Take it from someone like me who has attended more than his fair share of SHRM Annual Conferences over the years: the city, the speakers, the attendance and some of the side issues may change from year-to-year, but that’s about it.
In other words, if you’re looking for big news, you’re probably looking in the wrong place.
Yes, that’s the way things usually go most years at the Society for Human Resource Management’s Annual Conference and Exhibition. But this year in Las Vegas, there’s actually a few things percolating that might make SHRM’s 63rd annual conference one worth remembering.
Here are some of the things that may be happening there next week (June 26-June 29):
The world’s largest HR organization has been without a CEO for nearly a year since Lon O’Neil departed last July — not long after the conclusion of SHRM’s 2010 annual event in San Diego.
SHRM has had a revolving door of CEO’s over the past three years. Since Sue Meisinger retired after SHRM’s 60th annual conference in Chicago in 2008, the organization has gone through interim CEO China Gorman, Lon O’Neil, and current interim CEO Henry Jackson. The new leader, whenever he or she is named, will make it five CEOs in a little over three years. Make of that what you will, but no organization functions very well with that kind of ongoing change at the top.
I’ve heard reports from people in a position to know (but unauthorized to speak publicly), that the SHRM Board is close to naming a new leader and that it will be either interim CEO Jackson, or, a woman from outside the organization. The reports also say that if a CEO is named at the Las Vegas conference — and it would seem to be the ideal venue for such an announcement — that it will probably be done at the very end of the event.
My experience after attending a number of SHRM annual conferences — and for three years, editing and producing a daily conference news magazine that competed with the official SHRM conference guide — is that SHRM tries to keep a pretty tight lid on anything that might challenge or compete with what they are doing during their annual event.
That’s why it is pretty amazing that the press conference being held at noon on Sunday (June 26) across the street from the Convention Center by the group SHRM Members for Transparency is even happening. In my experience covering SHRM, someone holding a press conference to question the organization’s leadership during the SHRM annual conference is a unique and groundbreaking event.
There’s no need me for me to get into a lot of detail about what the Transparency group is about, or their concerns about what they say is “the establishment of some SHRM Board of Directors’ policies that the group believes were not in SHRM members’ best interests and, in some cases, were unknown to SHRM members.”
I’ve written about the Transparency Group, and their reasons for being, probably more than anyone else over the past year, but the Group promises that Sunday’s news conference will be to “summarize (the) group’s progress, make an important announcement, and provide an opportunity for questions.” Should be an interesting way to lead into SHRM’s big bash, although I doubt if SHRM’s leadership feels that way.
The SHRM conference is always packed full of speakers, break-out sessions, a busy exhibit hall, and lots of parties/side events. Here are a few more worth noting:
There might be a few other twists and turns at the SHRM conference, too, because after all, it is Vegas. It will be pizza oven hot (105 plus, I’m betting), with lots of distractions (aka, gambling, more gambling, shopping, more shopping, great dining, and “adult” swimming pools) and other side events that Las Vegas is justifiably famous for.
The last time SHRM gathered in Sin City for its annual event, back in those blissful pre-Great Recession days of 2007, they had the largest attendance ever for a SHRM annual conference. But that was then and this is now. I think the world’s largest HR organization would just be happy for SHRM Las Vegas to have a modest bump in attendance from last year in San Diego.
So it goes in 2011, in a world of downsized expectations. I’ll be watching closely to see how it actually plays out.