One thing you learn pretty quickly if you go to many conferences is this: the half-day session on the last day is usually a pretty big waste of time.
It’s not that the organizations putting on the event don’t try to make it productive and meaningful, it’s just that, well, it’s a half-day. Who wants to hang around for another half a day?
A lot of people who attend conferences bag that last day. You know how it goes; you may have done it yourself (as I have) and done it more than once. You’ll see it big time at SHRM’s annual conference and exhibition next month in Las Vegas, and although scheduling Michael J. Fox as the closing speaker is a big push back from SHRM to try and reverse this trend, don’t expect it to help much. After all, it’s Vegas, and even Michael J. Fox will have a hard time competing with that.
So, knowing how this works is why the last half-day of WorldatWork’s Total Rewards 2011 Conference & Exhibition in San Diego was such a surprise, because a larger than usual number of attendees (I estimate about 40 percent of them) decided NOT to bag the last day and instead, stayed to see Total Rewards to the end of the final, closing speaker.
And as surprising as that was, I don’t think they were disappointed. Here’s why:
I thought the last morning of sessions was unusually strong, including titles such as Work-Life Balance: Going Beyond Just Lip Service, Employer’s Mindset of ‘Catch Me if You Can’ and the DOL’s Game Plan for ‘When I Catch You,’ and Tapped In, Tuned In, and Gung Ho: Making Employee Wellness Work. Intriguing titles all, and certainly a reason to hang around and catch a later flight home.
One of the morning sessions I attended had a pretty big crowd, and the title of it says why — What it Takes to be a Successful Human Resources Professional. Globe-trotting HR consultant John Rubino had a highly-interactive and philosophic session that tried to provide an answer to what it takes to succeed as a HR pro.
He had a lot of great insights, of course, but Rubino didn’t provide a laundry list of qualities to clip and take home. Instead, he offered questions, suggestions, and some philosophy and zen to help the participants develop their own list of HR qualities one needs to succeed. But, Rubino did offer this set of things HR people need to have that I found useful:
I have never heard Bertice Berry speak before, nor did I know anything about her. All I know is that she was described in the program as an “educator and social activist,” and it was the social activist part that worried me.
I shouldn’t have been. Berry was warm, humorous, thoughtful, and encouraging. It’s hard to encapsulate all the wisdom she imparted here, but her message of positive change came down to this — ” To change the world, we must first change ourselves, (because) at the end of the day, the only person I can change is me.”
She also pushed the crowd to “find their purpose,” and noted that “your purpose is not your job — it’s your calling.” When you “walk with a purpose,” she observed, ” you collide wish destiny — and you never know when that might be.”
If you get a chance to hear Bertice Berry speak, make sure you do so. She’s wonderful — even if the label “social activist” hardly does her, or her message, justice.
Total Rewards 2012 will be held next May 20-23 at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida. It will be interesting to see if the upward attendance swing for WorldatWork continues for a fourth consecutive year. Unless we have another economic stumble in the next 12 months, my guess is that it will.