Welcome to the HR Carnival-HRevolution style! I’ve prepared a short video to lead into this fun “occasion” and the text of the video is below if you’re the reading type (or if my mug isn’t something you enjoy staring at). Please set aside some time to seriously read through and absorb this stuff, because it’s the most comprehensive collection of information about the event to date.

(Subscribers may have to click through to view.)

If you’d like to get on the email list for the HRevolution email newsletter, just pop your email into the box below. Spam is for eating on grilled cheese sandwiches and not for your inbox, so don’t worry about that. I’ll be sharing tidbits as the year goes on so you can stay on top of any developments and secret plans.

Thanks for dropping by and thanks to everyone who took the time to write and submit something. I was surprised at the number of submissions. Last year when I did my first regular carnival, I had fewer than this time! Trish and I both appreciate everyone for their help in making this event what it is today.

Below you’ll find links to the posts about HRevolution. I didn’t censor anything, so you will find that some talk about what went wrong at HRev this year. That’s perfectly fine. I know it isn’t perfect, and one thing to remember is that HRev is in its infancy. The idea of the event is less than a year old, and there are still kinks to work out.

But hey, it’s a $100 ticket. If you can’t get at least that much value from the event, maybe it’s you?

Quick shout outs to Dee, Mervyn, and Mike—you guys carried some great sessions, and I appreciate you letting me tag along with y’all.

If I had time to go through and talk about everyone who submitted, you’d fall asleep anyway. So here’s a universal and heartfelt thanks to everyone for making this all possible.

Some HR bloggers get more than 20,000 hits per month. There is an interested audience out there. We had just over 100 people at HRev this time. That’s a lot of wiggle room, so make sure you share this post with anyone and everyone to make sure they know everything there is to know. If you weren’t able to attend, you can get a great feel for the event by reading through the posts gathered here. And if you are serious about trying to get the “HRevolution feeling,” then you definitely need to take the advice I wrote about here.

Now get to reading.

The Posts of HRevolution 2010

Let’s start at the top, shall we? Trish McFarlane has become such a wonderful friend to me since our first phone conversation last year. Her posts about HRevolution have been fun to read, and since she’s a co-creator, I just can’t keep her down to one post. Learn more in her posts about the pioneer spirit, who owns culture,and  innovation in a static world.

Next up we have Crystal Peterson, another wonderful friend and talented HR pro. She was a big piece of planning for this event and the original one. I really wanted to see the session that she participated in more than any other, because personal and employment branding are both big topics in my work right now. While I didn’t get to see the whole session, Crystal still gave a great recap in her post on personal brands.

Then Joan, a fantastic individual to know (and she talks a lot on the phone ), hopped in with her post on rants and raves.

Teresa Morris, who most of us know as @controllergirl on Twitter, was a welcome addition to this year’s event. Her comments are short and sweet.

Johnny Nyk… Nyk… Nykolaiszyn (whew, that’s tough to get out!) offers a great post-HRevolution challenge for us all to stay on top of the commitments we made that day.

Mark Stelzner passes along this piece on HRevolution discontent and gives us some thoughts for future events. Mark played a role on the planning committee this year and was much more positive and happy than he seemed to be last year (you had to be there when we all left the last session feeling lethargic and hopeless).

With one of the most creative titles, Jessica Miller Merrill shares her unconference eyebrow wax post and some thoughts on how it’s hard bringing about a revolution.

A great, short conversation on Saturday evening is my best memory of Paul Smith. We talked about one of my favorite topics (blogging) and I was pleasantly surprised by some of his comments. Make sure you check out his whole series on how he is evolving.

Lance Haun is a fun, down to earth kind of guy. I had the pleasure of sharing his company at dinner on Saturday, and while we didn’t speak together much, it was nice to be close to the guy who co-led the final session on becoming a credible activist for the HR profession.

Benjamin McCall is a lively guy and has some great thoughts to share. One of my favorite points was about how an unconference is a form of leadership development training.

Mervyn Dinnen, one of our UK participants, was a pleasure to meet. I love some accents, and he has a great one. I had the opportunity to participate with him and Dee Honner as facilitators for a last minute session on mobilizing HR, and it was fun to hear his thoughts on the issues. His main thought? Be yourself and spread the message.

Krista Francis is my informal mentor. I can talk with her about almost anything and I think she’s a superstar. She lets me act important by asking me questions on blogging, WordPress, and other fun web stuff, so it all balances out. She gives us five thoughts on HRevolution, and I won’t spoil her fun by giving them away here.

Steve Boese, yet another person who took time out of his busy schedule to help plan this event, talks about barnstorming and taking the HRev show on the road.

One guy who I’m really sad to have missed out on talking to was Victorio Milian. Why? His post on his HRev action plan is a great reason. His thoughts and ideas are amazingly insightful and he challenges me to be and do better.

Mike Vandervort is a great guy and I would have loved to have chatted more with him. He let me have a little bit of the floor during our blogging session and his post-event thoughts are interesting ones.

Shauna Moerke (she of the big laugh and the bigger smile) got my weekend going with a laugh. She takes things a little more seriously in her post about how social matters.

Tammy Colson talks about making personal changes in her post, and I think it’s something we all should challenge ourselves with as well.

Frank Zupan, funny man and the-man-without-a-blog, dropped this great tweet on me that I just had to share. My post from #HRevolution: I took more than I gave. That is all.

You have to check out Kevin Grossman’s post about things coming in threes even if only to see his pink shirt. He also recaps a few of the thoughts from various sessions in his own unique way.

A recent contact I’ve made is with Steve Browne. While he wasn’t able to attend the event, he put together a fantastic post on Jennifer McClure’s blog about the impact of the event on those unable to attend.

A surprisingly quiet guy that I can never get enough posts from is Matt Stollack. His (interesting) advice for those returning from the event? Join SHRM. Like I said, I really like Matt and I wish he’d post more. So give him some comment love and maybe he will.

Next up is a post by one of my blogging pals, Shennee Rutt. It was great to finally meet her and after she mugged (or hugged, the memory is fuzzy) me in the lobby of the hotel on day 1, I knew it would be fun to see how she reacted to the event.

One of the quietest (and sweetest) ladies at HRev was Debbie Brown. I was so thrilled to be able to carve out some time to work with her personally to answer her blogging and website questions. There’s just no substitute for a face-to-face chat! She uses interesting words in her post.

As I mentioned before, I was able to work with Dee on a session, and hearing some of her ideas was a great benefit to me as a relatively new HR pro. Plus we were able to see the hockey fan behind the camera, so all sides of her personality were uncovered.

As my wife and I have been working through an adoption, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with a guy who has had the pleasure of going through that process already. I was really excited to meet him (although meeting his cute kids would have been fun, too), and Bryon Abramowitz is a sharp, tech-lovin’ dude. His comments are fantastic, and I like that he stresses the fact that it’s only a $100 dollar investment for such a great event.

My very first Twitter pal to meet in real life, April Dowling is a great person and a wonderful resource to me as well. I remember when I hassled her all the time when I got started in HR. Now it’s just every few weeks. Seriously, though, she has a list of sixteen funny, interesting, and pertinent points about the event for your reading pleasure.

I was surprised when a random woman came up and got in my face. That’s because I’ve never seen Robin Schooling in person. I’ve adored her comments from afar over these past few months, and she even let me (girly squeal) host her guest post about her first unconference ever. It’s about your really cool uncle Andre.

Lois Melbourne is one smart cookie. While she doesn’t post on her blog often, I really enjoy reading what she has to say. Her post leads off with one of my favorite quotes from the event. “If you don’t add value, then you suck.”

Despite my snarky comment to JP Elliot before the event (he asked what we were going to do differently after the event was over, I said I would end up sleeping more ) he was a welcome addition to the event. His thoughts on what we could do differently next time around are solid, and I’ve already started making notes for next time around.

John Ingham (of the pink blog header) was unable to attend this year, but that doesn’t keep him from participating. His post on how to get outside the social media bubble is definitely worth a read.

Ben Madden shares his post on how he is evolving (hint: by reading a lot, being willing to risk and potentially fail, etc.) and how the event impacted him.

Sarah White is an interesting woman. I think we shared a handful of words during the entire event, but I would have really liked to speak with her more in person. She gave me some great tips a few weeks prior to the event and I was overjoyed at her willingness to assist. Her post on generations (and forgetting them) is a great continuation of the generational session at HRev.

Michael Carty (yet another Brit, bet he has a cool accent, too!) wasn’t able to attend the event. In his words he was “stuck over in England.” But he still made the time to write on the employer branding session and asks whether staff are the best brand ambassadors or not.

Bill Boorman is smart. And funny. And I’m glad we finally met. I may have offended him by trying to copy his awesome accent (can you tell I’m addicted to those things?), but he still had nice things to say by the end of the event, so it couldn’t have been that bad. Make sure you check his post on the war for other people’s talent.

Matt Charney and the rest of the Monster gang were on top of things this year with some fun giveaways and great toys, but my chats with Matt since the event finished have been worth more than all the cowbells and drumsticks in the world. Check out his post on breaking the silo and the bigger picture.

My travel buddy and all-around good friend Steve Harrison wrote a piece on networking at the big event. I love reading stories about the new connections!

Charlie Judy (who wore a Monster towel as a skirt for a significant portion of Friday’s festivities) made me think with his post. I have a feeling that he’s not the only one who feels this way.

Charee Klimek put together her very first video post as a tribute to the event, and she doesn’t do that bad of a job for her first run.

I was interested to see how Kristina Allen, a PR professional, would view HRevolution. It turns out that she enjoyed herself while at the same time she still has the same questions as many of us when it comes to social tools.

Maren Hogan gets wordy and passionate in her post about why it matters if you weren’t there.

Lisa Rosendahl, one of the people I look up to most (she’s way smart at leadership/HR stuff!), ponders the event now that it’s over.

Stephanie Thomas tells us her story about HRevolution from the view of an outsider.

Paul Hebert, one of the most brilliant people I follow online and a delightful dinner companion, tells us what motivation looks like in real life using HRev as an example.

Although he had to leave early, Bryan Wempen still shared some great thoughts about the event. He’s one of those people I wish I could have spoken with more!

And the Rypple crew kicks the last one through the goal posts by talking about speaking the language of your profession. Quick thanks to Rypple for letting me pilot one of their video cameras around for the day and for the rockin’ t-shirt.

Whew! I don’t know about you, but I’m worn out. I’ll share a few links and we’ll call it a day, okay?

HRevolution website

HRevolution Facebook page

HRevolution LinkedIn group

HRevolution Attendee LinkedIn List

HR Carnival-HRevolution Style is a post from: UpstartHR

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Today’s post is a good one, and it’s even better because I was able to get the fantastic Robin Schooling to share it with all of you! I had the opportunity to meet Robin last weekend, and she was as wonderful in person as she is online. Now have a seat and listen up. She has a lesson for you…

It’s taken me a while to process and think about what I took away from HRevolution.  Other than “The HR Apprentice” session where I was a team captain (thanks Steve Boese) and talked up out of necessity, I primarily sat quietly absorbing content and was the most active-listener I have been in a long time.  I continue to think about (and even dream about – yikes!) conversations and comments and moments.  I had a conversation with my CEO on Monday and told her that it was the best event I ever attended (and my first unConference) but also that I was feeling a bit sad.

Sad?  Yes…because I fear for the ability of our HR family, and by extension our organizations and communities, to evolve.  It’s like the aftermath of hanging out with Uncle Andre at a big family dinner.

When Uncle Andre joins us for a family gathering, there’s a sense of excitement and energy (and maybe a few battles and arguments).  Most family members agree that Uncle Andre is the forward-thinking, progressive*, hip, with-it, “cool” uncle.  By comparison, the rest of the extended family is fairly complacent, content, and willing to sit back and complain about the world’s state of affairs without doing anything.  And, quite frankly, the rest of the family can sometimes be disturbingly sexist, racist and homophobic.  So when Uncle Andre leaves to return home, I am left with the rest of the family I hang out with every day, and what I know about them comes, sadly, a bit more into focus. (*use of the term ‘progressive’ is not intended to imply or confer political party affiliation)

Uncle Andre and I spring from the same gene pool and share inherited traits. He and I have, I like to think, started to evolve.  If evolution is a change in inherited traits through successive generations, what will it take for the rest of our family to join us?  Because I’m not sure our family has the time for WAIT for generations to work through some of these things.   As an HR family, we’ve inherited a legacy and foundation of what HR is and what HR historically does.  We’ve also, quite accurately in many cases, been labeled the:

1. Administrivia Worker,
2. Policy Police,
3. Personnel Girl,
4. Overhead Department,
5. Gatekeeper, and
6. Human Remains

So I took a few days to reflect upon my sadness – how could I leave HRevolution so incredibly energized (and I was/am/will continue to be) yet also feeling so lost and alone and bereft?

What left me feeling sad after HRevolution was the realization that when I go to the next HR family dinner back home, I won’t have Uncle Andre by my side.  Rather, I’ll have the other family members around the table, the ones I see every day… the ones who can’t or won’t evolve.  Is their unwillingness to evolve a conscious choice or a matter of their inherited traits?  Are they fighting evolution – and do they even know they NEED to evolve?

• Cousin Ashley is an HR Director who has been employed for a long-time with the same company – she’s quite accustomed to and very comfortable with the status quo, and sees no need to adapt to the changing world beyond her immediate border.
• Aunt Marie is content performing super-effective HR administrative work (and someone has to, let’s face it), and while she has a day-to-day impact within her company, she doesn’t necessarily care about moving the profession, or her organization, forward.
• And Brother Joseph continues to eat dinner with the same family members, in the same geographic location, and sees no need to worry about trying another  cuisine or having any other dinner conversation than the ones he has always had at the dinner table – with the people who think JUST.LIKE.HIM.

To talk about evolution means discussing adaptations and mutations and natural selection.  Perhaps Uncle Andre and I have adapted or started to adapt; perhaps we are just mutants.  But evolution, for the sustainability of our profession, will NEED to occur.  The mutations that Uncle Andre and I sense within ourselves (like X-Men!) will need to become, and remain, more common in successive generations of our HR family… or HR will cease to exist.

And if HR ceases to exist…. then I will really be sad.

Robin Schooling, SPHR is VPHR for a statewide Louisiana organization.  She has over 20 years of HR management experience in various industries including health care, banking and manufacturing.  Robin is Professional Development Coordinator with the Louisiana SHRM State Council (www.lashrm.org), a Past President of GBRSHRM (http://gbrshrm.shrm.org) and serves on the Board of Directors for the ASTD Baton Rouge Chapter (http://chapters.astd.org/SiteDirectory/BatonRouge/Pages/default.aspx)

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It was an amazing night at the Monster Social HRevolution event, and Saturday was no different. My sincere hope for this weekend was that everyone would finish the day saying, “I would gladly do this all over again.” With the feedback I’ve heard so far from our attendees, that’s been the case for the most part.

I’ve already seen half a dozen posts on the event from various people, and I know more will be coming soon. Don’t forget that I’ll be handling the HR Blog Carnival on May 19th, so get me a link to your post by the 17th if you want to participate! I’d love for it to be the most comprehensive collection of HRevolution material that’s available anywhere.

How to stay in touch now that it’s over:

These are important

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Website

But these are better

• Email
• Phone (hit me sometime-256.778.1236)
• Face to face

Even after all of the benefits that I’ve gathered through social media, when someone in the audience said that the telephone was still the best tool for connecting with others, I had to agree. Take things farther than a simple tweet or Facebook connection. Reach out and deepen your bonds with your fellow professionals. We could all benefit from standing close to someone smarter than us.

I will be posting more thoughts and incorporating ideas I gathered from the event as the weeks progress. And while I can share all the ideas I’d like to, without actually being there and experiencing it for yourself, you just can’t get the complete feel for the event.

If you have photos or video from the event, hit me up. I’d love to share them with the world!

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Whew! It’s 6:00 am as I write this and it’s time to start getting ready to head over to Catalyst Ranch. A little bit of news…

The Monster Social event held last night at TheWit Hotel was simply amazing. My good buddy Eric Winegardner from Monster outdid himself this time. People started arriving to the event half an hour early just to get a head start on meeting everyone. If you weren’t there, you totally missed out. A few high points for me…

• Started off by greeting the other members of the committee. Joan Ginsberg, Crystal Peterson, Mark Stelzner, Jason Seiden, Trish McFarlane, and Steve Boese were fun to meet the first time. They were even better this time around!
• Joined Joan and Crystal at the welcome table and was able to meet just about everyone as they walked in the door. Nice way to start off the evening!
• Met (for about 10 seconds) Willy Franzen. I was the only person who realized who he was at first.
• Heard a strange rumor about me not going on the HR Happy Hour show because I’m too cool for that stuff. Sounds like a lot of people are misinformed out there… I just have a wacky schedule and have to really shift things around to be available when the show comes on. But I love Steve (the host) and the show, so that’s what really matters.
• Had the opportunity to speak with Dave Ryan about how he got started in social media and how his company is starting to use it. I always love hearing people tell about how social tools have had an impact on their work.
• Made my way over to Lance Haun and we totally decided to give our mutual friend Chris Ferdinandi a hard time for missing out on two HRevolution events in a row.  Like going to Italy is more fun than this? Pffft.

There’s plenty more where that came from, but I really should be getting ready to go! I’ll catch you all later with a sweet update.

If you attended the Monster Social event last night, drop a comment and let me know what you got out of it. I’d love to hear!

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My buddy Benjamin McCall inspired me with his HRevolution Twitter list, so I went to another popular social network and pulled together more information to help our people connect with each other.

Click here to see the HRevolution Attendee LinkedIn List

I had the opportunity to speak with Trish McFarlane yesterday, and one of the things we were both excited about was the list of attendees. We have people who we’ve never even met, but they believe in HRevolution enough to come. I want to make it worth their time. After the first event, we had one person out of the entire fifty-plus attendees who was less than completely satisfied. Her issue was that she wasn’t connected with anyone before the event really occurred.

I want to fix that issue this time around.

I’m running through the list of attendees and making note of the ones who I don’t know. I want to talk with people who are the average, everyday HR pro. They’re the kind of people I identify with at this point in my career. I’m going to reach out to them and offer any assistance I possibly can before the event occurs, so we can just jump straight into the good stuff once we arrive.

What about you? Even if you’re not able to attend (and the vast majority of this audience will not be), how can you connect with someone today for a mutually beneficial relationship? Networking is easier than ever, but it’s also more powerful than ever if done correctly. Reach out to someone local you find on LinkedIn. You never know what may come out of a few minutes of effort.

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So, I just might kinda sorta be leading a blogging session at HRevolution. Cool, huh? Well, I wandered back and forth at HRev #1 snapping pictures and trying to listen in on both the beginner and expert sessions. I know there’s a lot of variety out there with regard to blogging ability, skillset, interest, etc. What I would like to know is what you’d like to see in a blogging session (if you even care).

At the first event, we split the bloggers into beginner and advanced groups. They covered everything from website troubleshooting to getting post ideas from Google Reader to adding images to a WordPress post. After the event was over, I kept up with the beginner blogger session attendees and tried to make sure and answer each and every blogging question they brought up. I had a lot of fun and hope to do the same this time around.

Check out the short form below and let me know what you think. If you are a subscriber, it may not show up for you below. In that case, please click here to take the HRevolution blogging session survey. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

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I, like many of the former HRevolution attendees, love talking about the event. It sometimes gets tough for those who haven’t been there to understand just what it means to those of us who have.

Today I’ll share a few perspectives from those who attended the first time around. If you like, you can see my little recollection of the weekend at this link. Maybe they can help you (along with these confessions from a few others) get a clearer picture of what the event is really like. Here are a few anonymous quotes from past attendees in response to the question “What did you like best about HRevolution?”

I’ve only edited where necessary to ensure the privacy of the survey respondents. The rest of the awesomeness is all theirs!

• The general feeling of the group discussions was incredible.  So much knowledge packed into a room.  Social was a great way to put a name to a real face versus and avatar and a voice.

Building community, putting faces to names, the variety of experiences in the room (HR practitioners, talent managers, consultants, recruiters, job seekers) and, of course, the discussions.

• I dont know that I can pinpoint one thing. Getting to meet everyone in person, the side conversations, [even] conversations over dinner!
• Having an opportunity to interact with the people that attended.
• Meeting people of similar mindset about social networking and putting names with faces/blogs.
• Networking with people you’ve only talked to online.
• Informality and free flow discussion
• Getting to meet and interact with everyone face to face and the presentations and the conversations they generated.
• The open dialogue
• The opportunity to network with smart, innovative thinkers that are unwilling to accept the status quo.

Free exchange of ideas from an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent group of people.  HRevolution had a huge brain trust that was SO stimulating.

• Learning more about blogging and ways to integrate social media into the HR Mix.
• The beginning blogger 101 session, engaging conversations about HR, and the very cool list of attendees!
• Meeting the people I’ve connected to online, knowing that they are some of the top names in the (r)evolution of HR!!! The energy level was awesome. The goodies (edible and otherwise) were great.

The interactive sessions. It was great to not just sit and listen to a presenter because there were so many great subject matter experts in the audience.

That’s the ticket! So, are you going to be one of those people who has stories to tell afterward, or will you be one of those people who kicks him/herself later for not attending? I know which one I’ll be.

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