I learned new things on business strategy (you can find some notes on the conference here), and took some photos:

(see in full-screen)

Videos

These are some clips I’ve made at the event, and at the end of this blog post, you’ll also see some pictures. Most of the clips are in English, some of them are in Romanian:
a. (in Romanian) Csaba GERGELY – official opening;
b. (in English) Paul EVANS – Managing the Downturn with the Upturn in Mind – Working through the Dualities of Talent Management, part 1;
c. (in English) Paul EVANS – Managing the Downturn with the Upturn in Mind – Working through the Dualities of Talent Management, part 2;
d. (in Romanian) Daniel ENESCU – Presenting the results of the strategic partnership survey 2009;
e. (in English) Csaba GERGELY, Daniel ENESCU, Paul EVANS, Gauthier van WEDDINGEN, Cornelia COMAN, Wargha ENAYATI – HR Club – Panel session with general managers part I;
f. (both in English and Romanian) Csaba GERGELY, Daniel ENESCU, Gauthier van WEDDINGEN, Cornelia COMAN, Wargha ENAYATI – HR Club – Panel session with general managers part II;
g. (in English) Gyorgy BOGEL – Rewriting the invisible contract – HR in the 21st Century;
h. (in English) Harry MEINTASSIS – Towards the second wave of transformation – Making Great Resilient Leaders;
i. (in English) William PHILLIPS – Managing tomorrow’s people. The future of work;
Here are some personal notes I made at the event.

Paul EVANS – Managing the Downturn with the Upturn in Mind – Working through the Dualities of Talent Management

1. Recommended reading: Jim COLLINS – “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t“;
2. What to do when things get complex?
a. Simplify, simplify, simplify;
b. Take things back to basic fundamental principles (something like common sense);
So, rather than simplify, you can develop simple procedures that help you get through;
3. Never tell people what to do;
4. Expertise traps you – you have a tendency to tell people what to do;
5. Job rotation is good, people learn how to start things off;
6. Move people out of their comfort zone, but avoid job rotation;
7. Nothing remains challenging forever;
8. Build a change matrix development within the job;
9. Compare:
- Being a business partner gets you promoted; (so this is a great optional thing to have);
- Not knowing the HR basics gets you fired; (so this is a mere filter);
10. Superior performance always comes from being different;
11. You should invent locally and act globally (spread ideas across);
12. In Romania there’s a lot of creativity in Romanian managers;
13. Harnessing conflicts is the key to creativity.

Daniel ENESCU – Romanian Human Resources Development Strategy

1. We used the snowball method – after you fill in the data, can you recommend us to other persons?
2. In the future, both targeting results and personal credibility will be more important.

Dr. Gyorgy BOGEL – Rewriting the invisible contract – HR in the 21st Century

Bad things about people at 20s-30s years of age:
1. They are dumber than their parents;
2. They are screenagers – committed to TVs and PCs;
3. No shame, no respect for privacy;
4. They steal;
5. Aggressive & violent? Sure;
6. No work ethics;
7. Narcissistic;
8. They want everything & they want it now;

Positive things about people at 20s-30s years of age:
1. Freedom in everything;
2. Love to customize & personalize;
3. Critical, scrutinize everything, demand more;
4. Search for corporate integrity and openness;
5. They want entertainment and play in work environment;
6. They like to collaborate;
7. Look for speed;
8. Innovative, try new gadgets;

Harry MEINTASSIS – Towards the second wave of transformation – Making Great Resilient Leaders

There’s a big gap on what the Romanian leaders want to be and the position they have in reality.

Dr. Gyorgy BOGEL – CEO’s strategic partner or Outsourced Service Provider?

1. MBO means “Management By Objectives”;
2. The really important things should be kept within a company, rather than outsourced;
3. Outsourcing as a process is very important to Romania (you are competitive);
4. The number of outsourcing activities is growing;
5. Outsourcing is a must;
6. Statistically, it is very risky to be a middle manager, you should move very fast to the top;
7. A career as an expert may be safer than one as a manager;

What did I discover at the conference?

1. I like workshops; Uuu, workshops are great; Lots of interactivity (unlike a seminar, which can also have the format of a conference addressed to a smaller audience), lots of things to learn and, boy-oh-boy, things to practice;
2. I like case studies, things to see from a personal perspective – “I’ve done this and that, I’ve got, as a result, that and that”;

About the conferences

1. The conference had good involvement of the audience;
2. The content was fine, lots of things to learn;

About panel discussions

1. Unfortunately, it’s like the Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder of events – I couldn’t pay attention to anything; Hard to follow, lots of switching; The discussions involved lots of knowledge, there was no main theme, the audience was not involved;
2. What I would love in a panel discussion?
a. A case study from each speaker – “I’ve done this, and got these results”; These are things to learn and build upon;
b. A lot of questions from the audience;
c. A list of best practices – you should do this, while you should also avoid doing that;

About the workshops

1. I would prefer a workshop not to have any presentation, but to be more similar to a game – make it as business professional as you like it, but don’t get into “I say this, you all should listen to me, don’t do anything while I speak”;
2. I would prefer team work & collaboration in a workshop;
3. Great to have – practical things to learn;
4. I’d also like to see some case studies;

What did I like about the event organization?

+ There were some ping pong small balls given to participants, quite funny;
+ Each speaker received a present;
+ The food was great;
+ HR Club did some CSR activities (also read this blog post): Some students at HR Club’s summer school took part to the event for free;
+ There were a lot of organizing personnel people at the reception desk;
+ The speakers received little to no stress from the organizers – if you wish to say this, you free to say it; If you’re a bit late, it’s fine;
+ The agenda was fine;
+ Lots of time scheduled for networking; (it’s one of the main reasons people come to conferences)
+ (CSR? Just being nice?) One speaker received a surprise birthday cake;
+ The light color itself was nice to the eyes;
+ The location was fine;
+ Although banners were present, there were not that much obtrusive;
+ There were plenty of drinks, even at the tables;
+ Although there were lots of participants, the place was not too crowded;
+ I could hear well;
+ The speakers came from different sources;
+ Having panels prior to the workshops was great; I was able to make a more informed decision;
+ (I should know, given the time at which I put this follow up public) The follow-up of the event was great – there was a form feed-back, I got a list with all the participants, there were some pictures, and, finally, all the presentations were available in PDF format; Great follow-up!

What would I do better?

- For the future events, the agenda and time schedule may a bit more enforced;
- A lot of movement on the curtains;
- At some times the light came from different sources, it was tiring for the eyes;
- Some presentations had interruptions, a rehearsal of the presentation would have been better;
- The profile of the participants was not that different from that of the previous events; A lot of the same people came; (which is good, considering that they liked the event, but I would prefer to see new faces)
- Although I understand the need for such a thing, the fact that in the morning one had to wait outside, before all was prepared, was not that great;
- Out of the three workshops presented, I wasn’t really attracted to any;
- It would have been better if the titles of the workshops were presented prior than during the workshops themselves;
- For me personally, I would have loved to know prior to the event what did these words mean: plenary session, panel session;
- The title of the conference:
“Conference of strategic partnership with the business environment”
a. Has these faults – hard to understand and not really that exciting and intriguing;
b. Is missing something; In Mathematics you can’t say “5%”, you have to say “5% out of something”; Likewise, your title shouldn’t be “partnership with the business environment”, but should rather be “partnership of something with the business environment”;
- I find it a bit funny: “Annual partners of HR Club 2009″; I think that if they’re annual, the year 2009 is not needed; Also, are they annual partners or for 2009 only?

Some hints for the future

a. I (see above) prefer a workshop to any other type of event; Put workshops, rather than other types of meetings;
b. I would have loved to see a live web cast with the conference; (it can be paid, not necessarily free)
c. There was a lot of effort (and when I say “a lot”, I mean “a lot”) for a one-day event; One thought to consider – having an event like this for more days, different timeframes, different locations? I personally prefer a series of less-than-perfect events to a one-time perfect event.

Conclusions?

This is yet another best-management-I’ve-ever-seen conference organized (how can this be any different?) by HR Club. Congratulations!

Pictures

Finally, some photos I made that day:

A. Radiography of the pharmaceutical market in 2009

1. “Medicine with human use in Romania – a law perspective” – Robert ANCUCEANU, General Director of the National Medicines Agency (Agentia Nationala a Medicamentului – ANM) (download PPT)
- While Wikipedia has a different approach on the “Chinese word for crisis” (basically saying that it’s most of the time misquoted), Robert ANCUCEANU quoted a thing also said wrongly by president John F. KENNEDY, who said: “When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one represents danger and one represents opportunity.”;

2. “Health status of the pharmaceutical market to the crisis impact” – Petru CRACIUN, General Director, Cegedim (download PPT)

- There is no try to signal from other players that “low price” implies “poor quality”;
- The market went down with a 2.5% in volume, but in the same time the market rose with 8% in value;
- The Over-the-counter (OTC) medicines market fell in volume, and had a slight increase in value (EUR);
- For the drug stores there will be a pressure on liquidities in the following years;
- Hospitals have a financing and credits problem;
- A lot of profit will be made by distributing products;

3. “Medicine distribution from producer to the drug store. Frame of laws and non-competing behavior” – Raluca VASILACHE, Associate lawyer, Tuca Zbarcea & Asociatii (download PPT)

- From a fixed exchange rate, each of the two parties involved in the money exchange lose some money;
- In a cartel, the competition meets and establishes a minimal level, a certain margin, they split the market between each other or they have unfair auctions;
- It takes 5 years for such a bad action to lose its validity;
- Any practices like these are obviously forbidden;
- There are some grey lists – imposing or recommending maximum prices;

4. “Sales force management” – Nicolae IORDACHE IORDACHE, Independent Consultant (download PPT)

- In the ’80s and ’90s a lot of emphasis was put on medicines for treating heart diseases, ulcers, infections; After this time passed, those diseases offer little advantage for growth;
- In the recent times, more emphasis was put on tobacco, hair loss, erection – helping others living a better life;
- Nowadays a lot of emphasis is put on rare but grave diseases – these are niche medicines, very expensive;
- The blockbusters are influenced by the generic sector;
- Industries in China and India determined price reduction of 50% from one year to another;
- Estimate: prices for medicines will fall;
- In Romania the crisis mentality is a standard; Nothing’s new on this side;
- Something to take home: in a few decades, we’ll all be dead; You should learn something from the crisis;
What’s to be done?
a. Returning to the clients;
b. Do the boring stuff well: processes, performance management, talent development, team work, passion for work, responsible management, discovering and keeping values;
c. Develop the companies;

B. Crisis versus development opportunities

1. “Can the crisis change the pharmaceutical industry in Romania?” – Adrian LAKATOS, President, AL Pharma Consulting (download PPT)

- The market has a lot of rulings in place;
- The dependency to political decisions leads to instability;
- There is a dependency to system financing;

2. “From current crisis challenges to future opportunities” – Monica CRACIUN, People & Organization Manager, Expand Health

- There are both opportunities and challenges in any crisis;
- Focusing on opportunities can yield better results;

3. “Success recipe: protect your client from the crisis” – Andreea IONESCU, Marketing Retail Director, A&D Pharma (Sensiblu)

- People need to connect to real examples;
- If you need a sudden change, you have to take into account: Where are the hypotheses you start with and How do you do it;
- Sensiblu is recognized as trust in counseling and recommendation;
- Sensiblu has 94% brand awareness;
- Clients of Sensiblu have 1.4M fidelity cards;
- They did a complete redrawing of the shopping experience (they can differentiate with that);
- Stop talking about the product, talk about the lifestyle – “You will not get sicker anymore”, “You should live a healthy life”;
- You can’t go wrong with a client-focused strategy;

4. “Adapting the organizational branding process during the economic crisis” – Marius URSACHE, Chief Creative Officer, Grapefruit (download PDF)

- Grapefruit worked for brands such as Banca Transilvania, Dacia, e-On, NNDKP, OTP Bank, Petrom, Prigat, Renault;
- Brand is what the client says and thinks about you;
- You should invest in leadership;
- A good idea is to recruit good people at reasonable prices;
- Charles DARWIN was quoted to have said “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” I found an interesting article on this quote on Cosmos Magazine, which basically says that this famous quote of Darwin is not his; This is the second misquote for the day;

______________
Bottom line: Quite a nice conference, good speakers, nice location; I’d try to involve the audience a bit more, I felt a certain distance between the speaker and the audience, and perhaps a little bit more follow-up, like the previous events had;

Warning: long post ahead.

How can I write about a careful planned event without giving all the details? Find out my solution, divided this way:
1. Why am I biased when I make this evaluation?
2. A personal case study: how was the conference for me?
3. Analysis of a conference in quite a few questions:

a. How were the speakers?
b. What speakers I like best?
c. How was networking (a personal case study)?
d. How was the timing of schedule?
e. How was the food?
f. How was the location?
g. How were the banners?
h. What have I learned?
i. How were the Marriott employees?
j. How was the web site of the conference?
k. How were the materials given at the conference?
l. How were the speakers thanked for?
m. How was the technical part?
n. How were the helping people of HR Club?
o. How was the timing of the conference as two days in the year?
p. How was the audience?
q. How was Corporate Social Responsibility?
r. How was the main organizer of the event, Carmen CUCUL?

Note: “HR” means “Human Resources”.

1. Why am I biased when I make this evaluation?
The reasons for me to be biased when making this evaluation include:
a. For quite a few years, I’ve been a colleague in LEADERS Romania with the current Executive Director of HR Club, Carmen CUCUL; Actually, when I first visited LEADERS Romania for the initial interview, Carmen CUCUL was just being interviewed by LEADERS’ CEO; And we were colleagues in LEADERS for quite a few years and worked on projects; For me, it was a fun experience
b. I was part of the HR Club Summer School of 2008 and made a few friends (from my part) with participants and organizers;
c. In the day of the evaluation I was in a very tiring state of mind: I’ve only slept 5 hours the night before and I felt a bit dizzy; While this may sound awkward, this might also have helped me notice things differently in a good way; I’m much more attentive to details in such states of mind;
d. I helped organizing the conference, so it was a little bit of personal involvement in there (how can I say about my work not being perfect? I actually can, but I may be biased when saying it was so nice).

2. A personal case study: how was the conference for me?
Exactly three weeks prior to the conference, I contact the one person I knew best in HR Club: Carmen CUCUL. My e-mail contained an offer (to help), and a request (to participate to the conference). Carmen CUCUL was very gallant, and allowed me to help them out.

Then a nice thing happens: HR Club gave 5 invitations to prior generations of graduates of HR Club Summer School. I’ve been a member of a Summer School in 2008. The value of the classes was high (very good speakers, great locations), while the cost for the participants was low (actually it was free for those to be admitted). And now, in a time of crisis, HR Club does a beautiful thing and invites 5 HR Club Summer School participants to join a great event for free. Now that’s a very good Corporate Social Responsibility and all done in silence (no advertisment for this).

Time passes. Three days prior to the conference, I send another email to get an update on how can I help. I’m informed by Alexandra Aignatoaie, Project Manager within HR Club, when and how I should come and help them out.

Time passes again. It’s 11th of March, the end of the first day of the seminars, and the evening prior to the conference. It’s 6 PM sharp and I’m at Marriott to help the girls (from HR Club and external people) organizing the room. Basically, I helped caring about two hundred bags from the middle of a large room to the margins. This took about one and a half hours. There were quite a few people (girls, actually) helping organizing the thing, and everyone was helping. At the end of the session (after leaving a bit earlier to go see a movie) I was informed I should be there tomorrow at 6:30 – 7:00 AM.

Due to some unexpected events in that evening (such as a movie with a friend and a discussion with a client of mine), by midnight I was still awake. The next day, at 5:20 AM I was up & running, and at 6:30 AM I was, once again, at Marriott.

Who do you expect was, in the day of the event, at 6:30 AM, at the Marriott hotel? All of the HR Club members involved in the project and a few outside people (more to come in a few dozens of minutes). I was really impressed of the effort required to be at the hotel both in the evening prior to the event and in the morning. For me, sleeping 5 hours that night meant sleeping 12 hours the next day. For the organizers, it was somehow natural.

I helped out the conference a bit more (you may notice the emphasis I put on my own work): arranging some banners, giving some not-asked-for-but-still-welcome pieces of advice. From about 8 AM to 8:30 AM I helped welcoming the guests, and then I went to buy some stuff for the organizers (I even negotiated the price and got 20% off). From 9 AM, when I was back from the city, until 9:30 AM I went outside the hotel to fix a personal thing, then all day I’ve been at the event. Now you know the conference background. Here comes the great stuff: Analysis of a conference via some questions.

3. Analysis of a conference in quite a few questions:
a. How were the speakers?
First of all, let me tell you how a typical conference goes: you get to see some speakers live.

There are two options with speakers at a conference: you either know them (you’ve seen them before) or you don’t (oh, goodies!, new faces). As you can imagine, it’s very good to have fresh people at a conference.

That’s a first classification. Another classification I make is regarding the type of speech they hold. Some speakers try to be fairly interesting, they prepare a speech, they do a bit of a research, while other speakers come and speak about their company (sometimes this thing is masked as a “Case study”, which is quite a beautiful name for blunt self-advertising).

Yet another classification from my part is the degree in which the person can keep you attentive. This is easy to be done by free speech, flexing the voice, involving the public, having great body language and other things that make great orators great. Oh yes, and making things funny and laughable does help a lot. How do organizers get into this picture? The organizers have either seen the speakers prior to the conference (this means there’s a high chance of the participants knowing the conference), or they haven’t seen them before (which means they may be poor speakers).

As you can imagine, the best type of speaker is that who you haven’t met before, a speaker that doesn’t speak about its company to try and “sell” it to you, and finally a person that can make you attentive while they speak (as said, laughing is great for this).

Now getting back to the HR Club’s Strategy Conference in Human Resources, I’ll tell you how they made a great success out of these requirements and how they can improve.

First of all, let’s have a look at the speakers in the panel:

• Dr. Lisbeth CLAUS, Ph.D., SPHR, GPHR, Professor of Global HR, Willamette University, USA;
• Anca Georgescu ALADGEM, Chief Human Resources Officer, Romtelecom;
• Brent W. MATTSON, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Learning & Development Executive, Enterprise Learning & Talent Management, Bank of America;
• Dave ULRICH, Partner and co-founder The RBL Group and Professor of Business – Ross School of Business, University of Michigan;
• Radu PANAIT, HR Vice-President, Ursus Breweries Romania.

There are just two persons from Romania in that list. The conference had three parts:
a. First half in the morning (various speakers, half of them from Romania);
b. Second half in the morning and first half in the afternoon (Dave Ulrich);
c. Second half in the afternoon (one Romanian speaker and two foreign persons).

As you can imagine, I’ve only seen before this conference the moderator (Csaba GERGELY, president of HR Club). That’s it. All of the non-Romanian people were unknown even by name. So, the very first good thing about the HR Club organization was picking up people from other countries (sure way to make sure they are not known).

That was point one. Point two: Choosing people from other countries was also good for the self-promotion part. While the Willamette University, Bank of America, Ross School of Business, Willamette University may be well known in the US, speaking about them in Romania is quite futile. The speakers had no incentive to self-promote their companies and institutions, their target audience was really not interested. You genuinely had to speak about something else about your company (also, some of these companies and institutions may be well unheard of in Romania).

Another great trick? In the very first part of the day, when there were a few Romanians speaking, the moderator gave them the following task: answer to this question. There was no presentation involved, each speaker had to answer the questions. How can I, a Romanian speaker, promote my company when I have to answer a specific question? It’s quite tricky. Great solution by HR Club.

Yet another trick? In the first half of the morning they’ve brought the speakers to answer questions. In the second half of the afternoon, all of the US-based speakers held a presentation. They’ve used the speakers quite a lot, I can say. Since they’re already there, why not use the maximum potential? Good stuff!

The thing on which HR Club did poorly was picking boring speakers. How can you tell, prior to the conference, if the speaker is boring or not?

i. See him live (harder for those in the US, I’d say);
ii. Hear them talking on a subject on the phone for 5 minutes (it is disturbing to tell them in-their-face that they are being monitored for speaking fine, and if they don’t speak fine they won’t get picked, but it is one solution; you also can’t see body language on the phone);
iii. Find other people’s opinion on them (this might be people who attended their conferences and posted on a blog or forum, like I do it in here).

This is one point where HR Club didn’t do so well. Sure, this is only a one out of three requirement, and I must say that finding an unknown speaker, who won’t talk about his own company and won’t bore you. And repeat this procedure for all the speakers. Two out of three is fine enough.

b. What speakers I like best?
i. Dave ULRICH gave me the best insights. It made me think on different thing, and learned a few things. In the 12th of March 2009 I had two opportunities: either to attend a conference by LEADERS organization with Jim BAGNOLA, or to see the HR Club conference. In any given day, I’d go to see Jim BAGNOLA. Great speaker, best trainer I’ve ever seen (I’ll have a blog post on him sometimes in the following months I hope). He’s just perfect. On this blog I’ve also written about Nigel RISNER (I knew him at yet another HR Club conference; he was the last speaker of the day, not that many people in the room; You can see that for the 2009 event, HR Club put Dave ULRICH right in the middle – not the first, not the last; They do learn!). Nigel RISNER was speaker also, he and Jim BAGNOLA were great choices for a conference day. But the thing is, I prefer seeing a less-than-perfect speaker talking to me, rather than just see the perfect speaker again and again. Sure, in a normal day I’d go see Jim BAGNOLA and Nigel RISNER. But in that very special day of 12th of March, I’d love to see Dave ULRICH more than anyone else. David ULRICH knew all the tricks in the book. He knew he should listen, he knew he should make fun of things (even of himself), he was fast to reply, he used some basic tipically affirmations (“that’s a great question”), he had good body language, he engaged the room, he put a lot of questions, he repeated thing, he made pauses after saying something to be remembered. This blog post is not about what he didn’t do good. Enough to say that although he knew all these things, the end result was not as good. But, at the end of the day, it was more useful for me to understand why he didn’t do good (and I won’t tell you that), than to see yet another perfect seminar by Jim BAGNOLA, or a provocative workshop with Nigel RISNER. I learned a lot of things from faults, more than from (previously seen) perfect behavior. And he had a good enaging spirit, kept me awake (very important) the whole day. Not bad, quite a good speaker all-in-all, with all his faults.

ii. Florin TALPES was another speaker at the conference. He was only present in the first half of the morning. Very smart, good answers, logical and lovely to hear. His strong point? Analytical skills. Great ideas to learn from him.

iii. But the speaker I liked most at this conference wasn’t present with his name in any of the speakers’ lists. He was serious, no joke when he held his speech. He had a less-than-one-minute speech, which he started with “I am not a HR person”. In that one minute, he made two affirmations which made my mouth drop:
a. (approximate understanding by me) We will launch a HR Software solution for the US market;
b. (approximate understanding by me) Within companies with a turnover of a range from millions to billions USD, we wish to hire CEOs and CFOs. All of these positions come with no special MBA required.

The affirmations (or at least how I understood) were made by Eric KISH (VP Retail The Rompetrol Group). It made me wish to include him on this blog with a dedicated blog post.

What have I learned from Eric KISH? In his one minute of speaking it made me understand that the MBA has some value (he said exactly the opposite thing, but, nevertheless, it made me wonder).

c. How was networking (a personal case study)?
When I came into the conference room at 9:30 the conference already begun. Most of the seats were taken. I waited for the speaker to end his presentation, and while presenting the next speaker I went at the very first table in the room. At that table I knew two persons, and I previously spoke with another. There were three other persons at the table. With two of them I had a talk by the end of the conference, and the other one suggested that I should speak for the whole group when requested so in some sort of a game.

When I was in the Summer School at HR Club, I had three colleagues in a mini-group, other than the whole group of participants. All of my colleagues in the mini group were there, plus another one from that promotion (my group was very engaged, it seems).

As you might expect, I talked with other people at the conference.

The best place for networking was a place I’d hate to be in any other circumstance: the smoking place. In Marriott hotel there was a special room dedicated to smoking. Good connections made in there, it’s easier to speak with a person in there.

The schedule for pauses was kept tightly, so there was plenty of room for networking.

d. How was the timing of schedule?
I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite monitor this. I was late from the beginning, and I didn’t quite care about the other points in the program. I can say that the schedule wasn’t followed to the last minute, but the time for breaks was followed, and everything else was thus fine by me.

Good learning experience meant I cared less about timing.

e. How was the food?
In general, at a conference you get to see this kind of food arranging: a wider or smaller group of foods, with a finite quantity. In the first 15-30 minutes of serving the food, the best foods are over, and the people coming late get to eat the remaining (not-so-good food).

Here comes a great solution from HR Club: there was a reasonable amount of variety of foods (pasta, veggies, potatoes, fish, chicken). All these 5 (or around so) foods were doubled: each side of the table contained these exact foods. You may think that the fish and chicken ended first and the problem was not solved. Well, not quite. The food was replaced by the Marriott personnel (I saw this myself), and 40 minutes after initial serving, you could still have the same food. The sweets and cookies were varied and at the same time a lot. Plenty of sweets to choose from, great quality.

All day the were: three types of ice tea, coffee (and of course accessories like milk and sugar), and three types of Pepsi-brand drinks (Mirinda, two types of Pepsi, 7UP), two kinds of water (whatever that may mean – still and carbonated).

In the first break of the day and in the very morning you could also have some three kinds of croissant (this is Marriott-specific and in my opinion it is the worst food for the whole day, I didn’t like it at all).

But all-in-all good food, good drinks, and not-really-that-bad croissants.

f. How was the location?
Well, it’s Marriott. I’ve worked for almost one and a half year at a company 5 minutes away from Marriott and I can say it’s quite easy to get there by any means (with the caution that the automobile and bus traffic in the morning can be a problem in Bucharest). But considering it’s a 15 minutes walk by foot from the subway (and my-oh-my, it’s passing right from a nearby park), it’s a fairly well chosen location.

The size of the conference room was enormous, not too many locations in Bucharest can accommodate more than 200 people. Go Marriott!

Oh, and the speakers’ positioning was great. The room was a rectangle. You had two options: putting the speakers at the middle of the very long or of the very short side of the rectangle. HR Club chose well. The speakers were placed at the middle of the long rectangle, I think it’s the best solution. Go HR Club, too!

g. How were the banners?
If I hadn’t help organized the event, I wouldn’t even have noticed this aspect. At one time, when I was outside the room I had nothing to do and I’ve read some things on a banner. I also saw, during the conference, the main banner of HR Club, with all the sponsors and partners. And the massage-giving team was hidden by a banner and a flower (I knew this from the morning). That was it. I never noticed any of the other banners.

I’d say that the banners were zero-obtursive to the participants at the conference: besides the main banner behind the speakers, during the conference my eyes were free to watch everything. Very warm and cool atmosphere. And while outside, I was generally too busy talking to people, rather to watch a banner.

h. What have I learned?
First of all, I learned, from a person giving me a delicate 10-15 minutes massage (even at the fingers), that I have no obvious back problem. That’s useful for you to know, wouldn’t you agree?

The conference also made me realize I have to make my SEO blog much faster.

I’ve also learned that a good question to help understand women is: “How are you feeling today?”. Ladies will feel they are understood.

For a more serious approach to what I’ve learned on HR strategy, see this (summarized, I promise!) blog post of mine: What have I learned at the Strategy Conference in Human Resources in the spring of 2009?.

i. How were the Marriott employees?
I had these four experiences:
a. After a night of a 5 hours sleep, in the morning, I saw a Marriott employee putting a sign on the door saying details about the conference; I was very intrigued (my mind always is after such a night) about how does this work; And my “be reasonable, act cool” pattern of thinking is very sound asleep, I opened the thing holding the paper; Naturally, the piece of paper with conference details fell on the floor and I tried to put it back; The Marriott employee saw this and, with a smile on her face, offered to help me; So, it went very Ok; That person always smiled that day and helped us out; Great employee!
b. I go to one waitress: “Where is the post office?”, I ask; “I don’t know”, she says; If you were expecting a follow-up to this, well, there wasn’t any; She just didn’t know; But, I might add, she could have helped me find out in other ways (asking, phoning, giving me directions); Well, she could;
c. I go to another waitress (I never learn): “Where is the post office?”, I ask (if you wonder how come, after working one and a half years in the area, I didn’t know where the Post office was, well, it’s memory issue, doubled by, you’re right!, lack of sleep); “Right across the street”, she says; “I know that there’s a Romtelecom office”, I insist, “is there a post office there too?”; “I don’t know, ask the doorman”; Now, if she didn’t know, why did she answer in the first place? I went there and there was no postal office, just Romtelecom;
d. I go to a helping young man from Marriott; “Can you help us put a sign at the entrance of Marriott, so that the people know where the conference is held?”, I ask; “Well, there’s a list of events in the lobby, and the rooms have clear signs”, he said in a not-that-happy voice; So much for help;

All-in-all I was amazed by the always smiling Marriott employee, a great person. But the overall attitude of Marriott persons was not great.

j. How was the web site of the conference?
You can see it right here: http://strategyconference.hr-club.ro/

Sure, my SEO eyes tell me at least the titles of the page should be unique, the black background is not a great choice for reading, the use of a subdomain doesn’t bring that much of a value to HR Club, a microsite or a subfolder was to be preferred, some speakers were not on schedule, after the conference ended there was no news on the web site, no follow-up, the conference specifies two days, but it’s actually a one-day conference preceded by a seminar, the emails on the contact page are not clickable, but it’s a decent website.

It shows all the required information, the sponsors’ banners have working links on them, the information is well structured, and the visual impact is good.

It’s a fairly decent web site.

k. How were the materials given at the conference?
Basically, I got two pens, two writing pads, a program schedule, an English book by the keynote speaker, and … ta-da! a working, great looking, women’s watch. My parents in Navodari couldn’t believe they such give free watches to conferences (my father was in Bucharest these days, he went home today).

Let’s just say that at the end of the day no one at my table left its bag with goodies at the table.

l. How were the speakers thanked for?
This is special. Besides Csaba GERGELY encouraging people to applaud whenever necessary, each speaker got a cute prize and a diploma. The women speakers got a very-well-picked-at-a-great-negotiated-price (so I’ve been told) bouquet of flowers.

I have yet to see such things at a conference. Sure, some speakers get paid (while others compensate by promoting their business), but this atmosphere was lovely and cute, in such a way that I’ve never seen speakers treated more nicely than at this conference.

m. How was the technical part?
The HR Club’s little helpers made the “get this microphone here” action very pleasant. There were two projectors, so you could see the presentation from both sides of the large conference room. There was a movie by HR Club that went smoothly, while the presentations went fine. All quiet on the technical front.

n. How were the helping people of HR Club?
At the reception desk there was literally an army of people welcoming guests. At most of the time, in the morning, there were 3 people who only gave the participants the instructions, one writing badges for people not on the list, and from time to time there were HR Club members checking things out and helping.

All day there was always someone at the reception desk and the microphones were flying during the conference.

Oh, a bonus: when the helping people asked people to join the conference, they were all smiling, put little pressure, and somehow they manage not to force things. It all went natural, I never felt that if I will be a bit late, this will be very bad. But since everyone went into the rooms, no real pushing was necessary. A very gentle way to handle the situation, I can say.

Regarding my personal experience as an organizer, the HR Club persons listened to all my surely-not-that-good advices. The helping people were smarter than that, and listened to none. This might also be due to my poorly way of explaining things.

o. How was the timing of the conference as two days in the year?
Well, they’ve put in the same day with a conference with Jim BAGNOLA, so it must have been bad. Kidding, an event like this is planned months ahead, you can’t tell what other events may be. As a positive side, in that evening there was a MBAs, graduate, and post-graduate education fair at the Intercontinental Hotel (if only HR Club announced the participants about this event). But if you were informed you had a pleasant option for the evening.

Coming back to the strategy conference, spring (alongside with autumn) is a typical period of time for conferences, it came right in a week after the Woman’s day on 8th of March, so bosses could have felt generous with women employees leaving for a day. (if they bring a watch in return)

p. How was the audience?
They laughed and they interacted pretty Ok. I must say I expected much more interactions, more questions, more vivid implications, but all-in-all it was a decent interaction for a typical group of persons. I had more expectations from a group of HR people, but that’s life.

q. How was Corporate Social Responsibility?
HR Club allowed five members of two HR Summer School to come at the conference. I couldn’t have done it any better.

r. How was the main organizer of the event, Carmen CUCUL?
Let’s say it’s 8 AM, and you’re already at Marriott way before 6:30 AM. You need to check the sound system. And check it. And still test it until everything is fine. At 8 AM people start arriving at the conference. And they come. And they come. And Carmen CUCUL has two options: letting people wait outside the room, in the lobby, or letting them in. And then she does a beautiful thing: she lets them out. The logic? “Instead of letting you in and making you hear bad sounds due to testing the equipment, we prefer to let you wait outside until we solve our problems”. Wonderful thinking, thanks for the tip. Good to know in the future.

In the morning she was worried, she checked things, but she still laughed at my try-to-be-funny-and-didn’t-quite-make-it jokes. At the conference she was always smiling, and helping.

And while I went in the very first row, she sat in the back, to check that everybody’s fine. And she never held a speech, although the main organizer.

Nice people in LEADERS and HR Club, wouldn’t you say?

______________
Bottom line: I’ve never seen an event of similar proportions organized so well. Sure, there were faults, there were things to be done better, but the event organization was great. My congratulations, HR Club!

How do you feel about this blog post? Leave a blog comment below. I’m more than happy to reply.

Still, these are the things I noted as important:
1. (a very well arrived reminder) In getting business solutions, you should first know how to listen to the other party;
2. How to make someone change its actions (whatever that may mean):

a. Why doens’t that person change? (ask)
b. How can you involve that person to wish, for herself to change?

3. The best example leadership on Earth: building the pyramids;
4. In a time of crisis, HR should take care of:

a. Reducing costs (including salaries);
b. Reducing personnel;

in a responsible manner;
5. It’s still not too late to take proactive measures regarding the crisis;
6. Profit is King, cash is King-Kong;
7. You can have the qualities of a leader, but still not have leadership (no followers);
8. Rather than bluntly reducing one specific thing with X percent, you should optimize a process, you can get better results in such a way (analyze procedures, and work on them; the price cuts may have no relation with the current performance of a process; look carefully at the process and work on that);
9. If you have a bad working person in an organization, it’s better both for your company (for obvious reasons – reduce losses) and for him to leave the company earlier; Why is it better for him? Simple: if he will leave 6 months later, in a full-manifesting crisis, he will be unprepared, and it will be hugely difficult for him to get a job at that time; Until then, he can prepare; Help him get a better job in a not-so-bad time by firing him earlier;
10. HR people should be 25% of their time on the field, talking to people;
11. Think at any task in three areas: from a tactic => to a strategy => to a context; e.g.: I can do a training (that’s a tactic), which will make the team reach it’s objectives better (that’s a strategy), which in turn will help the company and industry perform better (context);
12. In five years’ time, 80% of what HR people do today will no longer be doing; Learn to adapt.

Some of the speakers saying these were the following:

• Dr. Lisbeth CLAUS, Ph.D., SPHR, GPHR, Professor of Global HR, Willamette University, USA;
• Anca Georgescu ALADGEM, Chief Human Resources Officer, Romtelecom;
• Brent W. MATTSON, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Learning & Development Executive, Enterprise Learning & Talent Management, Bank of America;
• Dave ULRICH, Partner and co-founder The RBL Group and Professor of Business – Ross School of Business, University of Michigan;
• Radu PANAIT, HR Vice-President, Ursus Breweries Romania.

I was late at the very first session and I had trouble identifying who said what, and also I may have poorly understood things, so I won’t associate a thing being said with a speaker.

How was the message for you? Did it help you understand HR a bit better? You can leave a comment below.

Tendencies for 2009:
1. The online medium will make the difference in 2009; Currently active media agencies should try going digital;
2. The percentage of Interet usage for advertising will rise in 2009, because, in a time of crisis, the online medium has the highest profit-per-investment ratio;
3. The advertising company of 2009 is radically different than the same company of 1994;
4. We can expect an increase of the current penetration of mobile phone penetration in Romania (it is 123% right now);

Tendencies for the years to come, in 2009 and afterwards:
1. Using a technology called Radio-frequency identification (RFID), in the future it might be possible to interact with the objects around us; The television set, the fridge and my mobile phone might interact in the future to come;
2. The Internet connections will have an even higher penetration in all age groups;
3. The companies will put more and more emphasis on relations, not on selling things;
4. The mobile phones are the platform for communication of the future;
5. The future belongs to the Internet browsers that are integrated with desktop applications;
6. Dialogue with the client (as direct as possible) will bring more sales, but only if it will exist;

What strategies and tactics to use now to adapt to the future:
1. Right now the consumer is like a chicken, and the media agencies are like foxes; Foxes try to eat the chickens (it’s a win-lose situation), but it would be wiser if they coexisted, and we would get from the chicken the eggs to sell them (a win-win situation); You should be friend with your customer;
2. How can you rightly analyze the impact of an YouTube campaign:
a. Did it attract attention?
b. Was it forwarded?
c. Was it copied by others? (have spoofs been made?)
3. You can get very good profits from creating a very good game for your brand or by putting in-game advertising;
4. Monitor an online campaign closely to fully understand its impact;
5. Create experiences pre-sale, during sale, and most importantly: after sale! It’s being reported to be about 7 times more expensive to bring a new client than give up an old relation;
6. Use these five steps for a complete interaction with the client wishing to buy a car:
a. Collect data and have a good communication on sale (collecting data is great for a good communication);
b. After sale: verify the degree of satisfaction and cross-sell another thing (see if the person wants to personalize his car);
c. Cross-sell something to increase the life expectancy of a product (warranty);
d. Examine all of the clients’ objections and have a dialogue on this (at this time it might be angry);
e. Do buy-back & cross-selling on a higher level (sell him a brand new car);
f. Use this: an online clients costs less than an offline client;
g. Use browser cookies and authentification to learn more things about your clients;
h. Try to create a very personalized presence for a visitor of your web site: You know about each of your clients the time of the visit (you can provide a different web site in the night, different ads), its geographical location (provide information about its area), what browser does it use, what resolution has its screen (you can deduce from here that a person with a 22 inch monitor has more revenues); And for the logged-in clients, you have even more information; Use this for a very personal experience!
l. Try to create for the different interests of a client a personalized experience; Out of the 2.000 products on a web site, your visitor is interested in just a few and will only buy one; How to make him choose that? Try creating a wizard, a step-by-step guide, to make him choose wisely.

These were the speakers at the conference. I won’t tie the affirmations above with the speakers below, because I could have poorly understood the message, formulated it badly, or I could have came up with thoughts on my own:

• Alain Heureux, President, IAB Europe;
• Manuela Necula, CEO, Ogilvy Group;
• Mike Stapelfeld, Digital Director, Omnicom Media Group;
• Mihai Pricope, Platform Evangelist, Adobe Romania;
• Julian Smith, Director of Digital, Insight & Research, MEC Interaction;
• Adrian Stanescu, Country Manager, Eyeblaster;
• Dan Virtopeanu, Director General, Voxline;
• Catalin Emilian, Operations Manager, Gemius Research;
• Marius Deak, CEO, Green Pixel;
• Aurora Enghis, Manager, ARBOMobile;
• Gabriel Boaca, Sales Director, Intact Interactive;
• Adrian Alexandrescu, Managing Director & Partner, Interactions;
• Radu Ionut Munteanu, Account Executive, Carnation;
• Marius Pahomi, Interaction Business Development Manager, MEC:Interaction;
• Alex Visa, Managing Partner, Hyperactive.

I hope you find my blog post interesting enough for a small comment.