I've been out on vacation for a week, so I haven't had a chance to chime in with thoughts on the Unconference.
To echo many others - thanks to Jeff and Cindy for hosting, facilitating and herding all of us cats. For a first event, while there were kinks here and there, overall it was run very smoothly.
On the plus side:
- The people who were there represented a good cross-section of the leading thinkers in the recruiting industry, staffing leaders, recruiters, workforce planning, vendors, etc. - this helped create a broad spectrum of opinions. Despite other comments about vendors being less welcome next time, I for one didn't see a push to influence, direct or steer the conversations in any directions other than what was generally interesting to the rest of the attendees. Granted, I didn't attend every session, but I just saw passionate people who were there to learn and teach. As future conferences grow, however, I could see the value in being selective about who comes from the vendor community. You don't want to release the hounds on the next one.
- There were some very interesting topics and track leaders, including Jeff's dad. It's very nice to have people from OUTSIDE of the recruiting industry on hand to broaden peoples' perspectives.
- The topics were big, very important issues led by really great minds. You didn't see Margie from the Cleveland Clinic giving a speech about how they just implemented their first ATS.
- The group size (8-12) was ideal to have a meaningful conversation. Any more, and it would be people talking to hear their own voices and not much getting done. Any less, and there wouldn't have been a good diversity of opinions represented.
Some things to evaluate for next time around (and there should definitely be a next time):
- Making each topic only one session that's a bit longer. I'm not sure the structure was very conducive to having a really cohesive dialogue, as we had one group in the morning and a totally separate group in the afternoon. I think people felt like we ended too early on both counts - there was still lots left to discuss.
- Reducing the number of sessions or spacing them out over two days. I might also suggest keeping the group size the same, so you might have more than one session on the same topic, first come first serve. There were a lot of other topics I would have liked to participated in.
- Self-criticism time - I probably would have jumped into the meat of our morning discussion faster than I did in my session. I was hoping for a get-to-know-you type of icebreaker that went too long in my opinion, which was valuable but left us wanting more discussion on the actual topic.
Overall, well done guys and thanks for inviting me to participate. I can't wait for next year's UnConference, UnLess I'm UnInvited.
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