Showing posts with label Sarah White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah White. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

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!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

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!