A Visit to the Illinois Valley SHRM Chapter

IV-SHRM Pres, Debbie Claussen, John Munoz and Jeff Williams

On February 15, 2011 I had the pleasure of attending the monthly meeting of the Illinois Valley SHRM Chapter in LaSalle, IL at the Uptown Grill. The purpose in my attending was to represent our state council in front of local chapters, and help grow and solidify the relationship between this chapter (and the other 19 chapters) and the state council.

I would like to thank my friend Jeff Williams and IV-SHRM Chapter President Debbie Claussen for welcoming me and giving an opportunity to speak to their members.  In talking to the group I was extolling the virtues of Social Media, and how it was being used on the world stage to change society in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain.  I then asked for a show of hands for those that were: Facebook users – a few hands went up; Linkedin users – some but less, and then a show of hands of twitter users in the room of about 45, and sadly the twitter users could be counted on one hand

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Oh well, I guess this is job security for the Director of Social Media.  I provided a couple of war stories as to how I had hired folks after finding them on Linkedin.  I talked about my Company’s job listing on Facebook and did not feel like I was dealing with an engaged audience, but that could just be my read.

On a brighter not the Chapter is doing some great things.  This is a 100% chapter, and the folks up at the mothership on Duke Street would like to see all chapters moving in that direction.  The chapter meets monthly. They periodically have “after hours” meeting a local watering hole. This was the best though, in December they do not have a meeting, but rather meet at United Way and help with Christmas Gift. That’s pretty cool in this bloggers eye!

The meeting content was great; the Speaker John Munoz is a trainer for a local bank and spoke on Emotional Intelligence.  He presented the “Marsh mellow Video” and did a great group exercise with hats.   There are some pictures of the event here.

Again I would like to thank the chapter for their hospitality and sharing some of their valuable time with me.

- Dave Ryan Director of Social Media ISC-SHRM

“Anything Worthwhile is Worth Going After”

I’ve been in more than a few discussions about “finding the value” in my SHRM or my local SHRM chapter membership. Currently the chapter I belong to, IV-SHRM, is putting together some strategies to show the value of our local chapter to our members and community. So with that back drop in mind, here is what happened to me last week.

Last week I was looking for a misplaced e-mail. As I was searching in a few of the folders that I thought this e-mail may be in, I rediscovered some e-mail subscriptions I had signed up for with SHRM. I found several nuggets that were outstanding.

That got me to thinking about gold mining. It’s funny how the mind makes those associations. I’m sure some psychologist would have a field day with….well, never mind…that’s a story for another day.

There are records from back in the day (the 1849 gold rush) when prospectors would pan for gold and come up with 96 ounces of gold in a single pan. That would be worth about $100,000 today! The gold pan is most commonly used to locate areas that may contain larger reserves of gold. By sampling an area, the prospector can find the areas where larger equipment should be brought in to mine the gold.

I did a bit of looking around and I want to share this paragraph from an article I found from an article by Dave McCracken called, “Gold Panning Instructions.”

“The process basically consists of placing the material that you want to process into your pan and shaking it in a left to right motion underwater to cause the gold, which is heavy, to work its way down toward the bottom of your pan. At the same time, the lighter materials, which are worthless, are worked up to the surface of the gold pan where they can be swept away. The process of shaking and sweeping is repeated until only the heaviest of materials are left-namely the gold and heaviest black sand.

Once you are out in the field, you will notice that no two people pan gold exactly alike. After you have been at it awhile, you will develop your own little twists and shakes to accomplish the proper result.

I’ve found that “panning” for those nuggets of value in your SHRM chapter, State Council or SHRM National membership is about the same. None of us are going to do it exactly the same way. And in time, we will all find our own techniques to get the most out of our memberships.

But the kicker to me is, anything worthwhile is certainly worth going after.

So here are some tips and techniques to “pan” SHRM, your local chapter or State Council.

1. Get to know those who are there to help you. Your local chapter and State Council have a lot to offer in resources and support. They both are typically “staffed” with volunteers who will be more than happy to help you find what you need. And the SHRM Field Services Directors and administrators are very accessible to help you with finding resources with SHRM national.

2. Go to their websites and return there often. Even many of the local chapters now have websites with some information on the resources they offer.

3. Look for blogs, Facebook, LinkIn or Twitter accounts to follow from these organizations and their leaders.

4. Subscribe to any e-mail notifications you believe may help you unearth some valuable nuggets.

5. Attend their functions.

6. Network with other members.

7. Ask for help when you need it.

8. Offer help when you have it to offer.

Now for a word to those organizations providing great value to their members: Put something out there for people to “catch in their pan.” If people are looking but you’re not making it easily accessible, they will either give up or go look elsewhere.

Changes for 2011 - New Contributors to IL SHRM Site

It is the year’s end and at Illinois SHRM just like at many other volunteer organizations personnel changes usually take place around this time of year. At the top we have a new incoming State Director – Donna Rogers. We also have a new Director Elect Cathy Plouzek, and we have the outgoing, Past State Director John Jorgensen. While we have a number of personnel changes we also have some folks like your truly are hanging around for another year or two.


One of the things that I am going to do next year is add some new voices to this blog site. For the most part, postings so far, have come from me, Dave Ryan, the Director of the Social Media for the State Council. Having looked around at other sites and other organization I have invited more folks who are involved with SHRM here in Illinois to be contributors and give new and varied content  in regards to  what is going on in the World of Human Resources.

The three folks mentioned earlier, John, Donna and Cathy all have agree to generate 4 to 5 posts for next year. In addition to the IL SHRM executive gang, we have lined up IL SHRM’s membership director and all around great guy Jeff Williams to our crew. Jeff currently writes at his own blog site HDLeader. Our Director of Marketing and Communication Heather Hammitt will also be contributing to our blog site.

To another prospective, from the staffing portion of Human Resources, Chloe Rada, The President of Staffing Management Association of Greater Chicago will be a regular contributor to the site.

We have been fortunate to grab two more contributors who have been instrumental in creating a new SHRM chapter in the Metro East area. We are thrilled to have Trish McFarlane who regularly blogs at HRRingleader, and her co-conspirator Chris Frede who also has her own site, HRBouy, as regular contributors for 2010.

So if I go back and count up the bolded names I see nine names listed. The plan was to have 12 regular contributors. So if my math still works I need three more regular contributors. Please let me know if you would be interested in contributing.

In addition to the weekly contributions, we plan to be presenting guest posts from upcoming conference speakers, and others who are present on the HR scene. So be looking for exciting thing coming from this the Illinois State Council of SHRM and this site next year.
- Dave Ryan Director of Social Media Illinois State Council of SHRM