I’ve had enough of our regular conferences that double up as networking and marketing sites. This time I’m looking for more. I’m looking for people who want to do more. In this day and age, ideas rarely strike in isolation. Innovation is inevitable when two or more great minds collide and I am looking for the collision course.
No, conferences that talk about innovation are not what I am looking for. I want conferences that get people to innovate right there. Not take ideas, go back, incubate and fade. Let’s take a leaf out of the tech world and hold hackathons for HR. Throw a problem, form teams and give them till the break of dawn to come up with a prototype and share. That is a conference I would like to go to; one where I am surrounded by whiteboards, drawing tables and work groups. No speakers, no marketers and no stalls. Throw in genuine debates. Debates where people make each other uncomfortable. Not staged discussions that lead no where.
Is there a reason why this doesn’t exist today? Or does it and has it not scaled? Is this not viable because there isn’t a market? Are HR folks lazy and rather go back to the comfort of their homes than spend the night awake bright-eyed and brimming with ideas? Are our priorities different? Do we not aspire to innovate like the businesses we support?
Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that there’s a valid reason why a stack overflow for the HR world doesn’t exist. I want the big players in this space to come together and hold an innovation conference. I can’t wait to be part of one. I don’t care if the audience is 50. It’s a start. We’ll make it a 1000.
As Robert Henri said – ‘The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.’
The HR Business Partner Story 