendees at the 2010 state conference, and according to BlastFollow, 148 Twitter followers of the #HRFL10 hashtag used to identify the conference tweets.  There is absolutely no way to find any correlation in these numbers, but at face value, they suggest the following.   Ten percent (1,400) of the membership  of HR Florida attended their annual state conference.  Of the 1,400 attendees,  less than 10% (148) were using Twitter while at the conference.   The percentage actually break down a  bit, since many conferences attendees were from outside Florida, and many twitter contributors were actually following the conference remotely.

It looks like a 100/10/10 rule, but there is no way to gauge significance without better data.  I just thought it made an interesting, if slightly less than useful observation.

Getting Social Media Training for HR

In the first part of this roundup, I wrote about the growing level of interest that was noticeably obvious at the conference.  HR people are getting that they need to understand social media better.   They are struggling to understand it in terms of tools, policy and strategy.    I am working on something to help with that.  Look for an announcement on this soon!

Carol McDaniel

I want to wrap up with a personal thanks to Carol McDaniel, who is the outgoing HR Florida Conference chair.  Carol did wonderful things with the HR Florida conference, and will continue to be a part of the HR Florida state leadership, but she deserves special thanks for everything she has done to elevate the conference experience for all of us in Florida.  Carol was the very first person I ever networked with when I moved to Florida in 2003, and she has helped me out numerous times over the years since.

Thanks for everything you do, Carol, and I look forward to working with you on the next thing!

Happy Labor Day weekend here in the U.S.!

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