It was the 3rd HR Inside Summit in Vienna, which took place at the Imperial Hofburg on 27./28. of September 2017 and it was worth it to be there.
This is also a short summary of my personal favorites, a longer summary you can read at Eva Selans HR Blog here, also with news about the HR Award 2017.
Sindy Amadei and Viktoria Schmied showed again with their team of Überall-Scene, that they are able to refresh the HR conference landscape in Austria by bringing international speakers and HR insiders together for the 3rd time. It's also like family festival to be there, because you will meet HR people, which share a similar DNA, a DNA which fits to my view of smart HR people. I think there are at the moment 3 HR related conferences per year in Vienna and every event, has his followers. The HR Inside Summit, is the smart middle class event for all business and marketing people too, compared to the 2 other bigger HR related events in Vienna, the Personal Austriaand the We are Developers Conference for IT candidates and IT Recruiters.
It is the session, where the Upper East Side of HR meets HR Soho, if you compare it to New York. This is important to know, because you know what you can expect and feel comfortable with it. It's not an IT nerd recruiting hackatron event and it's also not a conservative HR Talent Management Club of a public authority, it's in between of these worlds with a lot of fun with a special standard. It's for the smart ones in HR.
So what were my personal highlights of this conference, besides meeting many old friends and ex-colleagues with the same business attitude ?
First of all the panel of Dietmar Dahmen I just knew before from YouTube and his funny videos, was a show to wake up the sleepy HR audience and kick-ass for innovation, future of work, move and change.
The future e-learning platform socrative was an inspiring newcomer for me and I will keep them in mind and observe the future development of these new learning platform, a combination of video lessons, social media interaction and physical lessons.I think they are on a good way, compared to Lydia(by LinkedIn).
The keynote from Leslie Stein about Creation of Collaborative Environments was a nice refreshment, but nothing new, if you are familiar with 4 colors analysis or inside tests in HR. So it was a bit the same adopted to vertical and horizontal graphs. Basic to know, but if you are in HR for 15 or 20 years and didn't heard about this, hm... I am sorry..., you have missed fundamental things of collaboration and team management. :-p
What I personally have missed, was the Big Data and Algorithm topic, which became more and more important as boon and bane of the HR and Recruiting industry of the future. I believe that after a hype of these tools, which can support HR for a first check, came a reversion to the roots of HR and the Human to Human analysis, but we will see. This topic is just starting since 4 years and we will see, how it will develop in future. The best practice session about Chat Bots was interesting and covered a bit the recruiting branch of HR, but there was also a gap for the international and executive search aspect in HR. Sessions and best practices in this field could be also interesting for a wider audience. So I think there are many topics for the HR Inside Summit 2018 to work on.
The exhibition stage is a good platform and presented a good mixture of innovative HR tools, smart startups and companies in Austria, who are an enrichment for our industry and the visitors too. The fair pricing to get a stand is motivating for startups and small companies in Austria to be there.
The HR Award Gala was a nice networking event in the evening my friends told me, but I had to be on a birthday party near the wine yards of Gumpoldskirchen, a small town near Vienna, you should visit too, when you are around for the HR Summit 2018.
So stay tuned and put the 10th and 11th of October 2018 into your agenda for the HR Summit 2018 in Vienna.Best regards,
Thomas Zahlten
Pictures: C by Benedikt Weiss