next week, i'll be in New Orleans for the first half of the week. i'm looking forward to the trip as it will be my first time visiting the town... but honestly, it's a little confusing to be heading down there at all.
first, for my non-HR and recruiting friends... i'll be in NOLA to attend the annual Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) conference. SHRM is a professional association devoted to HR people like me and it has more than 250,000 members... but that number doesn't include me. i actually opted out a while ago and stopped being a card carrying member. more on that later. their annual conference though... it's pretty much the biggest gathering of HR people anywhere. previous years conferences have had anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 attendees - scary, i know. it's a lot of HR people in one place.
so the confusing part about being in NOLA for this conference? i've been somewhat vocal about not being a SHRM fan. there are posts i've written... oldies, but goodies on the matter here, here and here. and yet i'll be jaunting down to NOLA because why? they invited me to attend. how bizarre is that?
the scoop... on wednesday, i'll be serving on a panel discussion moderated by SHRM's COO... HR Bloggers: Who are these people and why should I care? interesting, kind of. maybe. we'll see! i'll be chatting it up with the blogosphere's other finest HR bloggers - Kris Dunn, Lance Haun and Laurie Ruettimann - and we'll be talking about how we've each used the web to add value to our organizations and practices. and the end goal? teach people how social media can have a positive impact on your organization and how you can get started.
the session will be streamed live - you'll be able to watch from here and/or Fistful of Talent as we'll embed and live stream the video broadcast... and you can be the judge of how it goes. and yes, i've thought about whether doing this makes me a hypocrite. maybe. but i'm a capitalist and this is about getting maximum exposure. i'll use the time to connect with folks, network and try to soak in some learning... and i'll also use the time to try to influence and help make HR cool-ish. maybe. wish me luck... and if you're going to be there in NOLA, see ya then.
If you look at it as a whole, it would seem that you think you're a hypocrite, but in context, you're not. I looked at the date of your SHRM rants and almost everything was back pre-2009. However, that was with the old regime, and now you have a new regime that is opening avenues in other areas like social media and others. IS there room for improvement? Absolutely, but at least now they're catching up.
To be honest, I had the same feelings leaving SHRM and be happy to go to random, free networking events and my renewal was up on April. I did not renew my membership and was happy with...until in mid May when China tweeted my post on Mel Kiper and the Pop Culture HR Award stuff and renew my membership. I was going to be happy w/o a membership, but China expose my blog to her audience and I owe her a lot of credit of making me a better HR writer, so I returned the favor.
Posted by: Tracy Tran | Friday, 26 June 2009 at 01:59 AM
JL - First off, uber cool on this session. Then double uber cool on streaming it. I will be closing my office door to watch, listen and learn.
Do you know if it will be archived? (I fully suspect interuptions will be occuring as my job walks in the door.)
Enjoy!
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