What day is this? It's been somewhat of a blur. I can't believe these past 4 days in Las Vegas at the 59th Annual SHRM Conference and Exposition have passed so quickly. It's been a rewarding experience both from a marketing and an HR practitioner point of view. I met and talked to hundreds of people and had many interesting and enlightening conversations on the topics of employee performance management and compensation administration.

If you haven't been to a SHRM conference I highly recommend it. The entire management, organization, content and scheduling of the event was first rate. The energy of the attendees was contagious. I spent the majority of my time walking the tradeshow floor and meeting people while in the HRN booth. Here are a few of my more 'expo-centric' observations.

• It takes approximately 3.2 steps (and slightly more seconds) for an average sized attendee to walk past a 10 foot wide trade show booth.
• By my crude calculation, if a determined attendee with a pedometer walked down each aisle of the expo from end to end, they would walk the equivalent of 17.2 miles (try that in heels or carting a bag laden with swag)! Ok that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea . . . the expo floor was enormous. I think I heard that there were over 750 exhibitors.
• People will wear anything if you give it to them for free.
• When directly facing someone and they say ‘Performance Pro’ while holding a drink in their hand, you will get wet. The childhood comeback ‘say it don’t spray it’, comes to mind.
• The most common inquiry I received in regard to employee performance appraisals was, “will it write them for me?” Seriously, the primary recurring theme from HR professionals related to employee performance management had to do with integrating data between all HR systems.
• Attendee I spoke to from furthest location was Australia. I met HR professionals from as far away as Hawaii, Iceland, Barbados, Jamaica, Virgin Islands, Canada, Nigeria, India, and Argentina.
• Best always on smile award goes to Amy at HR.com booth.
• The biggest turf war seemed to be between competing online job search entities. Money seemed to be no object as they went through cases and cases of endless giveaways and had droves of overly ‘enthusiastic’ and brightly attired booth staff leading raucous cheers. Felt like I was at the homecoming game. I think they had more booth staff than HRN has employees.

All for now. I need to stretch my back, rest my voice, and rub my feet.

Signing off,

Paul