It’s that time of year again when all of us in the HR Technology business book our airline and hotel reservations and congregate in Chicago for the annual HR Technology Conference and Expo. Wait, did I say Chicago? Sorry, this year the conference was in sunny Las Vegas Baby! Anyway, this post is way late (and probably a dollar short) as the conference was over weeks and weeks ago. I have a good excuse or ten for being tardy on my post but I won’t bore you with the details. In my prior blogs posts about the 2009 and the 2010 conferences, I waxed on about the conference being about connecting with my social media network (especially my Twitter buddies – AKA my Tweeps). Making connections with the Tweeps was still an important aspect of this year’s conference. The Social Media factor at the conference continues to grow each year and I think we might have finally reached a tipping point. This year so many people were using the #HRTechConf hash tag on Twitter that the tweets were streaming into TweetDeck faster than I could read them. Information overload. So kudos to the conference organizers and all of my HR Tech Twitter buddies who helped promote the Social Media aspect of the conference. On the good news/bad news front the sponsored Wi-Fi was very spotty especially in some of the conference rooms that were more out of the way. In the larger sessions when everyone powered on their tweeting devices the Wi-Fi came to a standstill. What’s the good news in this? If the Wi-Fi had been 100% rock solid the tweet stream would have been OUT OF CONTROL.

What I Learned This Year

The expo floor as always abounded with a zillion vendors hawking their wares. I was having a conversation with one of the vendors who mentioned that in general the vendors were unhappy with Vegas/Mandalay Place in comparison to McCormick Place because the attendees were not a captive audience. At McCormick Place there was nothing around the conference center to do or see so most attendees with any free time would stroll through the expo floor. At Mandalay Bay, the attendees often used any free time to stroll over to the casino floor instead of the expo floor. Speaking of vendors, there were a ton of announcements at the conference and I do mean a ton. I’m too lazy to track them all down so here is a great summary of the announcements from Marketwatch.

Mobile was a huge topic at the conference this year but let’s first talk about the attendees mobile devices. The news reports indicate that the iPad has decimated the Netbook market and I can tell you first hand that this rang true at the conference. The iPad ruled and I could have counted on one hand the number of Netbooks being used. In a slight twist to last year, I witnessed a strong showing of people using physical keyboards with their iPads. In another nod to the strong growth of Apple, the MacBook Air also had a very strong showing among the attendees. Sorry Microsoft, the traditional laptop seemed pushed out this year. Hope you have big plans for Windows 8 to stem the market share loss.

Unlike mobile which has been brewing for a couple of years, gamification seemed to blast out of the woodwork from seemingly obscurity at the conference this year. For vendors and for companies the message this year is that if you want adoption of your application you need give workers a reason to use the app. Enter gamification which uses games design techniques applied to HR applications to encourage people to use (or adopt) the software. Gamification is no longer just badges but now includes awarding and redeeming points, achievement, challenges and recognition. There were many vendors showing applications with gamification built to the core or at least gamification techniques applied to bits and pieces. I’ll be curious to see in future surveys if gamification does indeed make a difference in adoption.

Just like mobile, analytics is HOT HOT HOT this year. The good news is there are now solutions that cover the spectrum of needs. Vendors are adding transactional analytics into their applications at a minimum and strategic analytic solutions are coming on strong. I encourage customers to take the long view when implementing disparate HR systems that each have their own transactional analytics to think about the impact of providing too many disconnected metric reports to their end users. While it might make sense to dip your toe into analytics by starting with built-in transactional metrics, only rollout the metrics that make the most sense and determine your long term analytics goals up front. Maybe an enterprise wide HR Analytics/BI system should be in you HR Technology Roadmap.

SaaS continues its steady march to replace on-premise HR applications. Nearly all vendors with on-premise solutions are re-architecting, re-coding or at least re-marketing their apps to say they are SaaS compliant. Don’t believe the marketing message however. Customers will need to dig deep and ask tons of pointed questions to determine exactly what flavor of SaaS the vendor is supporting. From the Talent Management panel the big take away was SaaS is really Saa (Software as a…). Service is still missing from many SaaS vendors. Customers are having to redo their contracts with SaaS vendors at renewal time and substantially beefing up the SLA and Service agreements.

The Awesome New Technologies for HR session was a hit again this year with the instant responses from the Twitter peanut gallery providing lots of colorful commentary. The Twitter users at the conference are pretty savvy HR Technology users so hopefully the vendors participating in the session captured the tweets (both good and bad) for future consideration. The iPad demo’s from Workday and Peoplefluent seems to garner the most interest and praise from the crowd and the tweets. Workday’s iPad app interface with the Swirl pretty much stole the show. By the way, for any session presenters reading this post don’t say “San Fran” when you mean “San Francisco”. You know who you are.

The Challenge For Next Year

The market for HR Technology applications has exploded the last couple of years. Core HR systems are hot again, suites continue to be rolled out, Analytics are front and center, Social Media is being embedded and everything is mobile, mobile, mobile. I found myself this year really feeling like I missed out on way too much. Trying to find time for all the great sessions, the expo floor, vendor briefings and hallway conversations with the attendees was impossible. The challenge for next year is to find a way to make more time available for all these things. Longer Expo hours, repeated sessions or maybe an additional day added to the conference might do the trick. Kudos to Bill Kutik and LRP for another great HR Technology Conference.

Most Important Takeaways

• Dwane Lay and Paul Smith make an awesome Penn and Teller combo.
• You know you have spent too much time in the elevators at Mandalay Bay when you can lip sync the Hubert Keller “Fleur” video.
• More men use moisturizing cream around their eyes than you probably realize.
• Ron Wallace is in amazing shape having to keep up with Naomi Bloom on her scooter.
• Bill Kutik needs a smart phone adviser the next time he gets a new cell phone.
• Naomi Bloom can operate an iPhone but not an iPad. Go figure.

No good conference is complete without some sort of video so I leave you with this awesome swag video by my good pals Dwane Lay and Paul Smith.

I’m too busy trying to keep up on Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/MySpace/BeKnown/BranchOut to find time to write up my thoughts on Google+. Fortunately many of my Blogger buddies did find time to write about Google+ so I thought I would share some of these posts with you.

Rather than saving the best for last, I’m going to put it right up front with the fantabulous post from Kelly Dingee on how she is TOTALLY geeking out over Google+:

But Google+…it makes me smile. I’m like a moth to the flame with this one, I just can’t stay away. I’ve seen a lot of blogs on how great it is for recruiting because of the core features like hangouts and sparks and circles. Sure, there’s huge potential there, but I think that’s just looking at Google+ in a very surface sort of manner.

Pay attention to Kelly’s post and read EVERY word.  This is one of the best examples of thinking outside of the box for using Google+. She also provides some tips on searching profiles and a link to pimping out your Google+ profile design.  Seriously, you don’t want to miss this post.

On the other end of the spectrum our intrepid HR Technology blogger, Steve Boese, is not sure what to do with Google+.

I kind of like Google Plus, but I also really don’t know what if anything I’ll ever do with it, and that any time I spend there is time I’m not doing something else.

And yet Steve does write near the beginning of his post some of the reasons people will use Google+.

Plus seems to fit nicely into a gap that many users of more established social networks feel exists, making it easier and simpler to share status updates, contents, images, etc. with discrete ‘circles’ of friends and contacts, positioning Plus less of a broadcast medium like Twitter, while offering better (at least ostensibly), control over data privacy, and possessing more potential for meaningful engagement than on Facebook.

It will be interesting to see how long Steve will be able to hold out on Google+. It’s a shiny new object and I know deep down inside that Google+ is calling to him.

Not surprisingly Laurie Ruettimann has chimed in with her take on Google+ and verdict is…wait for it…wait for it…”It’s okay”.  Umm, okay thanks.  Actually Laurie continues on to talk about social media and technology in our lives.  I love her final thoughts.

So what do I really think of Google+? I don’t care. The platform doesn’t matter because I’m pretty sure Google+ can do anything we want it to do.

We should dream bigger.

Rounding out the reviews is Chris Ferdinandi with his I want to love Google Plus (but I don’t) post.

Why not? It’s my least favorite things about Twitter and Facebook rolled into one site. It’s a beautifully designed network that I hate to use.

Ouch. Chris goes on the say the Google+ is too much like Twitter and Facebook and doesn’t solve a problem he has with Twitter and Facebook.  However Chris does give major props to Google on Privacy and data:

I will hand it to Google on this one – it’s a LOT easier to control your privacy and download your data on Google+ than on Facebook, and with more nuance than on Twitter.

Make sure you read all the comments on his post to catch the debate on the post contents.

So what have learned?  As usual if you ask for the opinion of four bloggers you will get four different answers.  What do YOU think about Google+? Leave a comment and let me know.

I won’t bore you with yet another write-up article blog post about Google+.  If you want to know more about it, do your own Google search to get more information.  I would just be repeating what everyone else is saying.

Instead, I will just say that I am treating Google+ as a mashup of Facebook and Twitter.  Are you scratching your head thinking I have no idea what that means?

I’m just going to let you ponder that statement and suggest you go get on Google+ and decide for yourself what Google+ is to you.

One last thought. Google+ has been way more entertaining for me than Facebook or Twitter this last week.  In additional to great content from all the usual social media gurus, I’m seeing a smattering of trash talking, joke telling and otherwise highly funny posts from those same social media gurus.  Oh and no damn poking.  Thank you Google.

Are you a big fan of Google Maps and feel like the Maps application on your iPhone is falling behind in functionality?  Maybe you would like to access your starred locations and My Maps data stored in your Google Account. Whatever your reason, Google has enhanced Google Maps for mobile browsers on Android and iOS.  Just visit maps.google.com on your phone or tablet browser and stare in awe of what Google has accomplished in HTML instead of a dedicated app.

So my dear iPhone owners and frequent flyers…would you like a highly interactive app where “you can track your flight, recalculate your remaining flight time and flight position, and learn more about key landmarks and geographic areas you’re flying over”?  (I love it when a vendor provides tech tips copy for me).  If so, you might want to check out all the details on the iPhone WindowsSeat app and see if this one is for you. Looks like they have a paid app for $2.99 and free app that covers a limited number of cities.

Are you one of those people who have a need to print from your mobile device but don’t want to have to install software for printing?  I’m a little late notifying you about this but Google has a service called Google Cloud Print that will do just that.  Head over to the Google Mobile Blog to read all the details.

As our social network continues expanding, the ability to keep up with all the noise can become overwhelming.  Twitter already has the ability to create lists but surprisingly many people are not aware that Facebook has a similar list capability.  Lifehacker has a quick write up on creating and using Facebook lists.  It’s only a couple of paragraphs so go read it now. Scoot.

I have had terrible luck this last year with hard drives failing on me.  I wish I had come across this website on hard drive sounds earlier.  Most hard drives start to make specific sounds when they are failing and Data Cert has created a database of sounds for each brand of drive to help you understand what might be happening with your drive when you think you hear sounds that just don’t quite sound right to you.

And finally, I leave you with one of the most interesting toilets I have seen in a long time. It’s called the Kohler Numi and this illuminated, electrified, spritzing, heated and wireless remote control device will only set you back a cool $6300. I’ll take 2.

I hope you all had some fun reading my HRevolution spoof-ish blog post hosted over at Paul Smith’s blog Welcome To The Occupation yesterday.  I thought I would actually get serious (who knew that was possible) and write my actual thoughts about HRevolution 2011.

Last year’s HRevolution in Chicago was great except that as a tech person it was missing something near and dear to me. It was missing a lot of HR Technology talk.  I wrote a blog post about it called HRevolution 2010 – What happened to the Tech Talk. This year I saw some progress. Not mind blowing let’s talk about the pros and cons of Best of Breed versus Suite or SaaS versus On-Premise type of progress but nonetheless progress.

Let’s first take a look at the Sponsors: Monster, Pinstripe, Ceridian, Aquire, SHRM and PeopleMatter.  There are some serious tech chops to a couple of these vendors. There were no hard sells from the Vendors but their presence helped establish some tech credentials to the conference. Oh and thanks to all the sponsors who helped keep the conference costs at a minimum level for the attendees. You rock.

Moving on to the keynote, we had the CHRO of Kimberly Clark, Liz Gottung, mention during her keynote that a pillar of her global HR plan was the global implementation of Workday. I looked around the room as Liz talked about Workday and watched people’s faces.  To my surprise it was clear that many people knew about Workday.  Last year, it seemed like people only knew about Abra and Taleo.

As for the sessions, there were several technology specific sessions.  Josh LeTourneau led an uber techie session on Social Network Analysis. I can’t do it justice to explain it so you will just have to head over to his website to learn more about it.  Craig Fisher showed us a bucketful of tools in his Recruiting: Cool Tools and More session such as Crowdbooster, thesocialCV.com and BizzBizz. Craig also showed us how to stalk potential candidates using FourSquare and Twitter.  You had to be there to watch some of the people in the room become a bit uncomfortable with the idea.

Finally, I had several conversations with various people about HR Technology throughout the day.  Great conversations actually.

Just like last year there was interest in Social Media technology and Mobile technology.  One didn’t need to actually talk about mobile you just needed to look around the conference to see a significant showing of iPad’s.  Speaking of iPad’s, after winning the iPad drawing from Monster last year I was somewhat relieved to not win this year’s Monster drawing for the iPad 2 as I figured I might get in trouble with the attendees if I won 2 years in a row.  Social Media and Mobile aside there were definitely more conversation and interest in technology this year.  It’s a bit of a slow burn but since the next HRevolution will be in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay (using the same meeting rooms) as the HR Technology Conference & Expo, I am hoping for an even better showing in HR Tech Talk.

Thanks again to Crystal, Ben, Steve and Trish for a fantastic conference and for making me the unofficial Wi-Fi guy.

Heeeees Baaaaaaaack.  Bet you thought I had abandoned my blog.  Let’s not use such a strong word as abandon.  How about hiatus or leave of absence or long vacation.  It’s been a whirlwind crazy couple of months but don’t worry, I didn’t forget you all.  To ease you back into my blog posts I thought I would write about the HRevolution conference I attended on April 30th.  I didn’t want you all to freak out having to read so many words on my blog after my hiatus so I hacked into Paul Smith’s blog since he doesn’t know WordPress from WordStar and left my true thoughts about Paul and the conference on his Welcome To The Occupation blog.  So go click that link just to the left of prior period thingy.

I’ll be back soon with some delicious blog posts of my own.

I’m tied up for a week or so but didn’t want you all to think I forgot all about this wealth of information I call the InfoBox Blog.  So…I rooted around in the archives and found this lovely gem from earlier this year.  I checked and you know all the information is still totally accurate, useful or worth a second read.  Without further adieu I give you:

How to Steal Time for Social Media

Recently, two of my favorite bloggers posted tips on how they handle social media overload.

Trish McFarlane wrote an excellent post on How To Simplify Your Social Media Life where she suggested you schedule time for social media and prioritize your access to social media sites.

Naomi Bloom also write an excellent post about her experiences with social media called Reflections Of A Digital Immigrant Gone Semi-Native: An Embarrassment Of Riches where she let us know she is going to set aside Facebook and limit the number twitter followers to keep from being overwhelmed.

I’d like to add on to these wonderful suggestions and offer up my own secret for keeping up with the firehose of social media information.   What’s my secret, you ask?  I steal…time. There, I said it.  I steal time. When I am sitting in a conference room waiting for a meeting to start, standing in line waiting to board an airplane, waiting for my mocha at the local coffee shop or walking across the office building, I steal that time and catch up on social media.  I’m sure by now you have figured out my secret weapon for stealing time and that weapon is my iPhone.  The iPhone has native applications for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and email and with mobile Safari and the Google Reader iPhone mobile website, I can breeze through my blog roll.  But wait there’s more.  The iPhone also has several native applications to manage your blog while on the go.  When I steal time for Twitter, my favorite application is TweetDeck.  With the iPhone TweetDeck application, I am able to automatically sync my TweetDeck groups between my desktop and iPhone.  When on the go and stealing time, being able to selectively view tweets via TweetDeck is a must for me. Did I mention that Google Reader mobile website for the iPhone is amazing?

Stuck on network other than AT&T? Hate the iPhone (for some inexplicable reason). Can’t be separated from your Blackberry or Android phone?  Never fear. So long as you use smart phone that has a fast 3G data connection with the ability to download native social media programs, you too can steal time.

Okay, let review.  YOU too can steal time for social media by:

1. Acquiring a smart phone such as an iPhone, Android device, Palm Pre or Blackberry
2. Downloading native Social Media applications for sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
3. Downloading native applications to manage your Blog
4. Configuring access to all your email accounts via the built in email application
5. Bookmarking the mobile Google Reader site

Oh, one last thing.  I’m not going to go into any details here but you might want to read this blog post of mine about a particular place to steal time.

I know there are probably a ton of other ideas out there so please leave a comment and tell me how you steal time for social media.

I was following the tweets from the Social Recruiting Summit when I came across this profound tweet from @ewmonster:

Such amazing insight in less that 140 characters that I felt compelled to share it with you all. Oh and if you want to follow all the tweets from the Social Recruiting Summit you can follow the hashtag #SocialRecruiting.

Are you coming to the 13th annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition?  Maybe you are still on the fence?  If you have not decided, time is running out as the conference is only 2 weeks away (September 29 – October 1).  I have attended the show for the last couple of years and this year I get the pleasure of participating as a panelist on the Blogger Panel along with Bryon Abramowitz (The HR Technologist), Trish McFarlane (HR Ringleader)and Laurie Ruettimann (The Cynical Girl).  The panel will be moderated by Kris Dunn (The HR Capitalist).  We will be talking about blogging, social media and of course technology on Thursday, September 30 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

If that is not enough to convince you to attend then check out this post by Sarah White on other great reasons to attend the conference.

Why YOU should be at HR Technology Conference this Year!

Don’t forget that you can save $500 off the registration fee by registering here and entering INFOBOX10 as the discount code.

If you see me at the conference don’t forget to say hi.

I’m currently sitting on a plane heading from Portland to Denver. The person in front of me has reclined their seat leaving me no room to use my laptop.  Being a good tech guy, I pulled out the iPad I won at HRevolution and am typing this out using the iPad WordPress App. Okay, Okay, I might have finished up this blog post back on the ground but rest assured that the majority of the blog post was indeed written on the plane using my iPad.  Now would probably be a good time to thank all the good people at Monster.com (especially my new best friend Eric Winegardner) for sponsoring the opening night party and for the iPad raffle that somehow I miraculously won.

A couple of weeks ago was the HRevolution 2010 conference in Chicago. I was not able to attend HRevolution last year as it was darn near impossible to get from Portland Oregon to Louisville Kentucky in a reasonable amount of time. Unlike many people who attended this year, I did not go to specifically pickup nuggets of HR knowledge. In some of my previous posts I lamented HR department’s lack of interest in technology so I didn’t go to HRevolution with the hope of a tech breakthrough. It’s a good thing since for the most part I witnessed the status quo. But more on that in a future blog post.  I did not go to HRevolution to pick up HR technology information; I went for the opportunity to spend time with my HR thought leaders outside of the sessions.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and with casual meetups over snacks, the parties, the sessions and impromptu hallway discussions  I managed to have great conversations. I also managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions. Of course one session I didn’t miss was the HR Technology Q&A session since I was co-facilitating with Bryon Abramowitz and Bill Kutik.  Again, stay tuned for a future blog post on my observations on HR Technology conversations at the conference.

I could write about what worked and did not work for HRevolution but as it turns out many of my fellow conference attendees have already blogged about it better than I could. One of the HRevolution planners, Ben Eubanks, has already rounded up the HRevolution blog posts into the wonderful Carnival of HR-HRevolution Style. Go ahead, click that link to open up the HRevolution Carnival in a new window and read all the wonderful blog posts.  I’ll wait right here until to you return.  As incentive for returning, there is still a matter of the blog title to resolve.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to my partner in crime and an amazing blogger Paul Smith who kept me highly entertained from morning until late at night and to the HRevolution organizing committee.  Finally as I end this blog post, some of you are thinking, what’s the deal with the Dirty Martinis in the Blog Title?  Well…I ended the conference on Saturday night at the rooftop bar at theWit Hotel by sipping a Blue Cheese Olive Dirty Martini along with Shennee Rutt and many many others.  Good times were had by all.

Stay tuned for my next blog post when I beat you all silly for not having a proper backup strategy for your personal computers.