I’ve been to lots of HR-related conferences in my time, and I have sat through far too many many presentations that literally bored me to tears.
Although they seem to all blur together now, most of them were dull and boring not because of the subject or content, but generally, because of the presentation. They either went on too long, emphasized the wrong things, or didn’t have enough bells and whistles to keep me mentally moving ahead.
That’s why I have become a fan of the Ignite HR format that I saw at the 2nd annual HR Reinvention “Experiment” in Omaha last October. I attended largely because TLNT was the media sponsor of the event, but what I found (besides an active and engaged local HR community in Omaha), was that the Ignite HR format made it hard to EVER get bored or complacent about the conference presentations.
The format is the thing
As I mentioned yesterday when we kicked off a week-long series of Ignite HR videos (you can see the first one, How You Can Turn Potential Into Productivity here) from the Reinvention conference put on by Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt, the two guys behind Talent Anarchy, Ignite HR is a format that gives presenters a tight structure of 5 minutes, 20 slides and exactly 15 seconds per slide. This makes it hard for presenters or conference attendees to linger on any one slide, any one point, and any single issue.
It also makes it impossible, as an attendee and consumer of the conference content, to get complacent or bored or to mentally drift away.
Is there a downside to the Ignite HR format? Yes, of course there is, but I think that it pales in comparison to the upside, and that is how this unique speaker structure keeps everything moving ahead rapidly, really pulling the audience along at a pretty quick clip. For me, I’d rather have this and be left wanting more then to nod off bored and frustrated as I have at way too many other events.
But, you should watch these video and decide for yourself. The Ignite HR experience in Omaha included six presentations that were each in someway related to the theme of “putting the human back in human resources,” so if you are interested in that — and that’s why you’re here at TLNT, isn’t it? — then these video are probably for you.
Today’s video is from Maren Hogan, who presented on Building Talent Communities. She helped the audience to better understand what community is, why it matters and how to start building one. Content, tools, platforms, you just need to start somewhere!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnGxqSeqbmA
Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt will be presenting at the TLNT Transform conference in Austin, Texas Feb. 26-28, 2012. Their topic will be When Talent Isn’t Enough: Social Capital and the Future of HR. If you haven’t signed up to attend, you should, and you can do it here.