Last fall, one of the attendees at the conference in Santa Clara told me that a document we posted to provide some tangible evidence of the benefit of attending SourceCon had worked for her: she printed up the document and gave it to her manager, who read it and said, “Looks like something you should go to!”
I was recently asked by someone interested in sending a small team of recruiters to SourceCon in Atlanta to share some further information about the conference and answer some questions. While responding, I really started getting excited about the event and all it represents, and my response ended up being quite long-winded.
The answers I provided, however, are truly a reflection of why I feel this event is singularly the most important event for sourcers and those who desire to learn more about sourcing to attend this year. Below are the questions as well as my responses — I hope these will help you make a decision to come to SourceCon or give you the tools you need to ask your manager to send you!
Can you give me background about the conference?
The conference is unique in that it was developed based on a community desire for a learning experience dedicated just to those in sourcing functions or those who desire to learn more about sourcing. So essentially it was developed BY sourcers, FOR sourcers, and has since come to envelope all areas that sourcing touches including social media, branding, marketing, management, technology, and other related topics.
How long has the conference been around?
The conference got its beginnings in 2007; it ran again in 2008 and was subsequently purchased by ERE Media in 2009. Since the spring of 2010, there have been 4 additional SourceCon events, with the one coming up in Atlanta to be #5 since the change in ownership.
What is the attendance like?
We have an eclectic mix of attendees ranging from brand-new entry-level sourcers to seasoned veterans who’ve been around sourcing since the 80s and before the Internet was available to the general public. Attendees consist of those who work strictly in sourcing roles, individual contributing recruiters who do their own sourcing, recruiters who want to learn how to source, managers who oversee sourcing professionals, consultants, thought leaders, and resource vendors who all enjoy coming to the conference.
What makes this conference stand out from any other conference?
Quite frankly, it’s the first and only conference that’s JUST for sourcing topics by people who actually source — not just vendors or consultants. Not to sound like the genie from Aladdin, but it is often imitated but never duplicated. As the Editor of SourceCon for the last 4 1/2 years (3 of those on a voluntary basis) and a successful sourcer myself since 2002, I can attest that the content from these events is carefully selected and evaluated to provide powerful take-aways and action items for attendees. Selected speakers are experts in their given areas and many topics are ones you’d never think to learn about but are pertinent to the achievement of excellence in sourcing (we had a social engineer at our NYC conference and the CIO of a semantic search engine company at our last event). Consequently, the learning experience is unique — we like to make things interesting by having a diverse mix of well-known experts and people you may not recognize but who have a ton of great knowledge that they want to share. And my favorite part of this event is the networking — the people who attend this conference are very community-oriented and absolutely LOVE to freely share what they know with one another, as evident in the grass-roots growth of the After Dark portion of the conference.
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As an aside, I may be biased due to my role as the person in charge of this conference, but I was a presenter at the very first SourceCon in 2007 and I loved it so much that I became involved by editing the newsletter, which used to come out monthly in PDF format. This is an event that was very near and dear to my heart long before I was paid to feel that way. 🙂
As an added resource for you, we’ve revised and updated the conference fact sheet to help you present a compelling case to your manager for you to attend SourceCon in Atlanta next month. To download the fact sheet, follow this link.
Hope to see you next month in Atlanta!
