#HREvolution No. 5 Recap

Last Sunday, the fifth iteration of HRevolution took place in the West Wing of the McCormick Place with over 100 attendees and guests in place.  Already, reviews have come in fast and furious - check out:

• Ben Eubanks: HRevolution 2012 - What Just Happened
• Bonnie Titgemeyer: No Nudie Pictures on LinkedIn & Other Tips from HRevolution
• Robin Schooling: Communal Collaboration
• Robin Schooling: The Pushback on the Push-Pull

After attending all five events, speaking and presenting at the last three, and co-planning the last two, here are my impressions from Chicago.

The Good

• High-Quality Content - We'll have to wait for the conference evaluation survey to go out, but I heard few complaints about the sessions were offered.  At each breakout time, attendees were offered at least two quality breakout sessions.
• Cost - Given the quality provided, the registration fee still feels like a bargain compared to many SHRM day long conferences
• Many New Attendees - Nearly 50% of attendees had not been to a previous HRevolution event.  It's always great to see fresh faces and new perspectives.
• Sponsors - Aquire, Ceridian, Pinstripe, and SilkRoad were helpful in keeping attendee costs down.
• McCormick Place - While it is an expansive locale, we only needed a small number of rooms in a confined space, and McCormick Place fit the bill (other than having no Diet Coke and being far away from coffee)
• The planning team - As always, Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane, and Ben Eubanks were dedicated to making sure the event was a success and were wonderful to work with.

The Not-So-Good

• Chicago - As much as I like the city, putting the event on the same day of the Chicago Marathon made travel to McCormick Place difficult, as well as hotel cost prohibitive.
• Missing Friends - While I loved seeing many new attendees, I missed seeing some usual attendees as well as there input.
• Combative Conversation - Perhaps it was the quality of sessions, but for the ones I attended, there was a lot more one-way presentations with questions than discussion about the HR issues of today and tomorrow.

The Future
We are no sure what the future of HRevolution will be, but here are a few items I wouldn't mind seeing if a sixth event comes to fruition:

• New speakers and content - While our sessions and speakers were great, there were many familiar faces who have spoken at HRevolution before.  Then again, the 1997 NBC campaign for reruns comes to mind - "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you."  With so many new faces, it was great for those attendees to see some of the best in the business.
• Sponsored Bloody Mary Bar - I don't know why we haven't seen it before, but given the inevitable Tweetup the night before, providing Bloody Mary's the next morning seems apropos...and I believe at least one potential sponsor has already been identified.

With this in mind...Whether you attended or not, what would bring you back for a sixth HRevolution? What would you like to see differently?