Please come check us out there!

Thanks!

We’re baaack!  HRevolution, that is.  We’re back and better than ever.

The HRevolution 2010 unconference will be happening in Chicago, May 7th and 8th and you don’t want to miss it.

Tired of those stuffy conferences where you sit in a room and someone lectures to you?

Wish you had the opportunity to check out a conference where you can actually participate in the discussion?

Want to hear from some fantastic HR social media thought leaders?

Yes? Yes?  And Yes?

Well, you should get your tickets now for HRevolution 2010 as space is limited.  And, trust me, it is  going to sell out.

3 reasons why you need to be in Chicago on May 7^th and 8^th:

The People: First and foremost, it’s the people. And the crew coming together for this year’s unconference is fantastic.  The planning committee for 2010 has arranged for about twice the capacity of last year’s event, meaning HRevolution 2010 will blend old faces with new in an intimate setting where relationships can unfold naturally and meaningfully.

The Place: We’ve locked up a phenomenal and highly professional space for the event that could not be more perfect for an unconference. HRevolution will take place at The Catalyst Ranch, which is one of Chicago’s premier event locations and—bonus!—is centrally located with easy access to hotels, restaurants, and nightlife. Catalyst Ranch is known for bringing a level of fun and sophistication to events that is unparalleled—we don’t recall meeting any other space providers who could so naturally blend “white boards,” “afternoon snack service,” “stereo systems,” and  the “Play-Doh for 110 people” into a single conversation.

The Topics: The beauty of the unconference format is that it is designed to leave you with practical, useful knowledge.  When you get back to work on Monday, and when someone asks you, “What did you get for the money,” the answer that flows oh-so-naturally from your lips will blow them away. And you, too, we hope. Especially given the awesome $100 ticket price.

So if you’re in HR—or a manager who truly believes in the power of  your people—if you’re dabbling with this social media stuff and  thinking “Should I or shouldn’t I” or “How do I…” or even “Why would I,” then get here on May 7th-8th. You will meet the people and learn the stuff and be in the places that make it all come together.

24 hours+ of mind-bending, trend-setting discussions.  You don’t want to miss it!

Are you still reading this?  Go, go on.  Go get your ticket!

Your HRevolution Team:

Steve Boese

Ben Eubanks

Joan Ginsberg

Trish McFarlane

Jason Seiden

Mark Stelzner

Crystal Peterson

I recently guest posted over at Creative Chaos Consultant about the Put Up or Shut Up Challenge.  Here’s my post about it (and the others are here), but in a nutshell, Victorio Milian asked HR pros what we were going to do to be a HR Rock Star in 2010.
As I was writing the post, I started thinking about some of the other things crisscrossing through my world right now.  There’s a lot going on and it’s an exciting time for me.  I’m learning and being challenged daily and I love it!

So what’s going on?  Good question.  Glad you asked!

 Outside of my HR responsibilities at the really cool ad agency I work for, here’s what’s been going on with me:

• Louisville SHRM Board – As I mentioned in my Put Up or Shut Up post, I recently accepted a board position with our local SHRM chapter as the Communications and Technology Chair. Part of my responsibility this year will be to get the chapter moving into the social media arena.   I also want to tackle our website; get in behind the scenes and get a better understanding of the back-end side of the site.  I’d like to work on making it more interactive, more user-friendly.
• HRevolution 2010 – I had such a good time on the planning committee for the first HRevolution, I signed up for more!  I am very excited about this year’s event but I can’t let the secrets out of the bag just yet.  Stay tuned!
• Personnel Committee – yes, that’s correct.  My church is still calling it a Personnel Committee and I am now a member of said committee.  My first task? Change the name.  Second task?  Putting some processes in place for recruiting and other HR-related issues.  We’re busy recruiting now for a couple of positions, so I had to hit the ground running!
• Couples Ministry – My husband and I have started a Couples Ministry at church.  We’ve been planning this ministry for almost a year and it’s all coming together.  We started our marketing campaign in January and had our kick-off session this past Friday.  24 couples attended the kick-off and we had a great time!  We already have our second session planned and are working on the rest of the year.  We’re really excited about this ministry and are looking forward to growing together as a couple, and encouraging other couples to do the same.
• 50^th Wedding Anniversary – Speaking of couples, my parents will be celebrating 50 years of marriage this year!!  My siblings and I are busy planning a big to-do to celebrate this milestone.   With one out of every two marriages ending in divorce, 50 years is definitely something to celebrate!

So that’s some of what’s crisscrossing through my life right now.  How about you?  What’s going on in your world?

A group called Edge Outreach,an international faith-based group, with headquarters in Louisville,  is busy providing water for the children and families effected by this crisis.   The Edge Outreach water team recently installed three water systems in the area – one at a Salvation Army site filled with homeless survivors, another serving a clinic that is seeing more than 200 injured or sick patients daily and a third at a Haitian Community Hospital. 

Other local entities have also aided in this relief effort.  The Louisville Water Company, the Metropolitan Sewer District and our city government donated a total of $25000.  And members of one local church, Southeast Christian, have donated over $80000. 

Edge is providing a wonderful service.  Donations are still being accepted and every little bit counts and goes a long way to helping Edge provide clean water to the survivors.

If you’re interested in donating, you can do so directly on their site.

Challenges and all, I’m very thankful for 2009.  I met some new friends, reconnected with old ones,  stepped outside of my comfort zone a few times, and believe it or not, said ‘no’ more often.

For 2010, there are a couple of things I’m excited about.  The first is the opportunity to connect more, both personally and professionally.  I will take my online relationships offline, and work to spend more one-on-one time with my friends and family. 

The second is an adventure that my husband and I are taking on….a marriage ministry.  We’re really excited about it and looking forward to learning, sharing and growing together and with the other couples in the ministry. 

Exciting times for 2010.  I’m looking forward to a terrific year.  How about you?

Happy New Year!!

• I am thankful for a wonderful husband who loves me unconditionally, prays with and for me, makes me laugh, and who I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with.
• I am thankful for my two beautiful children.  It is such a blessing to have my  little ones in my life, watching them learn and grow and seeing things through their young eyes.  They keep me on my toes and I love every minute of it!
• I am thankful for sweet, beautiful girlfriends who love and support me, laugh with me, cry with me, tell me when I’m right and when I’m wrong and are right there whenever I need them.
• I am thankful for my family. My husband and I have a great combined family and we can always count on lots and lots of laughter when we all get together. 
• I am thankful for the struggles opportunities for growth that I’ve had during my life.  I am the person I am today, in part, due to the trials and tribulations I’ve dealt with and I’m grateful that I can now look back on most of these and see the lessons in each one of them. And I am thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to share these lessons with others who are going through similar issues.
• I am thankful to my mother for showing me what having faith in God means and for giving me the tools and opportunities to develop and grow in my own faith.

I am thankful.  Truly thankful.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

And now, all of these terrific blog posts are in one location for your reading pleasure.  Trish McFarlane is hosting the HR Carnival’s HRevolution edition over on her blog, HR Ringleader and it’s a great collection of fun stories about the attendees, the un-conference style, turning tweeps to peeps, and the future of HR.  It was a great event and Trish did a wonderful job of pulling all of the stories together. 

So head on over to the carnival today and spend a little time reading about HRevolution.  Oh, and bring me back some popcorn!

Yep, it’s over.  HRevolution is over.  Well at least the un-conference part is over.  The real work is just getting started. 

This past weekend, almost 50 HR professionals, recruiters, CEO’s, consultants and vendors came to Louisville, KY to talk HR.  Social media for HR. Technology for HR. The future of HR. 

So many great people and so many great conversations and a lot of passion for the work that we do.  Everyone in the room was there to talk about how we, and our profession, can be better.  And that was inspiring.

 A few take-aways for me:

• If you have the opportunity to take your online relationships, offline, do it.  It is well worth the time and effort to get to know your twitter/blogging pals offline.  I am looking forward to engaging more with the folks I met this past weekend.
• HR is not dead.   HR is alive and well, and there are many, many HR pros rocking it out. Every. Single. Day.  Can we do some things better?  Yes.  But are we doing a lot of things well? Yes.  Yes. Yes.
• Not everyone in HR will be strategic and not everyone is looking for that ‘seat at the table’.  And you know what?  That’s ok.  There’s work on both sides (transactional and transformational) that needs to get done.  Whatever your role, do it and do it well.   
• While social media is definitely a topic for discussion among HR pros, we need to remember that it’s just a tool in our tool belt.  We need to make sure our culture is thriving and our employees are thriving and engaged.  And if that’s not happening, we need to be about the business of fixing that first.  Social media, web 2.0, whatever the hot new thing is, can’t fix those issues.  

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  We have the opportunity to continue this conversation and help take our profession to the next level.  And I’m excited about that!

So, are you ready?

Here’s a little info about Jessica:

I’m thrilled to be a part of this conference and I’m looking forward to meeting and collaborating with Jessica and all of the HR/Recruiting pros attending.

Will you be there?

What’s HRevolution?  Well, you can check out the wiki here, but in short, it’s an event for HR professionals who want to discuss social media for HR, blogging, HR technology and the future of HR.  There’s a fantastic group of speakers scheduled for the day, including Trish McFarlane and Ben Eubanks , co-creators of this event, and Steve Boese , who is also a member of the planning team.  Check out the full line-up of speakers and topics here.

The whole idea for HRevolution started on Twitter as a back-and-forth between Trish and Ben just a few months ago.  That’s right, this is the first year and already we’ve had tremendous support including several sponsors who stepped up financially to help make this a success.  Today I’ll be talking about two of our sponsors with more info on the other sponsors coming soon.

One of these sponsors happens to be the really cool ad agency that I work for. Doe is a full-service national agency specializing in all areas of communication (digital marketing, advertising, design, public relations, public affairs, sales promotion and direct marketing).   Some of our clients include Maker’s Mark, Hillerich & Bradsby (Louisville Slugger Bats) , Knob Creek Bourbon,  Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, Central Bank and Norton Healthcare.  You can check out some of our work here.    We have a social media group that works directly with our clients on all things digital/social media. That group also works on all things digital and social for Doe and I’ve been a part of this group working on our internal strategy.  So when I mentioned this conference to our CEO, he didn’t hesitate in his support.  

And then there’s  Lyn Hoyt with Berkeley Tandem, Inc/Fusion Frames, otherwise known as @designtwit and @awardframes on Twitter.  Berkeley Tandem is a certificate and award frame manufacturer based in Nashville, TN.  They supply, design and sale wholesale stock and custom frame award products to businesses and non-profits.  A few years ago, they changed their sales strategy and decided to sell more direct online and have since launched http://www.fusionframes.com and http://www.awardcertificateframes.com.  They’ve had great success with their online product niche and some of their clients include CarMax, Boy Scouts of America, American Red Cross, Dupont, Intel and HR consultants who incorporate their products into their recognition strategies.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lyn at the Kentucky SHRM conference last month.   She is a graphic designer by trade but has gotten more and more involved in HR as an employer.  We had a terrific time talking about HR and social media and while I know she’s thrilled to be a sponsor of HRevolution, I know she’s even more excited about being an attendee.  From Lyn:

“What we hope to learn at HRevolution is to be better collaborators and content creators, inspiring the HR industry with ideas online and to use social networking in order to continue learning about what our customers want. And as a business owner, hiring and good HR practices impacts the growth of my business. I find myself learning from this group of HR professionals about the tools, planning, practice and strategy that shapes our company’s HR planning.” 

 That’s exactly what’s going to be happening at HRevolution.  And it’s all going down right here in Louisville on November 6^th and  7^th.  We’ll be hanging out at the Seelbach Hilton for the conference and we’ll be checking out 4th Street Live for our tweet-up on Friday evening. 

We’re just days away.  Are you registered?