Mike VanDervort Speaking at Illinois SHRM Conference

Pictured at SHRM  2011 Legislative Conference Tara Mauk Arthur,
Donna Rogers and Mike VanDervor 

At this year's Illinois State SHRM Conference I will be watching a social media leader, and friend in transition. I have known Mike VanDervort for around three years. We met as friends on line before meeting face to face in 2009.

Mike is actually in transition on a couple different fronts. He has recently taken on new responsibilities in his day job with Publix in Florida. His focus has moved more towards social media away from labor relations. He still is an unquestionable subject matter expert and leader in the area of labor relations. His opinion is sought regularly about matters of labor relations. He also writes about the subject frequently at his blog site The Human Race Horses. Mike is also considered by many to be an expert, as well, when it comes to matters of social media. That is phase one of Mike’s transition.

2010 IL SHRM Keynote Speaker Pamela Meyer PhD.
Pictured with Mike VanDervort.

The second part of the transition is where you will find Mike at this conference. I am sure we will see Mike hanging out, observing, writing, posting, visiting and interacting with attendees what he does at most every event he attends. But this year, Mike is going to be one of the presenters. Mike is presenting one of the Social Media sessions. Mike is presenting “Unions are getting Social with your Employees.”

Mike is going to share some of the things he has learned along the way. For anyone who attends this session you will walk away with a keen insight into how unions are currently using social media.

Mike joined Illinois SHRM last year and participated in the conference and blogged about the event as well. We are excited to have him back again this year and look forward to seeing him in this new role.

- Dave Ryan ISC-SHRM Director of Social Media

Tracks at the 2011 Illinois State SHRM Conference

We are thrilled to make more announcements about the 12^th annual Illinois State SHRM Conference. In order to allow HR practitioners to keep up with the rapid growth in the use of social media in the workplace, we have added a special track of presentations on social median and how it can be used by HR. 

Presenters will include Jessica Miller-Merrill (author of Tweet This, Twitter for Business) on the basics of social media, Michael VanDervort (director of labor relations for Publix Foods) on how unions are using social media, Jennifer McClure (president of Unbridled Talent) on how to use social media for recruiting, William Tincup (CEO of Tincup & Co.) on the strategic use of social media and Lisa Callaway (VP & General Consul of the Management Association of Illinois) on some of the pitfalls and traps for businesses in social media.

We will have five other tracks in addition to the social media offering.  The other tracks include: strategic HR, Talent Management, Legal/Employee Relations track, the HR Tools track and the Total Rewards track

Look for future announcements about other top quality speakers who will be addressing attendees on HR and related topics at this year’s ILSHRM conference.

A Big Thanks to the 2010 Illinois SHRM Social Media Crew

Last week was my week in the big leagues. As the social media guy for the Illinois State Council, I found myself in the middle of our annual conference and our state council's social media efforts. Long story short, the event found me hanging out with, talking with and socializing with our blogging crew and SHRM’s social media guy. Prior to this conference, I had met Mike VanDervort, Trish McFarlane, Charee Klimek and Curtis Midkiff at previous events although I had not had the pleasure of meeting Sarah White.

To anyone who has met any of these folks, you all know this, but I feel compelled to tell the world that they are all genuinely nice people who have no airs about them. Although the reality is they all have large followings on their blog sites and with their twitter followers as well. They were all very welcoming and spoke to anyone who engaged them in conversation.

In one instance, I read a blog post response where a conference attendee was uncomfortable walking up to Mike, although she had seen him at the conference. Mike did follow up with her in a blog comments section and offered up a phone call. In another instance, another commenter thanked Sarah for spending one-on-one time with her after a session answering questions about social media. Trish enticed all of the women on the board of the ISC SHRM when she asked for guest posts for one of Trish's many projects The Women of HR blog.

To some degree, each of them possesses a talent often seen in our children. Their multi-tasking was amazing - tweeting, blogging, questioning, talking - all at the same time! They all did it; this was intriguing to watch.

During the second day luncheon, sponsored awards were handed out. Without any prompting or requests, the blog squad in unison began tweeting out thanks to the award sponsors (Blue Cross) and quickly received a tweet back from Blue Cross. That’s what they do, and boy do they do it well!

So, in summary, and, on behalf of the entire the SHRM State Council, I would like to send out a big thank you to our 2010 blogger crew and SHRM national’s Curtis Midkiff for all of their work in helping us deliver this year’s conference to the whole world via the internet. It was truly my pleasure getting to work with and know each of you.

Stay tuned and see what Trish, Curtiss and Mike bring us from HR Florida, no doubt it will be interesting!

Blog Post # 1

This will be known as blog post # 1. Coming on the heels of the 2010 SHRM Annual Conference is the 11th Annual Illinois State Council Conference. This year’s conference is August 2nd and 3rd in beautiful Oak Brook, IL. The conference features some keynote speakers on a wide range of topics. It promises to be an exciting event with more than 450 registrants and 55 exhibitors at the time of this post.
In addition to the conference ISC board members are working to make this a social media event as well. Perhaps not as was done on such a grand scale in San Diego by the SHRM mothership. While we may not be the mothership, ISC does have its Captain- SHRM’s own Curtiss Midkiff (a.k.a. SHRMsocmeguy)who will be in attendance. Curtiss along with SHRM National’s help is going to dial up the transparency of this event as there will be lots of live blogging and tweeting going on at the event; the likes of which many of you may have never seen.

Also to make sure there are a number of good blog posts coming out of the event, the council has confirmed guests and Blogging Icons Trish McFarlane (who blogs as the HR Ringleader), Mike Vandervort ( who blogs at The Human Race Horses) and Sarah White (who blogs at I’m So Sarah). No doubt they will have some thoughts on the conference and the speakers. They will also be around, in the event that you would like to meet or speak with them during the conference.

The ISC will also be hosting a tweet-up on Monday evening. This is going to take place at the Hilton Hotel, adjacent to the conference. Unfortunately this will be an invitation only event.

So if you have not made your plans to attend the conference, it is time to do so NOW!