Given it is the eve of the U.S. Independence Day, nothing is more fitting than a celebration....in this case a celebration of great HR content.

So what makes a great July 4th celebration?

Travel - Whether to visit family or friends, many will take the July 4th break to head out on the open road.  So, it is fitting that Naomi Bloom shares the great HRM she experienced in her recent travels from Istanbul to Vienna (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Music - As background to the cookout or conversation, or to accompanying the explosions overhead, music plays an important role to any July 4th celebration.  Mervyn Dinnen provides some choice tunes with his top 6 albums of 2013 thus far.  Amit Bhagria shares his Job Description of a Karaoke Artiste.

Movies - For some, July 4th provides an opportunity for some to catch up with the latest films at the cineplex.  With that in mind, Robin Schooling informs us that "Even 007 Can't Work Alone."

Guests - Usually, any celebrating is done with others.  But, unfortunately, it doesn't always work out.  Shauna Moerke tells us "How To Connect in Non-Creepy Ways on Social Media."  Mike Haberman suggests "7 Reasons You Have Toxic Employees." 

Games - No July 4th celebration is complete with a little gameplay.  At the Dovetail Software blog, Dwane Lay highlights with his wrapup of the SHRM13 kickball game and its impact to raise support for No Kid Hungry.  Of course, you need great players to make a successful game, and at the Teleos Consulting blog, Joan Kofodimos suggests that we need to banish the cult of the A-B-C player.  Similarly, Susan Heathfield tells us to "Do Powerful Internal Training."  But, if these players come together, Julie Winkle Giulioni wonders are they a team, a group, or a train wreck?  And, if you don't play as well as expected, John Hunter ponders "What is the Explanation Going to Be if this Attempt Fails?"

Food - Whether it be a picnic, cookout, or barbecue, food is critical for any successful July 4th enjoyment.  In this case, there is plenty of food for thought; just chew on the following:

• At the Tribe HR blog, Katy Innes shares  7 Goal and Management Tips for New Supervisors
• At the Four Groups blog, Michael Folkman wants us to Rethink the War on Talent
• At the Inflexion Advisors blog, Mark Stelzner thinks about HR innovation and suggests we might "Maintain Optimism and Fresh Eyes"
• At the Canadian HR Reporter, Stuart Rudner share some tips on hiring and firing.
• At the Great Leadership blog, Dan McCarthy tells us How to Overcome the 3 Barriers to Leadership Development
• From the Human Capital Strategy Blog of the Rainmaker Group, Chris Young shares 7 Things I Wish I Knew When Founding This Company
• The Godfather Steve Browne shares 5 New Ideas he gleaned from the 2013 SHRM Annual Conference 
• At the Toolbox for HR, Ian Welsh queries, "What Kind of Passion is Best At Work?" 
• At the Humor That Works blog, Andrew Tarvin has Advice for People in Job Transition
• At Welcome to the Occcupation, Paul Smith wants your Subscription to HR Leadership
• At the HR Introvert, Tim Gardner tells us Why Everyone Should Have A PIP
• At UpstartHR, Ben Eubanks suggests "Maintaining Your Culture As You Grow."

Fireworks - The end of the July 4th evening is typically capped with a fireworks explosion.  Hence, it would be a shame if there was no big bangs.  Karin Hurt shares "10 Ways to Zap Energy and Squash Enthusiasm." 

This concludes the July 3rd edition of the Carnival of HR.  Be sure to head over to mentoring Mullarkey for the July 17th edition.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Carnival of HR.  There is a veritable cavalcade of HR knowledge provided from a bevy of HR Subject Matter Experts ready for your perusal.  Cue the Deer.

Some Questions

Mervyn Dinnen at T Recs wonders "Is Success Overrated?"  Check out the link to find out his perspective.

Chris Young at the Rainmaker Group asks "Employee Engagement: Just How Screwed Up Is Your Team?" 

Ian Welsh at Toolbox.com wonders "Could We Improve Recruiting Quality By Recording Interviews?"

Our own HR Minion, Shauna Moerke, examines career transitions and queries "Who Do You Want To be Tomorrow?"

At Lean HR, Dwane Lay asks "The Santa Claus Question."

Some Answers

At Envisia Learning, Wally Bock gives us "Two Simple Ways to Help Managers"
  
At the HR Schoolhouse, Robin Schooling gives us the skinny on "What the 'HR Community' is REALLY Talking About."

At the HR reMix, Melissa Fairman provides some life lessons in "Everyone Should Get Laid Off Once."

At Insight, Nancy Saperstone looks at "Office Politics that Work - Improve Employee Productivity."

With the 2012 American football season in full swing, Tim Gardner, in his The HR Introvert blog, looks at "One Employee's Passion is Another's Loss of Inclusion."

At Upstart HR, Ben Eubanks examines the "Benefits of Team Building."

At Julie WG, Julie Winkle Giuloni gives us the lowdown on "Creative Crossings: Where Employee Development and Career Development Converge."

At Canadian HR Reporter, Stuart Rudner warns us to "Beware the Dangers of Templates."

At Everyday People, the Godfather Steve Browne tells us to ditch the labels and "Go Tagless!!"

At Great Leadership, Dan McCarthy gives us some history in "Managing Remote Employees: Lessons from Ancient Rome and Today."

At the Curious Cat blog, John Hunter wants us to "Manage Better By Managing Less."

At Mentoring Mullarkey, Patrick Mullarkey gleans some good HR info from the Police Academy movies in "Carey Mahoney: The L&D Professional That We All Want To Be."

Some Numbers

At her self-titled blog, Jesse Stoner gives us "The Five Steps of CRISP Decision-Making."

At Thin Difference, Jon Mertz examines "How to Navigate Life in Work - Six Considerations."


At the Inflexion Advisors blog, Mark Stelzner provides us with "7 Steps to Surviving HR Vendor Consolidation."

At Tribe HR, Paul Baribeau demonstrates no triskaidekaphobia with "13 Ways to Get Your Employees To Tune Out."

At People Equation, Jennifer Miller goes from A to Z in "26 Ways To Be A Better Boss."

******

Don't forget - there is a special Carnival of HR next Wednesday, September 19.  It is being hosted by Ann Bares at the Compensation Cafe.  So tune in next week....same time, different channel.

With the HREvolution Unconference looming this weekend, I have the enviable task of providing the pre-conference Carnival of HR.  As noted earlier, since HREvolution should be about evolving and change, the blog posts I want should answer one of the following questions:

1.  What was your favorite blog post you ever read and why?
2.  What was the blog post that pushed or influenced you to evolve and change and why?
3.  What was the blog post that influenced you to get into blogging and why?

Let's get to the results:

R.J. Morris nominated Steve Boese's "PBR, Irony, and Duct Tape."  According to R.J., "Steve does an incredible job of taking the reader somewhere unexpected.  He weaves marketing, youth rebellion, branding and the decline of manufacturing into a powerful story about being a father and the irony of generational differences.  It’s a very powerful post."

Steve Browne nominated Paul Smith's "Songs About Work 3-D."   In Steve's words, "I began reading Paul long before I started a blog myself.  It was so cool that he combined music with work because I have been doing that for the past 8 years through the HR Net, and I didn’t know that anyone else in HR made the connection.  Paul’s blog keeps it real.  He is genuine, poignant, thoughtful and edgy.  I like that in HR and identify with it.  Living on the edge of HR is so much more exciting vs. fighting from the inside out."

William Gould nominated Charlie Judy's "The Care and Feeding of Your CFO."  According to William, "(Charlie's blog) was one of the first HR blogs that I found and read; his writing certainly influenced my decision to create a blog of my own (HR Soot).  What struck me most about Charlie's writing was his raw honesty, direct approach to real HR issues, and the authenticity which pushed against the traditional, neutral HR voice.   Since the summer of 2010, I've discovered a number of great blogs and bloggers, and have grown to appreciate and respect the progressive, business-minded HR professionals that exist in the spaces between the traditional HR noise.  But, Charlie's blog was the one that ignited an idea in my mind that perhaps I too should join the public discussion about what HR could be in the future."

New to Twitter and blogging, Chris Fields, cites the inspiration for his blog is the Evil HR Lady herself, Suzanne Lucas.  In his most recent blog post, Chris writes, "... while researching human resource blogs, I came across the Evil HR Lady. The moniker was enough to intrigue me and her articles and postings were pretty good too. They were thought provoking, insightful and informative. At the time, I was still not sure if this was something that I wanted to be involved in and not sure if blogs really had an impact. Until one day, I read a post ("Why Workplace Bullying Should Be Legal") and the subsequent comments, the post was about bullying. The article made excellent points about passing legislation regarding bullying but the reaction was down right, wrong!  It got ugly, and personal.....She responded with intelligence, respect and just a bit of clarity.....I gained more respect for the Evil HR Lady....Suzanne Lucas, Evil HR Lady, thanks, you helped me to blog."  Check out Chris' blog for his full contribution.

In her post, "Relationship: Transparency and Trust,"  Lynn Dessert cites as her inspiration Penelope Trunk's "How to Decide How Much to Reveal About Yourself."  Lynn writes, "I was hooked. I spent hours reading about her raw life experiences, marveling in her resilience.  Sure, I walked away with – wow she’s gone through and deals with a lot of crap. However, what sticks in my mind is that she is a survivor with real life experiences. She gets it. And I would love to talk to or meet her, even though she is a private person."  Check out Lynn's blog for her full contribution.

In his post, "The Community DJ and Me," Mervyn Dinnen expresses his praise for Paul Jacobs' "Community DJ." Mervyn writes, "I loved this post because it was simple and well written. The perfect blog. Three paragraphs…one to pose a question, the next to provide an answer, and the final one to explain why." Check out Mervyn's blog for his full contribution.

Dwane Lay gives praise to Trish McFarlane's "I'm Engaged At Work, Are You?" and Paul Smith's "License to HR" as the posts that inspired him to start writing.   Dwane writes, "I went back to the first posts on their blogs I could find where I commented.  I’m not saying my comments were all the witty or important, but any post that gets someone new in the space to add their voice is, to me, an important one."  Read about Dwane's first encounter with Trish and Paul, as well as his further thoughts on this topic here.
Bill Boorman cites three posts as his inspiration.  The first is written by his son.  Bill says, "A bit egotistical but when you read it you will understand it. This post is by my 11 year old son on his old blog, To Be frank. Read it and you will understand why it brought tears to my eyes. A complete surprise and best birthday present ever!"  The second is from Steve Newsom when he announced to the world that he was living with cancer.  Bill states, "It’s very moving.  Whenever I’m drawn to feeling stressed, I reach to these posts for hope and inspiration. Without doubt they have shown me the value of living for now, and this post made me extra thankful for what I have over what I don’t."  Lastly, Bill cites his own guest post.  Bill clarifies, "This post didn’t inspire me to blog, it got me blogging. Jeff lipschultz asked me to guest post. Hard to believe that it was only June 2009. I have since written 400+ posts, before being asked I hadn’t considered blogging. I include it not because I wrote it, but to emphasize the importance of asking others to guest for you who have never posted before."

In "Welcome to My House of Words," Ian Welsh discusses his initial entry into the world of blogs, "They seemed really lively. I wanted to join in, but felt nervous about writing the wrong things. I got over that."  He then cites three blog posts worth noting, "I enjoyed the discussions, and then came the beckoning of the blogs. Great stuff written by great people. My first comment was on Mike Travis’, Liars in the Executive Suite post, which, I believe, still holds the record for the most comments (39) on the HR site. I joined Ira Wolfe’s Geeks and Geezers with a couple of comments and otherwise cruised around and particularly to the exotic places Rebecca Morgan (Grow Your Key Talent) described to us. Bit by bit I was being drawn in and loving the lure of the blogs."  Read Ian's full discussion at the above link.   



In "The Start of It All," Shauna Moerke shares the story of her journey into blogging, "I have always said that I credit (blame) my start in blogging to Kris Dunn,The HR Capitalist. His was the first HR blog I ever read and it was from his Blogroll that I expanded my horizons to the Evil HR Lady, Laurie Ruettimann, Lance Haun, and Jenn Barnes (HR Wench I miss your blog and you!"  She concludes, "So big hugs to you KD, for inspiring all of this! You still have one of the best blogs out there and I know I’m not the only one who has benefited from your example. Here’s to you, Cheers!"  Check out Shauna's full discussion at the above link.

To close, I share my own thoughts on the questions.  The inspiration for this blog came from the Cynical Girl herself, Laurie Ruettimann, who pushed me into blogging at the 2009 SHRM Annual Conference in New Orleans (I can faintly hear her saying "sucker" under her breath).   Meanwhile, my favorite blog post was Josh LeTourneau's "Social Recruiting 3.0 - Fast Forward to the Era of Leveraging Conversation and Social Interaction." With its unique perspective and detail, it represents, to me, the apex of blogging and is something for other HR bloggers to emulate and aspire to.

Thanks to all the contributors, and to those who helped to inspire them. 

In three weeks, I'll be heading to the HREvolution unconference in Atlanta to present on HR & Popular Culture with the Cynical Girl herself, Laurie Ruettimann.   However, two days prior to the start of HREvolution, I get to present the prime appetizer in the form of hosting the April 27th Edition of the Carnival of HR.

However, instead of simply accepting the best blog posts of the past two weeks, we will be going in a slightly different direction.  Since HREvolution should be about evolving and change, the blog posts I want should answer one of the following questions:

1.  What was your favorite blog post you ever read and why?
2.  What was the blog post that pushed or influenced you to evolve and change and why?
3.  What was the blog post that influenced you to get into blogging and why?

So, instead of promoting our own writing, it is time to highlight the best of others?  Get your suggestions to me at matthew.stollak@snc.edu by Monday, April 25th with "Carnival of HR" in the subject line.  I look forward to seeing the best of the best.