The HR Technology Conference: Everything's Amazing But...

Thanks to the Internet's irrevocable laws of virality, you've probably seen, (or at least heard of), a clip from the comedian Louis C.K. titled 'Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy', (I'll embed the video at the end of this post for those that care to take a look. It is quite funny).

Louis' take is essentially that the incredible advances in all kinds of technology and levels of utility and convenience that these developments have enabled quickly progress from 'Wow! Isn't this amazing!' to 'Is that it? I'm totally bored.' in shorter and shorter cycles. In the video Louis compares our perceptions of modern air travel, which still should be considered a magical invention, (five hours from LA to NYC), to our still fairly recent history where a similar journey would take '30 years and some of you would die'.

But the nature of technology and of progress has always been such - once a standard is set, and the near term benefits of new invention are realized, (or at least generally understood, kind of an important distinction when it comes to enterprise technologies), most of us wonder what's next? Where, how, and from whose wisdom will the 'next big thing' spring from? It doesn't really matter if we, (sort of a collective we in this case, so don't get all 'I understand this space' on me. Thanks.), have not really completely or ecven adequately processed last year's set of 'next big things.' In the context of the recently concluded HR Technology Conference, we can talk for some time about this year's 'Cool New Technologies', but can you name one or two from last year? Can you name any from just two years ago?

We are driven in the technology field as participants, commentators, consumers, and leaders to continually search for the ideas and certainly the supporting and enabling solutions that can help transform our organizations and turn these great ideas into accepted enterprise practice, to better facilitate connection and innovation from our teams, and provide organizational leadership the information and insights derived from a more complete understanding of the performance and potential of the firm's people, (whew - I almost referred to 'people' as 'human capital', it was a close one), to achieve our organizational goals. I'd also be naive and optimistic to hope that one of those goals is to 'help our people be happy', but I'll leave that for another time.

So in the chase for 'what's next', it's easy to forget, or at least choose to not remember many of the things that led us to this place. And beyond that, we can often fail to appreciate and come close to extracting the potential of even 'older' technologies and solutions, caught up in the game of the latest gadgets, UX's, or smart marketing slogans. 

All this really long (apologies) preamble was inspired by some things I have read or heard about the HR Tech Conference, and by proxy, the HR Technology market as a whole. Because if you feel, as I do, that the conference represents a kind of State of the Union event in the space, then what happens there, and what is said about it in the ensuing weeks probably represents an accurate and full assessment of the industry at a point in time. So when you catch the odd comment or blog post or two about people not being really blown away by any new solutions they saw, or that perhaps too many of the vendors are chasing each other's functionality around in circles, resulting in a mess of non-differentiated solutions, or even that some of the sessions seemed to present the same ideas from prior years, just packaged a bit differently - then I'm left to wonder and question if we've lost a little perspective of what is really happening inside most organizations, and the truth of the struggles many of them face with HR technologies every day. Never mind the fact that there were over 50 product announcements, some really exciting and interesting, presented at the show.

Why the HR Technology Conference is, as John Hollon at TLNT.com points out, one of the HR industry's two essential events to attend each year, is because it is much more than just fancy and showy displays of a new application or of the announcement of some new features added to an older application. The event is about taking measure of trends and ideas that are developing on a much broader level, cross-industry, global, and large in scope, but with the added advantage for attendees to start to think about how to apply and take advantage of these trends in almost real-time.

How can they manage this? Because the concurrent sessions present real stories of actual success from which to draw. Because their current vendor partners are almost certainly attending and exhibiting at the show, usually with many of their most senior executives on site. Because all of the top industry thinkers and consultants are there, most of whom are accessible for a conversation and exchange of ideas. This confluence of educational content, solution provider presence and attention, thought leadership, and top-caliber social and networking opportunities simply happens nowhere else in the industry.

Last point on all this is that many if not most of the benefits of attending the show for HR leaders and practitioners are not at all about the so-called 'latest and greatest'. Sure, the flashy new application that hits all the current buzzwords can be fun, interesting, and can even be really important, but remember - next year there will be another crop of 'latest and greatest', and we'll have to think hard to recall this year's winners. No, the real value of this gathering is far more enduring and important than making a bit of noise at a booth - it's about the rare opportunity to walk away from a three day event armed with new ideas, closer relationships with important partners, new and reinforced connections with peers and experts, and finally the chance to make positive and lasting impacts on your organization.

And we all know to do that takes time, great tools, insight, good ideas, and lots of help. The HR Technology Conference scores on all those measures.

Congratulations to Bill Kutik and the entire team at LRP for a fantastic event.

FYI - Here's the Louic C.K clip I mentioned at the top - email and RSS subscribers will need to click through - Have a great weekend!

#HRevolution at the HR Technology Conference

We are just winding down the HR Technology Conference here at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, once again it was a fantastic event complete with all the things you'd expect from this event - great sessions, a lively exhibition hall packed with demonstrations from every solutions provider that matters, and as always the chance to connect and re-connect with peers, friends, and industry leaders.

To Bill Kutik and everyone at LRP that makes this event what it is today - many thanks. 

I was fortunate enough to get to participate in two sessions at the Conferences- as a panelist on the Social Media Strategies panel, (which I previewed here, and will have a recap posted later in the week), and as a co-facilitator along with Trish McFarlane in an #HRevolution-style session titled 'Your Kids Will Never Work in an Office', an open and wide-ranging discussion on the changing nature or work, the influence of technologies like mobile and social on the workplace, and what challenges the next generation of workers will present and provide.

The slides that Trish and I worked from have been uploaded to Slideshare here, and are also embedded below:

HRevolution Session at HR Technology Conference 2011

View more presentations from steveboese

This #HRevolution session was just one of three separate breakout sessions that #HRevolution veterans presented today at HR Technology.  In addition to our session, Dwane Lay and China Gorman led a discussion on 'HR Technology and Differentiation'; and Daniel Crosby and Lance Haun took on the topics of 'Change Leadership and Gamification'.  All told across the three session, we likely introduced the HRevolution format, vibe, and style to about 250 attendees.

Our session on the future of work was extremely lively and participatory - exactly as an HRevolution-style session should be. While Trish and I set up the topics, offered some discussion questions, and tried to guide the discussions - the conversations were clearly driven by the participants. There were engaged and thoughtful comments, questions, and opinions from all corners of the large room, and I'd estimate we heard from at least 30 different individuals during the course of the hour.

The lesson for me is certainly not that any event including HRevolution can truly solve big problems in an hour, but rather that HR and HR Technology professionals have lots to contribute to these discussions, and that when provided the opportunity, (as HRevolution does), they will dive right in and offer their expertise, and openly look to their peers and colleagues for support.

Our industry needs these opportunities for professionals to come together and engage in this way, and while HRevolution does not claim to be the only option for this kind of dialogue to happen, it is certainly one the seems to have resonated here today at the HR Technology Conference.

Many thanks to Bill Kutik, Claude Werder, and everyone else at LRP and HRevolution for all the support.

Talking Social at The HR Technology Conference

Next week at the 14th Annual HR Technology Conference at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas I will have the privilege of participating in a panel discussion titled 'HR Technology's Second Annual Social Media Panel: Deploying Deep Social Strategies Without Destroying Your Career.'

The panel will be moderated by the HR Capitalist himself Kris Dunn who will be joined by Laurie Ruettimann, Mike Krupa, Oliver Marks, and myself.

It is no secret to anyone in Human Resources or in the enterprise technology space that 'social' needs to move past marketing buzzword and into demonstrable business value for most organizational leaders to take notice, to support social evangelists inside the organization, and to see the real benefits of deploying either social and collaborative technologies in-house, while opening up more fully and systematically to the use of outward facing social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in support of enterprise objectives. I'll bet 90% of the vendors you will see exhibiting at the HR Technology Conference will have some kind of 'social' angle in their solutions, (or at least in their marketing copy), but which ones make sense for you and your organization, and which ones look and feel like they simply bolted on some 'like' buttons and badges as an afterthought. It's not always easy to tell.

And then there is the 'personal' side of social for the HR professional - how can someone that has a day job with real responsibilities, deadlines, and managers to answer to still use social tools in a way that won't compromise their ability to perform, as well as act in concert with company-wide messaging and postioning that quite frankly, most HR people are not always so well-informed about.  What happens when one of your employees, say a star engineer starts to gain popularity on his or her blog, has about 20,000 followers on Twitter, and starts getting asked to speak at events and do vendor webcasts?

Do you allow and support them in their 'micro-celebrity', or do you worry about tasks not getting completed while the young (or maybe not so young), emerging star is building his or her name. Can you accrue value from this activity back to the organization? Do you even know how?

Just because every vendor is talking about social, and just about every person at the Conference and who might be reading this blog is participating in social, (check the graph below for more color on this), hasn't made determining where and how social technologies and processes fit in a given organization's business model and processes any easier. And just because you finally convinced your VP of HR to join LinkedIn or get a Twitter account doesn't mean determining the right balance and relationship of your talent's personal brands and online presence any simpler.

So at the HR Technology Conference (our session is Tuesday October 4 at 11:00AM),  our panel on social will certainly try to explore many of these topics, I am sure in 75 minutes we can't solve them all, (or any of them), but I think we will provide some good food for thought and give attendees some ideas they can begin to explore in their organizations.

Oh, and here is the chart I mentioned I'd share - just one data point among millions you have to consider when talking 'social'.

Source - Business Insider

Wow - 16% of all time spent online is now on Facebook.  Hmm. Better quit reading this now and get back over there - I might have just tagged you in a picture!

Hope to see you at the Conference next week!

Shameless Promotion Warning: Catch the HR Happy Hour Show Tomorrow Night

Over the last year or so I have tended to shy away from posting that often on the blog here about my other little project, The HR Happy Hour Show (Thursday nights at 8PM ET), but this week's special guest, and the topic are so important to me that I feel that no amount of shameless promotion will be, well, too shameless.

For this week on the big show, HR Technology Conference Co-chair, columnist for Human Resources Executive magazine, and leader of the best LinkedIn discussion group for HR and HR Technology professionals, and occasionally referred to as the most interesting man in the world, Bill Kutik will return for his annual appearance on the HR Happy Hour Show.

You can listen to the show tomorrow night at 8PM ET/5PM PT on the show page here - on the listener call-in line of 646-378-0186, or using the widget player below:

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

You can also follow the conversation backchannel on Twitter using the hashtag - #HRHappyHour

We will be talking about the upcoming 14th Annual HR Technology Conference set for October 3-5, 2011 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This is a can't miss event for HR leaders, professionals, and the HR Technology community.  So we will preview the event and make sure you understand what you need to know if you are planning your trip to Las Vegas, or if you have not made the move and booked your place, we'll make sure you have the info you need to make the right decision.

We'll also get to touch on into some other topics, like the state of the HR Technology market, the ways social networking has changed our industry, and even the best ways to get yourself in a little trouble while in Las Vegas.

Tune in to the show tomorrow, Thursday August 18 at 8PM ET to get the lowdown from the man himself, Mr. Bill Kutik.

Small Business HR Technology - What's Changed in Two Years?

I got a super question in the email yesterday from a reader asking if I had any advice or recommendations for the best, or at least most interesting HR Technology solutions for the small business.

It is a great topic for sure, and as I was trying to craft some kind of thoughtful response, I turned to the wise wizard of Google to help spur a few ideas by typing 'small business HR Technology' into the 'please tell me what I need to know box' and hoped for some inspiration.Jasper Johns #6 - nothing to do with HR Technology, I just like it

Of course there were a few sponsored results on the top of the search results, but much to my shock and surpise, the 3rd organic result was a post I had written about Small Business HRIS system over two years ago - 'HR Technology for the Small Business - Core HRIS'.  While it was neat to see one of my posts show up pretty high on page one of the results, it also made me think that two-plus years is an eternity in the technology space, particularly for solutions that are targeted at smaller organizations and even sole entrepreneurs. I took a quick look at the post from 2009, and besides thinking, (this is boring), that it likely is really out-of-date, and thin on depth for other solutions and resources besides Core HRIS that can potentially assist small businesses with HR and recruiting challenges.

So what has changed in the last two years?  What should the small business, I am thinking under 100 or 150 employee type firms mainly, be thinking about in terms of solutions and resources to meet their HR and Recuiting challenges?  Of course the effects of mobile and social have both grown tremendously in the last two years, but what else? 

Rather than do what I (lamely) attempted two years ago, and list out 5 or 6 HR Technology solutions that I recommend for the small business, I want to put the challenge out to the readers and to the solution providers to tell me what solutions should be on the small business owner's radar screen. 

If you are an HR or Recruiting pro in a small business, what tools and technologies have you used that are helping you solve your business challenges?  Please share the names/links in the comments.

And if you are a small business HR Technology solutions provider - please feel free to describe and pitch your solution in the comments - you never know, in a few days this post might start showing up on the first page of Google search results for 'small business HR Technology', and it might not be a bad thing to have your name and link in the comments.

So what do you have to recommend?

Come at me, Bro