TALENT First & Conference 2.0

I am putting the finishing touches on my preso for Mega Session Monday – where I’ll have an opportunity to speak about the trend line and evolution in HR Communications and branding for talent  (Employment Branding 2.0) at the Garden State SHRM Annual Conference.  It should a great event.

The conference is appropriately titled Blueprint for a Changing Reality.  They nailed it.  The business of Human Resources is in the midst of transformation and will need to look very different coming out of this recession than it did going in.  While products, services and technology evolve at a pace that minimizes differentiation and signals more commoditization in the marketplace TALENT moves to the forefront as the key competitive business advantage.  Its heavy on the mind of any C suite exec that has his/her eye on the prize and whose vision exists beyond the next quarterly earnings report.  You can shed until your dead or game plan to win with a TALENT first strategy.  The future of HR will be about building readiness and responsiveness to meet the evolving TALENT needs of the organization.  And I look forward to hitting this topic hard Monday afternoon with the tremendous HR talent in New Jersey.

My hats off to GSCSHRM for organizing a Conference 2.0 style event.  They did it right with a strong web presence, linked in group and twitter hashtag (#gsc09) to build community around their lineup of first class content.  For the Practitioners that opt in they will have a more robust conference experience and build stronger networks faster that aid in the sharing of best practices and cultivation of relationships across industries and disciplines.   For a speaker like me it’s provided an awesome opportunity to share some of my relevant content/articles etc. in advance of the event in an effort to create some expectation around the experience I intend to deliver on Monday.    And I likely won’t have to wait for the conference evaluations to know if my experience met with audience favor.  We’ll live tweet the session and I will know real time if my message resonates.  That’s a changing reality for certain.

SHRM President & CEO Lon O’Neil kicks us off Monday morning and the legendary Simon Bailey is the closer.  It’s a privilege to serve as the middle reliever for this event.  I better bring the A game!