It could have been the the fact that I found a guy at FAO Schwartz that was so corporate (I didn’t even ask for the shot!), great dinner Saturday night with a small group of people I admire in this industry, the Monster Social/Tweetup Sunday Night (see below),  the onslaught of  social recruiting discussion at the summit on Monday, the the 6 hours of business planning meetings that followed Monday night or the fact that I did most of it not realizing I had pneumonia, but I am exhausted and am glad I have an excuse to stay in bed the rest of this week and relax.  Will this post ramble.  Yes.  Sorry.

To start, I have to say a huge thank you to the ERE crew for putting on such an amazing event and a huge congratulations to Laurie Ruettimann for being a gracious and entertaining chairwoman.   I also have to say a HUGE thank you to HRMDirect for encouraging us to attend and to Elaine Orler with Talent Function for letting me test out her laptop mini (just one more time) so I could live tweet.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the morning keynote and am pretty disappointed about it, but here is what I did see live and some thoughts on in…

Overall lessons learned from my Tweets

Failing via social media because you are doing the same old style of work makes YOU suck, not the technology

Sometimes you have to be common sense smart

If you want to have a solid social media strategy – drive transparency & enable conversation

Most companies aren’t social media recruiting they are social media sourcing

Social Recruiting is a “boatload” more than posting jobs per @johnsumser

Resisting social media in 2010 is like resisting a website in 1997  (Which I saw was actually used in another conference this week)

Not everything is about today’s hire people!!! Think pipeline!!!

Content should be relevant to the jobseeker not just what the “pros” think we should do

#monstersocial – WOW!  Seriously, WOW!  From finding a uber cool location in the meat packing district to the DJ, the Vin Diesel look alike bouncer, free pac-man, the bartenders who made custom drinks to match your outfit (or mood) or the chocolate covered bacon. Again, Wow.  And it gave me a chance to wear a little sparkly dress.

While it was quite the social, there was a lot of shop talk going on still, people were talking about how they were using social media in their own lives – both professionally and personally and how the line between them had really evolved.  I stumbled upon conversations on the evolutions of job boards/applicant tracking/performance management/software, conversations about how to engage candidates more effectively (and if you should care to) and discussions about the droid vs iphone.

In back rooms ( the back rooms were very cool) the mood was more mellow, the setting was more intimate and the noise levels were low – it was where conversations turned into discussions.  Topics floated around other conferences and the rapid evolution of the conference world in the last 18 months thanks to social media and New York itsself.  There was one lengthy and passionate debate about the value of recruiting CRM, their place in this industry and who was leading the way and why. It was really interesting to hear peoples thoughts sans filters

All in all, it was an amazing event – lots of great conversation, tons of laughs and some fantabulous dancing with Maren Hogan, Jenny DeVaughn (once most everyone else had gone home).

On to the main event – #socialrecruiting

Social Recruiting Panel -  The social recruiting panel was filled with big name people (Kelly Dingee, Ben Gotkin, Kerry Noone, Heather Tinguely) from big name companies talking about what they were doing with social media.  IT was a neat concept – I wish it would have been a little more interactive and got down into the how’s more than the should’s.   I would also love to see a similar panel that included some smaller/mid sized companies that were doing social media the right way.   I love hearing about what Microsoft, Sodexo, etc are doing but the reality is developing a social media strategy with an well known, established corporate brand is different and in some ways a lot easier than doing it from XCY Widget Maker with 500 ee’s.

SRS Quick Hit’s – Carmen Hudson (Tweetajob) got up in her typically, funny style and got things rolling before her breakout discussion and John Sumser (of everything and everywhere)- I think we all loved what he said, but the real winner (at our nerdy crew table) was the presentation software he was using.  Prezi.com  It was awesome and was a great lead into his unconference session

Social Recruiting from 30,000 Feet – This was by Master Burnett who rivals our own Afton Funk for coolest name ever and took a lot deeper look than I would have anticipated from the title.    It was really a quite enjoyable session

Then we got a look at what Talent Camp would have been like if there would have been 300 people at it and it was held in a comedy club.   There was some doubt on how it would work out, but as usual, Susan Burns (who happens to have been last SRS’s chairwoman)  pulled it off and IMHO was the session that got  a ton of involvement.   I know of one major company who had a few, um, non believers there – who told me later that it was that session that drove their non-recruiting people that required buy in, to get the buy in.

Finally, we come to the last sessions – I had to choose between Gerry Crispin and Jessica Lee – considering my laptop was almost out of juice, I stayed near the plug and sat in on Jessica Lee’s session on bashing monster social media for smaller companies.  It was an interesting session to say the least, I feel like I know Jessica know (even though I don’t) and think we have way to much in common to ever actually speak to one another.  It would be a dangerous mix.   Anyway, the most entertaining portion was when she happened to mention they were stopping the monster contracts and then it kinda went downhill from there.  I was proud of the restraint held at the table full of monster people behind me when comment after slide bashed them (although Eric Winegardner did retort quite nicely and professionally in a way that only he can) and felt a little bad at the comparison of free skype to Hirevue (Not even close to the same thing – its like saying I don’t need to have dinner, they give me free crackers while I wait).   But seriously people – not all jobs are right for all job boards – I get it.  Those of you that don’t have likely never worked in a small company before.   We’re cheap.  Seriously, like priceline cheap.  All in all – her message was awesome – you don’t need a huge budget to move mountains (or sumo wrestlers) in this space.  You just need innovation and engagement.

#SimplyHiredNetworkingReception

Very, very nice wrap up to the event – huge turn out, lots of ongoing discussions from the day and a bit of a feel of the last day of school for a lot of us who “conference” regularly and have grown accustomed to seeing the same people every few weeks.

Also, just have to say that it was so great to finally meet the Redhead.  I was confident that @therecruiterguy had been making her up and photo shopping her into pictures.