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Creating a Better Regional HR Conference

The HR Conference season is over for 2007, and I have some observations, and some goals I have set for myself that hopefully will spur on some exciting activities in 2008.

So far I have attended and spoken at 2-3 HRMAB’s, 2 HRMATT’s and 3 HRMAJ’s. I have been to a couple of JEF conferences and also a JIM Conference. I may also have lost count of one or two here and there…

What is striking about our conferences is how limited they are to the attendees of the country. At HRMATT, there were 2 Jamaicans and a single Bajan. At HRMAJ there was one Bajan (the same one) and one Trini. At the last HRMAB conference there were 2 Jamaicans, and perhaps 3-4 Trinis.

The numbers don’t augur well for what we are all attempting to create — a regional body that unites all practitioners across the region. At the moment, the only unifying entity that exists is CaribHRForum, the regional discussion and email list.

Under the auspices of CaribHRForum, I am thinking about doing more to help regionalize our conferences. So far, I have come up with the following ideas:

  1. Find out why people aren’t attending the conferences across the region (a survey maybe?)
  2. Determine what needs to change to enable them to attend
  3. Sharing the outputs from each conference across the region
  4. Giving cross-conference awards e.g. best paper submitted to a conference
  5. Granting conference discounts for those who travel to attend
  6. Setting dates early in the planning year to allow for those who want to attend to do so
  7. Approaching cross-regional companies to sponsor several conferences at the same time

Does anyone have any other ideas about what we can do in the short term to generate greater attendance?

As budgets get created for 2008, does attending a regional conference show up on HR budgets as a priority? If not, is it because the company has no interest in CSME, or is it because the case has not been made for HR to be an important part of the changes that are coming?

I am eager to hear. Let me know your thoughts.

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HRPS Conference 2007 and HRTrends

I thought this blog was particularly interesting, as it was a blog created specifically for a conference, as a way to share information about the HRPS Conference 2007.

I thought that this was one very quick way to connect to what’s happening, especially for those who could not attend. It could be updated from session to session throughout the conference days, and allow those who are at their desks in their offices to feel like they are a part of the happenings.

This is one of those solutions that could be particularly effective for our regional conferences, given the high cost of travel from one country to another.

Also of interest on that page are the results of a survey done on HR Trends.

Hopefully, there will be a conference next year, as it seems to cover some useful information.

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CaribHRNews; The Source for Caribbean HR News

Framework Consulting is pleased to announce the launch of CaribHRNews, a Squidoo-hosted aggregator of the most recent internet-based news related to the Human Resources profession.

On the company website, the page may be accessed from the link on each page titled CaribHRForum.

President Francis Wade noted “We wanted a single place to find all the information related to the Human Resource industry and after months of searching for viable solution we found one that would not require intensive manual effort.”

The price to use the service is free to professionals, and the cost of its maintenance is being underwritten by Framework Consulting.

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Meeting Kwame

Recently I finally met Kwame.

The Kwame in question is not himself a famous freedom fighter, but an esteemed colleague. He happens to have made the upgrade from “cyber-friend” to face-to-face friend while I was at a conference in Barbados last week.

Lest you immediately get the wrong idea about Kwame, he is not the son of that Nigerian ”prince” who needs your help to transfer $10 million, “with your kind help.” Instead, Dr. Kwame Charles is a pioneer in the field of Caribbean employee surveys, and he has the best and most comprehensive data on what the region’s employees think about their companies. See his website Quality Consultants for more information.

My point here is not to shamelessly advertise Kwame’s expertise (although companies would be crazy not to use him, and I do have his cell phone number if anyone wants to get hold of the man himself AND he is coming to Jamaica to next week’s HRMAJ conference.) Instead, it’s interesting that Kwame and I have known each other for about 3 years, but only met last week in person.

How did that happen?

Via the internet we have become colleagues by:

  • lobbying on CaribHRForum for the establishment of a regional HR conference
  • sharing leads and contacts within companies for future business
  • visiting each other’s websites
  • talking on the phone from different countries and timezones
  • writing chapters of the same book (*note to self… start writing chapter of book, as promised)
  • trying to arrange a meeting over drinks

So, last week, we finally met.

And it made me think how much more rich my life is, due to the existence of the web, internet and cyber-space. Instead of finding a stranger sitting beside me, I found a new, old friend.