Five Lessons from HR Technology 2010

Let me begin with a confession – I’m exhausted. Not that usual, “boy I really need a good night’s sleep” kind of tired, but instead that deep feeling in your bones that screams, “take a serious breather, step away from the laptop and just chill.” This is how I’ve felt since returning from the 2010 HR Technology Conference and Exposition that was held in Chicago this past week. But rest easy organizers as my show review is very positive. And given all the wonderful summations written by my peer group, I’ve instead elected to use this experience to examine some of the systemic issues I think we need to address.

The Convention Center

We once again returned to Chicago’s McCormick Place, a conference monstrosity designed by cheese-hiding scientists intent on studying the walking patterns of bewildered and confused attendees. If not for the great anticipatory skills of HR Tech’s sign makers, hundreds of HR technologists would still be huddled together for warmth sharing remnants of their boxed lunches. I, for one, am looking forward to the change in venue next year as the show moves to Las Vegas. Perhaps the 2011 convention center won’t boast laptop cables that don’t exist, have their expo security guard berate early arrivals, treat 150 social media trainees as a single IP address or make finding power plugs as futile as a snipe hunt. So I firmly believe…

Lesson #1: We Can Do Better – These aren’t the salad days of conventions where venues could chalk their mistakes up to inexperience or a lack of understanding. You want to have a positive reputation drawing tens of thousands of people to your venue? Then stop behaving like entitled pains in the ass and start focusing on customer service. With virtualization threatening to completely upend the business plan you seem to take for granted, I’d suggest you get your act together before museums display animatronic versions of your shrug-shouldered workers with groups of small children asking their escorts, “What is a bill of lading and why didn’t they know how to design women’s restrooms?“

The Conference Itself

Despite venue challenges, Bill and Dave know how to put on a show. As someone who was intent on participating meaningfully, I found the agenda and speakers to be thoughtfully assembled, saw a packed expo hall and witnessed very active attendees. Perhaps the most thorough content review I’ve read (and agree with) was published by Marcia Conner of Altimeter Group (you can find her post here) so I won’t repeat her well summarized thoughts.

Bill Kutik exceeded my expectations with his opening remarks, setting the tone by citing the wide variety of attendee types, heralding the continuity of certain vendors and sponsors, noting the academic and global participants, and proclaiming his show as the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. You could hear genuine pride in his voice and I felt happy for him and his co-organizers. They’ve worked hard and they deserve the praise.

If you’ve participated in the HR technology space at any point in your career, you know that HR Tech is old home week. You run into all your former colleagues, find out where they work these days, share stories of old and generally bring yourself up to speed on everything new and exciting in the industry. I enjoy the reunion atmosphere and the idea of running into old friends and co-workers. However, I don’t like the fact that many of them never see a session or make it to the show floor, which brings my to my second systemic issue:

Lesson #2: Briefings Need to Change - This is the first time in my career that I’ve passed on industry briefings at a show. Why? Because I started to realize that booking back-to-back briefings with vendors and consultants is a completely lost cause. As one very large vendor told me, “After six hours straight of saying the same thing, we start to loose the sincerity and excitement around our own products and services. It’s exhausting.” I corroborated this viewpoint with the other side as well, with a senior analyst saying, “With four inches of literature and almost fifteen briefings in two days, my eyes start to gloss over and I have trouble remembering what was so special about any of the vendors.” Sure, I get that everyone is in the same place at the same time, but I’m starting to think that there has to be a better way. Perhaps we should look at a pre-conference briefing day so that vendors and analysts alike can spend more time in session presentations surrounded by buyers.

Social Was “In”

This conference was teeming was social media and the free wireless access was a great move by the organizers. Nearly 800 contributors provided approximately 5,000 tweets over the course of the conference, an amazing show of force considering the number of attendees (and if you’d like to get a sense of what was said, I’d encourage you to review the transcript by clicking here). HR Tech boasted nearly 20 bloggers, at least two official tweetups, one live radio program, a Twitter training session, and a blogger panel. Add to this the social nature of a number of vendor applications and you couldn’t throw a lanyard without hitting this topic. Which leads me to:

Lesson #3: Social Means Everyone – My sense is that we’re at a point where some people are feeling left behind by those who have already embraced new media tools. As I’ve said before, I think the purposeful use of social media offers a competitive advantage over those individuals and organizations who have yet to jump on board. Not comfortable? That’s cool, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should make you feel like a moron for not “getting it”. Adoption is growing and the conversation is now shifting more toward “what” versus “why” and “how”. So for those of us on the bleeding edge, I’d ask you to mentor someone along and remember how you felt sending that first tweet, blogging that first post or connecting to that first stranger. Let’s emphasize inclusion and get more voices to participate in the mix. This was an idea jump started by Victorio Milian, Ben Eubanks, Lance Haun and others and I fully endorse it (to learn more about its origins, click here).

The Expo Hall

I don’t envy the task facing HR vendor sales and marketing executives. They are burdened with some impossible choices, not the least of which is throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into an eye-catching booth while enduring the absurdity of the conference economy. One vendor told me with a sly smirk, “well at least the price of conference coffee is down to only $45.” Yeah, it’s that bad.

So imagine my surprise when one vendor decided to buck the whole trend and put up a cardboard booth. I know that Sonar6 caught a lot of flack for doing so, but the brilliance of their plan is that everyone is still talking about them, it cost a fraction of their peer’s investment and people actually stopped by to chat and learn more about what they’re doing. This brings me to…

Lesson #4: Differentiate or Die – The beautiful news about this year’s HR Tech conference is that people were there to buy. This includes senior practitioners who came with shopping lists as well as VC and investment firms who would like to pour their capital into new and innovative HR service providers. And since it’s my nature, I spoke with many of these folks to ask them how they liked the expo floor. Many felt the energy was upbeat and choices plentiful, but when pressed to articulate differentiation between vendors, they really struggled. One very senior investor asked me, “How do you keep this all straight when every vendor says exactly the same thing?” And therein lies the problem. So whether it’s a cardboard box or some new means of messaging, vendors must find a way to communicate in a clear, concise, unique and differentiated way. And if you don’t? Prepare to be lumped in with the masses and compete on price, a fate no vendor desires.

The Evening Activities

I can’t continue to write this about every conference so I’ll cut right to it:

Lesson #5: Quit Acting Like Morons – I’m not sure what’s going on but I’m sick and tired of drunk HR people acting like complete idiots. I suspect I am the Earth’s great moron magnet which creates a gravitational pull toward insanity. I should not have to tell a senior HR executive to stop touching the inseam of my dress pants or fight off the very aggressive nipple twisting I received from yet another hammered HR executive. I’ve had it. I know that some HR people don’t get out much and you finally feel like you can let your hair down among your peers, but please – for the love of God – stop acting like it’s the first day of college. It’s embarrassing (and can leave a welt).

Closing Thoughts

If you were hoping I’d share some of the terrific insights or quote worthy moments of the conference, I apologize. Hopefully you followed me on Twitter and picked up some of those gems in real-time, as this year’s HR Tech was truly a great show. But as I said at the outset, I’m tired. Mainly I’m tired of having the same conversations and working over the same issues year after year. Instead, I want to see us get out of our comfort zones and really push past the status quo. I want to see us spend the next twelve months addressing these issues head on and, in doing so, get back to the business of maturing our industry. There are some incredibly smart people in this space and most of them spent the past week together in Chicago. Let’s leverage this brain trust and break out of the rut once and for all. Or maybe you’re thinking, “What rut Mark? Maybe it’s just you.“. That just may be true, and if so, tell me. But I can’t imagine wanting or expecting more from our industry could ever be viewed as a bad thing.

So share your thoughts, lambast me where appropriate and let’s keep the conversation going.