You may have already seen Gareth Jones’ blog on the announcement that London will be playing host to the first UK HR-focused Unconference. HRzone has attended a few similar events before, most recently TRU Manchester. Despite a large amount of HR practitioners attending these events they are mainly recruitment-centred, so this will be the first unconference especially for human resources professionals.

This event follows on from the massively popular #ConnectingHR tweet-ups which have always been immensely good fun and a great way of meeting up with like-minded individuals.

Jon Ingham, who HRzone regulars will know, and Gareth have teamed up to take the event one step further to a full day ‘unconference’ – a conference with a twist where the participants set the agenda. There is no powerpoint, no keynotes and no restrictions on which or how many sessions you attend.

Jon explains: "The concept of an unconference is very different with the focus being on value added, attendee driven discussions and interventions as opposed to the more traditional, back to back, hour long, one way presentation format you would find in a more traditional event. This format is much better suited for busy professionals who want to get maximum value from a day out of the office.”

The theme of the event is on using social media and a new era of social collaboration for business benefit, but there will be plenty of opportunity for other discussions and contact-making: it’s entirely up to you. I can also reveal that HRzone will be holding a session during the event.

Gareth adds, “The impact of social media and social networking has huge implications for organisations. For many HR professionals, it’s definitely an agenda item, but very few have managed to leverage any advantage from it. Indeed, many still view it with scepticism, which is why we started the ConnectingHR initiative in the first place."

You can start creating your own agenda by visiting the ConnectingHR website and adding your idea to the list, as well as see what others are saying so far about this exciting event.

The duo hope to bring together a wide spectrum of HR practitioners on 21 October at the Spring Centre in Vauxhall, London. Tickets are priced at £65 for the whole event.

Hope to see you there!
 

• For more information and to book tickets please go to http://connectinghr.eventbrite.com