There will be around 7,500 people at the HRTech 2016 conference. Every imaginable kind of person from every imaginable sector and background comes to learn more about HR Technology. There are over 400 vendors, nearly 70 optional sessions, and 8 keynotes/general sessions.
If you are at the conference all four days, there are seven slots that you can use for sessions and seven slots when food and refreshments are served in the expo hall.
You have a very short amount of time to take advantage of a huge amount of opportunity.
With the unstructured time at your disposal, there are three basic things you can do:
- Go to a session and learn something about an HRTech success story
- Visit the Expo Hall and learn about a vendor’s products
- Network with the people you meet at the show
The sessions generally involve either the story of an HR Leader solving a problem using HRTechnology or a generally repeatable principle like how to conduct a demo. Our session guides should help you quickly decide which sessions to select.
Our vendor directory includes categories that match the session guides. There are company descriptions, tag lines, URLs and our categorizations. The directory is easily sortable by column so that you can narrow your search quickly.
Balancing sessions, vendor investigations and conversations is the real trick.
It’s fairly difficult to have a real conversation with a vendor when everyone else is in the Expo hall. It is noisy and confusing. Your best bet, if you are trying to understand a particular vendor or group of vendors is to try to set an appointment in advance for one of the times when everyone else is in a session listening to success stories. That’s when the Expo hall is its quietest. Sessions usually last 60 minutes. You should be able to have three good conversations with different vendors during that time.
Networking is a different story. The more direct and upfront you can be, the more success you will have. Networking at the HRTech conference is the wrong time to let your shy side dominate. Identify the people you want to meet, search tem out and schedule a time for a cup of coffee or a meal. If you were to meet and get to know five or six people who shared your interests, it would be a home run.
Be sure to have your business cards and follow up with your new connections when you get home.
