HR Florida and social media: to change or not to change

William Shakespeare

 Time to change my role? That is the question.

I feel like I am at something of a personal crossroads, and I am looking for some feedback.

I have attended the HR Florida show and been involved with social media at the event every year since 2008.   The trajectory of my involvement with HR Florida looks like this:

  • HR Florida 2008 – I was just beginning my new phase of HR geek conference attendee tweeting and live blogging from the event because it seemed cool  and I had seen people doing the same thing at tech shows I attended.   I was crazy about Twitter and wanted to show other HR practitioners how Twitter could be a great tool for them.  I evangelized about social media like mad, and nobody very much attention.  Most of the time, they got that now familiar glazed look in their eye and took the most convenient escape route as soon as possible.
  • HR Florida 2009  –  I was invited by the HR  Florida leadership team to be a part of their first ever conference blogging panel along with Jessica Lee, Laurie Ruettimann, and Kris Dunn.   It was an excellent experience that involved blogging, tweeting, great networking with the HR Florida team, and a panel presentation moderated by Sharlyn Lauby where the members of the blogging team all discussed why we blogged.  I also planned and pulled off the first ever official HR Florida tweetup event.  It may even have been the first HR state conference tweetup as well, although I have never researched that.
  • HR Florida 2010 –  This was the year that I took over as the leader of the HR Florida blog team.   My goal was to move the conference experience from one where the blogging team reported on the conference experience to one where the team aided HR practitioners in understanding how social media tools could be put to work in their own business situations.   I also hoped to move the forward the acceptance of social media in the HR profession.  I started by putting together a team of wide depth and experience, including Trish Mcfarlane, Steve Boese, Mark Stelzner, Franny Oxford, and William Tincup.   We also added a large number of social media speakers to the HR Florida program, added social media preconference sessions, and did a panel about using social media to work in the work place.  We also hosted the first Voice of HR booth, held a tweetup event sponsored by Monster, and invited leadership from SHRM national and state conferences to attend our conference.   All this activity was designed to expose our average conference goer to social media in variety of ways.  I believe that our goals were largely  accomplished.
  • HR Florida 2011 –  I was the conference for what became the social technology team this year.  My goal for 2011 was not to expose HR people to social media anymore, but rather to help them put it to work.   Our social technology team consisted of Kris Dunn, Franny Oxford, Bryan Wempen, Victorio Milian, Ben Eubanks, and Joni Doolin, all of whom put social media to work in their businesses every day.  Activities this year included a pre-conference social media academy, a panel on putting social media to work, and a social media hub on the exhibition hall floor.  At that wrap, I was left with the feeling that social media is now an accepted part of our profession, and people are hungry to learn more about it.

Mission accomplished?

This bring me back to the feedback I am seeking.  I am trying to decide if I should return to HR Florida for one more year as the leader of the blogging team.  I love doing it, and it provides me a great way to get things done in the profession, but I can’t help but wonder if it is time for a change.  Maybe someone with new ideas could change things up, and take these efforts in a new direction.  Either way, we need to change things up a bit for next year.  I don’t know what this would look like, but I am drafting a blog post about it that will go up later this week.

So help me out by answering a couple of questions.  Should I stay around for another year? If I do, what would one great idea/issue would you like see a big state HR conference chapter related to social media?

Share your thoughts in the comments, PLEASE! Thanks!

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