NZLEAD Unconference - Unfurling a new Human Resources profession on the 15th October 2014

The #UnfurlingHR unconference would not be possible without the support of some of our awesome sponsors. So I just wanted to take some time to mention a couple of them.

Firstly, HR Shop who gave us enough money to push the Pledgeme campaign up to covering it's costs. Big thank you to Samantha Gadd who heads up HR Shop. 

Here's a little blurb about HR shop:

HR Shop shapes the culture behind workplaces of the future. HR Shop is a mixture of generalist and highly specialised HR experts with backgrounds in a number of commercial sectors. Falling somewhere between an outsourced HR manager and a consultant, we embrace your people goals and business aspirations as if they are our own. Our varied client base means our clients benefit from a fresh perspective, we understand no two of our clients are the same. Our size allows us to form close working relationships, and the best part about the HR Shop is that when you work with one of us, you're working with all of us - you just might not know it.http://hrshop.co.nz 0508 HR SHOP

Secondly, I'd like to give a wee shout out to Spark, one of NZ's biggest telecommunications companies. An event like this needs wifi but scout camps are not exactly run with wifi in mind (which is fair enough). The lovely peeps at Spark are hooking us up with some technical connection, to which we are very grateful!

If you would like to sponsor the unconference with goods or services then get in touch. Tweet me, or comment on this post. 

And, if you are attending the unconference already, please don't forget to fill in the form so we can order your t-shirts and start collating topics for the day!

In the countdown to the NZLEAD UnfurlingHR unconference is there is a wee bit of organizing to do. Not least of which is working out an initial overview of what is going to happen on the day. 

This is going to be a truly crowd sourced affair so I’d really appreciate your help.

Firstly, I’ve put together a google form to capture some information that I would not have necessarily got from the PledgeMe campaign. It would be super awesome if you could fill this in before Monday next week. That’s Monday 22^nd September.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be adding you to the UnfurlingHR twitter list, so you can easily participate in the conversations up to the event, and to the Google+ community where we will be discussing topics and format for the day as well as other logistics.

On that note, there are a few of you coming from out of town. There is not that much accommodation out by our venue and, if you don’t have a car, it might be difficult for you to get to. As such, I recommend you stay in the city. The venue is about a 20min drive from the city centre. We will either get groups of you to co-ordinate taxis or shuttles, or we will organize a mini-bus to grab everyone in the morning and drop them back at the end of the day. Watch this space for more details.

I’ve also started a discussion in the Google+ community asking for suggestions for where you can stay in the city. So if you let me know your Google+ handle quick smart, then I can add you and you can suggest or read other’s suggestions.

Lastly, a few of you have asked what time the unconference starts and what time it will be running to. Just to give you an indication, we’ll have some casual meet and great stuff happening from about 8.30am, kick things off at about 9am, aim to wrap up at 4.30pm, and then have a few drinks at the venue (or nearby) until about 6pm or whereever the wind blows us.

Lastly, lastly, if you know someone who would like to attend, or you missed out on the Pledgeme campaign, you can still register to attend here. 

Thank you to all of your who pledged!

I'm blown away that 67 people thought that this was a good thing to get behind and helped make it happen!

So what comes next?

In the next couple of days I'll be getting all your details from the PledgeMe people. I'll then be sending out a survey to capture any more information that I need, like t-shirt sizes, addresses (if you've pledged as a supporter) and what kinds of topics you want out of the conference so we can start playing with the agenda.

In the meantime, I am looking for people to help me make this stuff happen so please email me amanda[at]nzlead.com if you're keen to help. 

We've reached a point in the unconference campaign where we've covered the basic costs to make it happen.

As part of supporting, attending or sponsoring the NZLEAD unconference you receive a t-shirt with art by Simon Heath. But it's more than that, the logo designed for the unconference represents what we are are trying to achieve with this event - unfurling HR.

It was in exploring how the unconference would be visually represented, that the theme came about. See the original NZLEAD logo is a hashtag made up of intersecting korus. A koru features a lot in traditional Maori art, the original settlers of NZ, and is based on the spiral shape of an unfurling silver fern. If you follow any NZ sports teams, particularly rugby, you'll know that us kiwis have a particular affinity with the silver fern. The koru symbolises new life, growth, strength and peace. 

It seems fitting then, that the NZLEAD unconference is represented by this icon. We integrated it with the '@' symbol to represent our friends in other far off lands, those people we are able to connect with digitally and who help make NZLEAD the awesome community that it is. 

Join us in #unfurlinghr.

In November Angela Atkins will be writing a book to capture the ideas and discussions that come out of the HR Game Changer Conference in NZ, and the UK and #nzlead unconference. She wants to capture the HR transformations that are happening now, and what the HR profession want to be in the future. She will be participating in NaNoWrimo to get the book written, with publication date planned for February 2015. NaNoWrimo is national novel writing month where 350,000 people around the world all write a 50,000 book!

You get a copy of this book when you pledge as a supporter or an attendee at the NZLEAD unconference! Angela writes some of the best books in NZ on HR and managment practices, so the HR Game Changer book will be a crucial addition to your book shelf! 

Can I add something on your 'will do' list this balmy Monday morning? I promise it will be worth it. 

See we're a quarter of the way there with pledges for the NZLEAD unconference. But to make the event happen we need to be all the way there. There is still 3 weeks to go but there is still a way to go.

All you need to do is get one more supporter or attendee pledged. Just one. One each.

If all current pledgers get one more person involved then we will be almost there.

So talk to your friends, colleagues, parents, neighbours. Take them out for coffee, email them, send carrier pidgeon, however you want to do it. Share the pledgeme campaign with your LinkedIn, twitter, google+ instagram contacts. Meet them in real life, pick up the phone, tweet them. Keep working on them until you get ONE more person pledged. 

Because that one person will make a difference.

.... and if if would be helpful for you to have a little blurb to explain the unconference to people:

Hi (insert name of awesome person here)

I am participating in an unconference event  in Auckland, New Zealand on the 15th October and it would be super awesome if you were involved to!

This event is about unfurling the potential of HR by creating connections in real life and digitally, sharing knowledge, working on plans and supporting each other in the challenges that we have. It is also a great opportunity for individual learning and development, problem solving, and hearing what other HR practitioners are working on.

The event is being organised by NZLEAD. Which is a social media based HR community. It is all about connecting human resources (HR) professionals from NZ and around the world to collaborate and share knowledge. We believe that by forming these connections, and by sharing knowledge and resources, we can create an HR profession where we play a really important role in business adaptability. 

The unconference is seriously going to be your most impactful, and cheap, development activity this year. To support the unconference you can pledge as a supporter or as an attendee by visiting the Pledgeme site here. The event will be confirmed when we reach the target. You don’t get charged until the target is reached. 

Thank you

(insert your awesome name here)

As you may know, Ian Pettigrew, from the UK, has donated an attendee place at the NZLEAD unconference. We ran a wee competition to choose a newbie HR practitioner or student to take that place. 

We had two fantastic entries!

Louise did this creative and passionate video on vision and HR. I don't know about you, but I get warm fuzzes seeing young HR practitioners grasping the powerful impact that HR practitioners can make on the business. 

Gemma did this blog post so eloquent that I got a little teary. Seriously! It's been a long week and I'm a sook. Read the last paragraph and tell me you didn't get a little hiccupy.  

The criteria for the competition was simply to convey passion for the topic. That is, passion for HR contributing to businesses coping with change. 

But I couldn't choose between both these entries so I decided not to choose - why not! The second place will be pledged by NZLEAD. 

Congratulations Gemma and Louise, you both have a place at the unconference..... BUT....

The unconference going ahead is reliant on reaching the funding target. So, please tell your friends and colleagues. Help us reach the funding target so that awesome HR peeps like Gemma and Louise can start #unfurlinghr.. 

I haven't been to an unconference before but I'm excited about the opportunity to take part in our very own HR Unconference in New Zealand.  If you are unsure what they are all about, here are some thoughts from my own reading and research.

So first of all what can we expect? Expect the unexpected I would say. If you are tired of attending expensive conferences and being talked at by so-called experts, then this is for you. If you are expecting presentations and the traditional Powerpoint slides, think again.

The unconference concept is simple. There is little structure, the agenda is largely set by the participants on the day and the format encourages active participation for each session. 

I have always thought that #NZLead would lend itself perfectly to an unconference format. #NZLead started life as a weekly Twitter chat amongst interested HR professionals and I see an unconference as an extended "in real life" #NZLead tweet chat.  

Sessions (or tracks as they are known) take the form of facilitated discussions. There will likely be several running simultaneously and, as a participant, you will be free to move between tracks as you see fit. If you are bored of one, or not getting much out of it, you move on. No one minds.

Discussions lead on to new tracks, and anyone can take control of or start a new track.  Like all good things, you get out as a participant what you put in.  It's all about the discussion and collaboration, not about being talked at. 

The theme of the day is Unfurling a New Human Resources Profession. I hope this will be a wide ranging discussion about what’s good and bad about HR, where and how we need to develop as professionals, how that should be recognised, the future competencies we will require alongside expected changes to how, where and when people work, the impact on organisations and their cultures.

For those of you attending the HR Game Changer conference in September, I am sure there will be many themes emerging that will benefit from further detailed discussion.

And of course all this talking makes networking a breeze. In fact, you might find some of the best discussions happen outside of the actual tracks themselves.

So if that sounds like fun, make a pledge and help get the HR Unconference off the ground.    

Richard is the HR Director, Australasia at FNZ 

It's really hard to explain what an unconference is, or even what the NZLEAD unconference is, without taking away what it is. That is, an opportunity for you to bring what you want to get out of it, use it as a forum to discuss, build and play with your challenges and ideas, develop yourself, develop your role and help in developing the profession as a whole. 

But it's such a new thing within the NZ HR profession, that getting your head around it is a little challenging. It is exciting that it's such an innovative thing here though!

I've dug out a couple of videos to help explain it. 

The first one is a quick overview. And this one, although a little naff, goes into a lot more detail. 

Please do tweet me at @sterling_amanda or connect with me on LinkedIn if you have any questions whatsoever :-) 

Ian Pettigrew (@kingfishercoach) from the UK has pledged as an attendee. At first we were really excited that he might be coming downunder but it's a litlte bit far to fly!

So he's donating the place to someone deserving, and what better than to offer it to an HR student or someone just starting out in the profession.  This is a fabulous opportunity to meet and mingle with some thought leading HR practitioners, find out more about real-life HR experience and contribute to the HR practice of some great companies. 

If you'd like to take this place at the NZLEAD unconference then all you need to do is tell us what you believe HR, Recruitment, Learning and Development (or any other HR type profession) can contribute to businesses coping with change. 

You can share this with us by blog, video or any other social tool. Tag it with with #unfurlinghr & #nzlead and mention Amanda (@sterling_Amanda). We also don't mind if you want to share it in a more traditional way, write it up and email it to [email protected]

We'll decide who gets the place on the 15th August 2014. The criteria is, quite simply, how much passion you convey. There is no right or wrong answer, only what you believe. 

Note: your place is confirmed when the campaign reaches its target. So tell your friends to get behind it too!