Step right up for this week’s Tuesday Tech Tips. I did a random grab of tech news from my Instapaper archive so I’m guessing I will please no one with these tips. I joke, I joke. Anyhoo, on with the tips.
Do you have an iPad and an iPhone or maybe 2 iPads or perhaps 4 iPhones? If yes, then Engadget has a review of the overachieving iPADock.
I know a bunch of you tried out the new Google Voice integration in Gmail. Now the good folks over at Google have written up some handy features of Google Voice in Gmail.
Calling all iPhone or iPod Touch runners!! There is a new Nike+ App that throws away the little Nike+ sensor and instead uses the accelerometer of your iOS device. Whats not to like about that?
With all the Tweetups going on all over the world, you are going to need a way to keep in video touch with all your new tweeps. Skype 5.0 Beta to the rescue with 10 way video calling.
I love me some full screen browser windows all the time. Google took that one step further and created Fullscreen mode in Google Reader. Life is pretty good now.
I know all you iPhone owners out there have been waiting for iOS 4.1 (especially iPhone 3G users waiting for the performance tweaks in iOS4 to make their iPhones usable again). Head on over to the TiPb blog for an iOS4 walkthrough.
I’m not sure what took so long but TiVo finally produced a remote with a built-in keyboard. Good grief TiVo, your product lifecycles are longer than even Microsoft’s. If you are not sure the new TiVo Slide Remote is for you, read the Engadget review here and the Zatz Not Funny review here.
The controversial new Twitter app for iPad built by Loren Brichter and his team (who developed the Tweetie app) is out. If you have an iPad you probably already have the new Twitter app but you might want to take a peek at the TUAW Blog review anyway.
And finally (he says while trying to keep from giggling in that nerdy sort of way)…who wouldn’t want an Atom-powered PC in “an exact replica” of the original beige Commodore C64 chassis. Christmas is just around the corner.
This is an all volunteer event and these 3 people, the entertainment and the volunteers pour their heart out for this event. Me? I’m scrambling to get this post out so I can head over to the live event to volunteer my time today. So how about in exchange for all my Tuesday Tech Tips, you click the donate link below and donate a couple of dollars towards a worthy cause. That seems fair to me. Thanks.
That’s right kiddos; I’m hosting the next Carnival of HR right here in the rainy Pacific Northwest. Please, pretty please send me your submission by February 15th to michael at infoboxinc dot com. Yes, yes I know I am making you manually type in my email address but I do what I can to keep the spammers at bay.
Just a reminder that we have rules (but only a couple of easy rules) and I have lifted them directly from the @hr_minion listed them below:
1. Please submit a recent (within 2 weeks) post of yours for consideration to the current host.
2. Once the Carnival goes live please help promote it via twitter, your blog, or what have you.
3. Check out our fan page on Facebook and go to Twitter right now and follow CarnivalofHR!
That’s it! Check back on February 17th for all the delightfully wet goodness of the Carnival of HR.
My day job is keeping me pretty darn busy right now so I’m going to give you my (brief) thoughts on the HR Technology Conference.
The conference was a great opportunity to make the rounds on the show floor and get some first look demonstrations for core HR and Talent Management systems. I am a big supporter of SaaS based systems so I was able to take a peek at the offerings from vendors such as Workday, Taleo, Authoria, KMS, Enwisen, SuccessFactors and many others. I am also a PeopleSoft HRMS customer so I visited the Oracle booth to get a demo of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50.
The show floor
Workday continues to add functionality to their HCM offering at an astounding pace. They are nearly functionally complete in core HR and are now aggressively adding Talent Management functionality.
Self Service, Actionable Navigation and Actionable Reporting are at the core of Workday and I saw a lot of other vendors with a renewed focus on Self Service and Actionable navigation this year. My guess is this is a direct response to the positive buzz that Workday is receiving.
Taleo and Authoria continue their rapid pace at adding new functionality into their Talent Management offerings.
The PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 demo was plagued by either bugs or infrastructure issues and didn’t demo well. I think 9.1 Bundle 1 will be probably be available shortly.
KMS Software appears to have an interesting wizard based onboarding solution but unfortunately they were not able to demo the solution to me.
I saw huge and positive usability improvements in many of the other vendors offerings as compared to last year.
The keynotes
I enjoyed all the keynote sessions. I am eager to read Don Tapscott book “grown up digital”, fell off my chair laughing when Wayne Cotter declared the true meaning of SaaS was “slice away annoying staff”, marveled at the knowledge on the Industry Analyst Panel, was in complete agreement with Naomi Bloom that it’s time to “Turn of the wing nuts” and sing The sun’ll come out Tomorrow…
The sessions
The sessions were great. In particular the Talent Management Panel and the Recruiting Panel stood out. As always, Naomi Bloom in her expert panel shared great information on HR system selection and upgrades. In “Metlife Tackles Workforce Analytics” I learned a better approach for implementing analytics.
The shootout
The Shootout was a mixed bag for me. I believe at the shootout last year that Authoria used an electronic magnifying glass so that the people in the audience could easily see what was happening on the big screens. Salary.com was also in the shootout last year and did poorly when the audience voted. Apparently Salary.com was paying attention and this year came out swinging with their UI changes and use of the magnifying glass. What difference a year makes. The actual presentation from their CEO was a little lacking (reading from notes was a big no no). I was surprised that none of the other vendors employed the magnifying glass during their demonstrations. Unfortunately some internet connectivity issues marred the presentations of a couple of vendors and in the end all the vendors seem to have similar user interfaces and capabilities. Although Salary.com won the shootout I didn’t see a clear winner.
Thoughts for next years HR Technology conference
Chicago: Been there, done that. How about someplace else?
With the now pervasive use of Twitter and live Blogging, I believe the conference should offer affordable or no cost Wi-Fi. I’ve been to volunteer run tech conferences that cost a couple of hundred dollars for the week that offer free Wi-Fi for conference attendees.
Make sure the conference facilities are not a big black hole for cell phone coverage. McCormick Place (almost) completely blocked out cell data coverage from AT&T.
Embrace the use of Twitter at the conference. How great would it be during keynotes and sessions if one of the big screens was showing the live tweets as they came in.
Wrangle up some actual customers who are willing to demo some of the really cool technologies they are using.
Final thoughts
My company was not planning on attending this year due to budget cutbacks but at the last minute decided we should go. I’m glad they found the money. Between the show floor, keynotes, sessions, shootout and the chance to spend time with all my tweeps (who are now peeps), the HR Technology Conference was worth the time and money.
Big thanks to Bill Kutik (look, I spelled it correctly this time) for all he does before, during and after the conference.
Well, okay I might be exaggerating a little but we did talk about Mini Coopers on episode 6 of the HR Happy Hour. I am a little late getting this out but since the next HR Happy Hour is not until August 14th, I can be forgiven for being a slacker. Speaking of Mini Cooper’s, [...]
The second HR Happy Hour was last Friday evening and a good time was had by all. Steve Boese and his lovely co-host Shauna Moerke lead the call. with special guests Lisa Rosendahl and Deidre Honner. Participating on the call or via write in questions (from Twitter) were @JubileeHR, @frankroche, @beckyallen, @slcmyers, @adowling, @ljbooth, @StephanieALloyd, [...]
…make a ping pong table. Let me explain. My team recently moved to a new building that was formerly occupied by a loan processing subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. Here is a picture before we moved in: My guess is the center filing cabinet island was paper and printer central for the operations in each pod [...]
Warning, this blog post has nothing to do with HR Technology. Last week a friend of mine was in the hospital for some major surgery. The operation was a success and the friend recuperated for a few days in cardiac intensive care. At the end of the week she was moved from cardiac intensive care [...]
