Steve's HR Tech: Hitting the Road

In the next few weeks I will be getting out of the ROC (finally) and hitting up a series of events in the coming days, and thought it made sense to summarize them here.

September 23 and 24 - Recruitfest 2009 - Toronto

I am really looking forward to this event.  While I am not myself a recruiter, the tools and technologies that recruiters are adopting are really interesting to me, they are a part of my HR Technology class topics, and the chance to see a live Animal show were all too compelling to pass up.

September 25 - Heading to Ottawa to meet with my friends from Halogen Software.  Regular readers of this blog will remember that Halogen has been a fantastic supporter of my class, and the HR social media space for a long time. I am really looking forward to learning more about their latest product developments. 

In addition, we will do a special 'remote' HR Happy Hour show from the Halogen offices on Sept 25, more details on that show will be posted on the HR Happy Hour site.

September 30 - I am speaking on HR Technology at the WTPF annual professional development event in Washington, DC. The WTPF is a Business Forum for HR Professionals, comprised of Human Resources professionals and thought leaders in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area.

September 30 - October 2 - The HR Technology Conference in Chicago.  I will be meeting many leaders in the HR Tech space, getting interviews, doing some video blogs, and overall trying to learn and share as much as I can about the future of HR Technology. 

I am talking to some folks about doing another remote HR Happy Hour show from HR Tech, more details to come.

November 6-7 - The HRevolution - Louisville, Kentucky.  The first ever HR Blogging/Social Media Unconference. I am really excited about this event and have been honored to be a small part of the event planning.  This promises to be a great time and I will be leading a session on new and innovative technologies that HR pros can leverage.

Does Social Media influence your participation?

I read an interesting article that theorized that many academic journals and paid subscription based publications are under increasing pressure due to their 'closed' nature.

The basic premise was that since articles in many of these publications can't be linked to, blogged about, tweeted, and otherwise publicly shared that many authors will begin to seek alternate mediums for Flickr - Tochispublication.

It makes sense; if you are really interested in building your personal brand, and enhancing your credentials to the widest possible audience, should you write for academic journals that only a very few choose to pay for, and whose content can't be widely distributed? Or would you choose to blog, conduct webinars, or produce e-books that can achieve much wider distribution.

The same argument could be made for academic and professional conferences.  Would you be less willing to attend or speak at a conference or event if you thought no one would be live blogging, tweeting, streaming and otherwise promoting your appearance?  Is it enough just to reach the 50 or 100 folks in the room that day? Or does your session have to be streamed, tweeted, and blogged for maximum exposure?

I am interested in knowing - how does social media coverage affect what events you attend and where you distribute your content?