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