Thanks to the ILSHRM Technology Director

This post is about our revamped Illinois State Council of SHRM website. We have tweeted and re-tweeted about it, so if you are out here in the HR blogosphere you probably already know this. But, I must say I am really proud of the new site and the look. I didn’t have anything to do with other than offer a few opinions now and then. The State Council has a dedicated volunteer Carrie Gurski who has worked long and hare to bring this to fruition.


ISC Technology Director Carrie Gurski

 Carrie is like many other SHRM volunteers, she goes about her volunteer work in the organization without any fanfare and very little recognition. All of us in HR know this is wrong, as employers, we are supposed to recognize and reward our top performers. So on behalf of the entire Illinois State Council of SHRM I am calling out Carrie Gurski our Technology Director/Webmaster and letting her know how grateful we are for her efforts.

Now while I don’t want to diminish Carrie’s efforts at all but as I write this post I am seeing the tweets roll in from California from the SHRM Regional Conference #SHRMreg. The attendees are State Council Directors & Director Elects and of course the folks from the mothership on Duke Street (Headquarters). But this organization is driven so much by volunteers at all levels. Most of whom do their work in obscurity making the local chapters and state councils run.

So thanks to all of our SHRM volunteers here in the Land of Lincoln, but I am saving our biggest kudos and thanks for Carrie.

- Dave Ryan ISC Director of Social Media

Upcoming Legislative Conference 4/12 & 4/13

The 2 nd Annual ISC-SHRM Legislative Conference will be held in conjunction with the 12th Annual Legislative Conference hosted by CIC-SHRM on April 12th and 13th in Springfield at the Lincoln Land Capitol Training Center. It will be a full two day event with seven extremely experienced professionals presenting on very timely HR issues and updates. National SHRM Governmental Affairs staff, Mike Layman will be presenting a Federal Policy Update, while others will present on topics from Union Organizing to Healthcare Reform. A reception will be held Tuesday evening at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and a visit to the Illinois Statehouse is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon to meet with representatives regarding hot HR legal issues. More information including registration information will be available on the Illinois State Council website very soon. For now please save the date.

- Tami Ireland, MA, PHR, Government Affairs CLA Director for the ISC-SHRM

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