NOTE: This is the first in a series of articles over the next few days from Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, two of the recruiting industry’s most well-respected figures, who are attending SHRM’s Annual Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas this week. They will be providing exclusive coverage of the conference for the Electronic Recruiting Exchange, which we will be presenting to our subscribers in a series of supplemental emails. The attention of the HR world shifts to Las Vegas this week where the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has convened its 52nd Annual Conference and Exposition. (Details and press coverage can be found at http://www.shrm.org/conferences/annual. 12,000 paid attendees (not counting the hundreds of speakers and the vendors supporting 1100 booths) began converging on the Hilton hotel and LV Convention Center on Friday. I also arrived Friday to get a jump on meetings and network opportunities but found a few distractions like the poker rooms at the Mirage. Saturday, I was able to map out the booths I wanted to visit, programs I wanted to attend and the room where Mark and I would be holding forth ourselves. Mike Losey, SHRM’s CEO, is retiring at the end of this year and a party was held Saturday evening to celebrate his accomplishments and toast his unique style. SHRM will have grown from 50,000 to 150,000 members, and is driving many of the changes taking place in the human resource profession. After half a dozen committee meetings Sunday morning and an opening keynote speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (we think we have problems!), 12,000 people flowed through several acres of booths and the fun began: