Social Media Perfect Storm

I have been looking for the best analogy for this post and I have been unable to come up with it, so I will go with an over-used trite and glib analogy. Watch out for the impending Social Media Perfect Storm. With the recently concluded SHRM Annual Conference, there is no doubt that all aspects of Social Media took at least two giant steps forward coming out of the conference, at least as it relates to those of us in Human Resources.

In another time, video taping an interview and distributing your video took a lot of equipment and expertise, just to get it done. Then it took even more resources to distribute or make it available to others. Today, you can shoot video on an iphone or with a flip cam (both around $200) and with internet access you can post it on youtube and with that you have the video imagery of your interview distributed to the world. This has been a huge change making video accessible for the masses, and easy to use.

Video was used on a grand scale at the SHRM 2010 Conference. In addition to video, there were many bloggers and tweeters who put out a large volume of excellent content during the conference. There was many other watershed moments as a result of the conference but suffice it to say, SM is now here to stay and will continue to grow like a giant snowball rolling down the mountainside.

Going forward from this point, how will SHRM, SHRM Chapters, State Councils and Human Resources communities build on the use of social media? The Illinois State Council of SHRM is going to do our part by elevating the presence of Social Media at this year's Illinois State Conference. As noted in Blog Post #1, we have a group of well-known bloggers and SHRM's own Social Media Guy all on our list of attendees. We have a committed State Council Director, Director Elect and Social Media Director who are all going to do the utmost to get our efforts to make the 2010 ISC Conference one to remember, not only as a great conference but for bringing social media to the event.

I will speculate that the HR community will see this continue. Coming up after Illinois, is the HR Florida Conference. There will be over 1200 attendees at HR Florida, in Orlando beginning on August 30. HR Florida already has a huge presence within the SM community. They were the first state council to have a social media director. Steven Harrison, with HR Florida, says 2010 will be the third year they have been using SM to promote HR Florida. Steve says they have even engaged conference attendees and exhibitors by running contest on twitter. HR Florida is on Curtis Midkiff's blogapolooza tour. I look for Steve and his Florida posse to really show us how it is done.

The blogapolooza tour continues, for SHRMsocmeguy in September starting on September 15 in Sandusky, OH. I know that there are many SM leaders and advocates in Ohio, so look for their State Council meeting to be another ground breaking event. Ohio currently has about 500 attendees signed up just about the same as Illinois.

And lookout in October, because on October 6 the Wisconsin State Council will host their annual convention and know at least one advocate of SM in WI, I am sure he will bring SM to the conference.

So watch and see how we do here in Illinois, and also see how SM becomes a part of the conferences in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

You can view an entire list of State Conferences for 2010 on SHRM’s website.