HRPA Conference

I attended a number of sessions at the HRPA conference, which were interesting and provided some good insights for challenges I expect to be facing in the coming year.

We struggle with finding enough content to fully use the three days so my department has taken to purchasing three passes and sharing them. While a bit of an administrative headache in coordinating the sessions and transferring the passes, it was a good way to give more people the opportunity to attend sessions of interest to them.

For the most part, the sessions seemed to be well received. Many were short (less than one hour) and the presenters did a good job of keeping the content very focused vs being too broad or general to be of any real benefit. Generally the speakers covered the key concept of his/her latest book, providing an opportunity to purchase it at the accompanying trade show (at a discount) if you wanted to delve deeper. I picked up two books for topics that were relevant to issues I would be tackling in the coming months. Many of my colleagues did the same.

While there is some debate as to the value of these high level sessions, I found the opportunity to network with my colleagues, to visit vendors at the trade show and discuss tools/processes/opportunities relevant to my current and upcoming projects, as well as have an opportunity to get an overview of the best new business books or current thinking, through the one hour sessions, was well worth the investment.