HRIS Careers Podcast

2024 HR Technology Conference Recap & HRISY Awards!

• HRISCareers.com

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In this solo episode, host Troy Wallace shares his experiences attending the 2024 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. Offering practical insights and tips for future attendees, Troy breaks down what to expect, from must-visit vendors to event highlights. He explores networking opportunities, conference logistics, and essential survival tips for navigating the vast expo floor. Notably, Troy introduces the first-ever "HRISY Awards" his take on recognizing standout vendors and booths. 

Plus, Troy announces a fun listener incentive: the first comments on YouTube or Spotify will receive an exclusive HRIS Careers t-shirt!

🎧 Topics Covered:

  • Networking & Tips for First-Time Attendees
  • HRISY Awards - Best Swag, Best Snack, Best Virtual Experience
  • Advice for Vendors and Consultants in HR Tech
  • Fun moments from the conference pub crawl 🍹
  • Stay till the end for a special t-shirt giveaway announcement!

Chapter Timestamps

  • [00:00] - Introduction: Live from Omaha!
  • [02:12] - Conference Overview: First impressions and key takeaways
  • [03:43] - Tips for Navigating the Conference: IRM membership & Expo pass benefits
  • [06:55] - Pub Crawl & Networking Highlights
  • [10:09] - Planning & Navigating the Expo Hall: Vendor priorities
  • [14:46] - HRISY Awards: Best Swag, Best Virtual Experience, and more!
  • [22:49] - Shoutouts & Thank You to Connections Made at the Conference
  • [22:49] - Closing Remarks & T-shirt Giveaway

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast

  1. HR Technology Conference - Conference link for HR professionals interested in attending in 2025.
  2. International Association of Human Resources Information Management (IRM)
  3. Z-Biotics
    • Probiotic supplement Troy recommends for conference drinking recovery.
    • Z-Biotics website - Use the discount code STOC10 Troy mentions for a special offer.
  4. Featured HRISY Award Winners
    • Rippling - Winner of “Best Value for Advertisers” for sponsoring the Wi-Fi at the conference.
    • Paycor - "Best Swag When You Have A Teenage Daughter" : nail polish and hand sanitizer.
    • Seekout - Awarded for “Perfect Thing at the Right Time” with water and mints for attendees.
    • ICims - Noted for their nitrogen ice cream, awarded “Best Snack.”
    • Cornerstone - Awarded “Best Virtual Experience” for their realistic VR training simulation.
    • HiBob - Recognized for “Most Popular Exhibit” with a high-traffic photo booth.
    • HireVue - Highlighted for “Best Physical Good” with semi-custom t-shirts.
    • Isolved - Awarded “Best Cocktail Pub Crawl” during the Tuesday night pub crawl.
    • Upwork - Awarded “Best Cocktail for Happy Hour” on Wednesday night happy hour, featuring spicy margaritas.
    • Flockity - Awarded “Startup to Watch” for their influencer-driven recruitment marketing platform.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the HRIS Careers Podcast with your host, troy Wallin, a podcast for human resources, information systems professionals to help you elevate your HRIS career.

Speaker 1:

We always say no one gets into HRIS on purpose, but it sure is interesting to find out how they did. We interview your HRIS peers to find out how they got tricked into the industry and what lessons and tools they use to progress their careers. Along the way, we discuss industry trends, ai and even talk candidly about all the most popular HRS platforms. Just think of it as the closest bar just outside the entrance of your favorite HR technology conference. Now you get it. Welcome in. Welcome to the HRS Careers Podcast, broadcasting live from the beautiful studios in downtown Omaha, nebraska. Now this is going to be a what I'll call a solo-sode. I'm way overdue on this, but I had attended the HR Technology Conference out in Las Vegas in late September, out in Las Vegas in late September and the first time I'd ever been there. It was really eye-opening overall, just fantastic, especially from a networking perspective, and I thought it would just take maybe 15, 20 minutes to go over a few things and just discuss the good, the bad definitely mostly good If you were thinking about going next year or in the future. Some tips that I have to navigate what you get out there and really how to get the most out of the conference. That being said, I've only been to one, but overall I had a great experience and what I want to do is start a tradition, and this is maybe the most important part of the podcast. At the end, I'm going to award our first annual HRISC Awards, like SP Awards, for the conference. I won't be too serious, but there were some cool things that I saw. I definitely want to recognize some people that were gracious enough to give me some time while I was out there. Oh and, by the way, if you have a better name for these awards, certainly let me know and maybe we'll change them for next year. You can always reach me at Troy, t-r-o-y dot Wallace at H-R-I-S careers dot com.

Speaker 1:

All right, so, number one, let's just we'll talk about some takeaways. I would say again first time that I had gone to this event, but overall, if you're a vendor in the HR space, I think you have to be there. If nothing else, the networking is worth it. I don't know that, depending on what your specific software does, whether you're going to be making a lot of sales directly to decision makers on the floor. But to getting in that expo center is really worth it and even if you're just to walk around talking to people at the booths, I think the networking is really worth it. And even if you're just to walk around talking to people at the booths, I think the networking is really powerful at that conference.

Speaker 1:

So, just broadly, I showed up on Sunday night. I have some family that lives in the area so I spent some time with them on Sunday and Monday Just so happened to have a client meeting in Las Vegas also, so that worked out on Monday. And then I went to the IRM meeting and if you're not familiar with that association, it is the International Association of Human Resources Information Management, the professional organization for what we all do in HRS. So I had joined and they have their annual meeting on Monday night and I reconnected with some people that I had not talked to in a very long time. Oh, by the way, if you do join IREM and I'll put some links in the show notes that will take you directly to where you need to be but you get a free expo pass to the HR Technology Conference. Really, I think what you pay for IREM is between $100 to $200. You really make it back just if you're going to the conference.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, I did just get the Expo Pass which just really gave you access to the exposition hall. I did not get to attend all the different lectures. There was so much going on there. I would say, if you couldn't get the funding for the full conference fee for your company, or if you're putting the bill, if you're an independent consultant, just the Expo Pass that again you can get free with an IRM membership is well worth it. There are lots of talks going on right in the Expo Hall and, again, the networking is just really good. Either way, if you can afford the full pass, definitely likely worth it. But even if you can just afford the Expo Pass, which I think is under $200 typically, that would be more than enough to fill your time for two or three days.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to run over here and show you some pictures. So if you want to get over to YouTube to see what I'm showing, you can go over to the YouTube channel, all right. So we just walked through the logistics. So again, there were sessions during Tuesday, during the day, if you had the full pass, of course I did not at the Expo pass, so I was waiting for the expo hall to open. So I headed down to the Mandalay Bay on that Tuesday afternoon and hung out a little bit in the food court, did a little work waiting for it to open. And you can see a couple of pictures here.

Speaker 1:

Number one as you enter into the convention area, the big HR tech sign. And then there were lots and lots of people waiting outside waiting for that expo hall to open, primarily because there was going to be free booze inside with a lot of the companies hosting what they call the pub crawl, and so you can see the people piling in. And then, once you get in again, it was just a who's who of HR tech vendors For the most part, if you had the money, so the SAPs, the Workdays, the Oracles had the front spots with the really large booths, and then you move back, you moved into more of the mid-tier vendors and then, if you went back into what I call the cheap seats, there were some of the startups and some more, I guess, reasonable space to rent back there. So that first event was really the pub crawl on Tuesday and I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know if they were hosting at bars, but it was actually right. In the expo hall they just set up bars at I think maybe 10 to 12 of the vendors. I'm sure they had to pay for that privilege. Here's a drink menu by exhibitor. So there were one, two, three, four, probably 10 or 12 that were hosting drinks that night Pretty high quality. As a matter of fact, I've got a couple of awards to give in this category, all right. So here's some more high-level takeaways.

Speaker 1:

Let's see number one. They certainly encourage the consumption of alcohol. The two main events in the Expo Hall are about a two-hour pub crawl from 5 to 7 on Tuesday and then they do a one-hour happy hour on Wednesday night and the vendors a lot of them are bartenders. Some of them had very simple things like just a couple types of beer. Some did very complex drinks, but overall really well done. I didn't see too many people getting too intoxicated, but the drinks were definitely flowing freely at that point.

Speaker 1:

So certainly not what this podcast is about. But if you are preparing for your New Year holiday and need something, if you know you're going to be having a couple more drinks than you normally would. My go-to is this thing called Z-Biotics. I can't remember what podcast I heard about it on, but I think I've got a discount code that'll link in the description in the show notes. But I've got to say I'm not trying to encourage people to consume too much alcohol, but if you're going to let loose a little bit, it works. Anyways, that's an aside, all right.

Speaker 1:

So this, this number one, is you know, drinking is definitely encouraged. Between the two events there are a lot of vendor events that are hosted, and some of the clubs and restaurants in and around Mandalay Bay in this case. So number two there's so much information so it's like drinking out of a fire hose. That's how I explained it so much information compressed into a small amount of time. So what I did is I was there really to learn as much as I could about as many vendors as possible, so I went through I think there were 400 vendors, and so I went through the list that the HR Tech Conference provided, put it all into a spreadsheet and then I prioritized who I wanted to visit, and I probably made it to not even half of those that I put as a kind of a one priority. As a matter of fact, I don't even think I visited the Oracle people and that's the space that I put as a kind of a one priority. As a matter of fact, I don't even think I visited the Oracle people and that's the space that I work in. Just there's a lot.

Speaker 1:

So when you come you've got to do a little preparation and go through the agenda and mark out what you want to see, who you want to talk to, and you'd want to do that ahead of time. So another thing that I noted is, after the Expo Hall closes there's not a lot to do. It's Las Vegas, so plenty to do, but there's not a lot to do conference related, unless you are getting invited to some of these private events. So as you walk out of the conference hall, all of the neighboring bars, restaurant, most of them, have been reserved by some of the big software vendors, and if you were not invited to their event then you don't have a place to go. So if you are somebody who's actually shopping for software for your organization, you're going to be super valuable. If you want to go to these things, I'm sure it's pretty easy to get invited. But if you are expecting to jump right out of the conference and go to a restaurant and get in. There are lines, there are reservations, people have reserved a lot of those venues already, so that is something that I did not anticipate. But I was lucky enough to hook up with a couple people I had known previously that are part of IREM and they were good enough to take me to the Vizier party, which was in one of the towers there at Mandalay Bay and was fantastic. They spared no expense. I think it was open for two or three hours and they had cocktails and they were passing around hors d'oeuvres and was really nice. I encourage you to do a little planning or just be aware that if you're not getting invited to these parties, there might not be a lot for you to do, at least in the Mandalay Bay conference related. If that is your goal, All right.

Speaker 1:

Another item so this is stupid. You are a stupid, stupid man. But I wanted to get to as many booths as possible and I was lost the first night. So they had some general signs when you looked up that said here's row 4,000. But as far as I knew, I couldn't find any specific booth signs or that represented the number. It took me until day two to actually look down and notice that the booth number was on the number. It took me until day two to actually look down and notice that the booth number was on the ground. You are a stupid, stupid man Up in front of the booth. That was my mistake. Obviously, I made navigation much, much easier once I figured that out. That's something for going. Just you can know that ahead of time.

Speaker 1:

One other thing I wanted to note I'm getting into my well, I am in my fifties and I think maybe every generation says this, but the next generation that, oh, younger people don't seem like they're doing the right things or they don't work as hard. And I will tell you. I met some extremely sharp younger people. I'll just name a couple that I noted when I was speaking to them. There was Adam Cashman of Phenom, drake Patterson of Greenhouse Software, kayla Giles for HiBob, which is one of our partner reps, and I know I spoke to a lot more that were sharp. Just those were three that I just happened to write down their names as well.

Speaker 1:

All right, now let's get to what everybody has been waiting for the first annual HRISC Awards. Just be aware, I made up these categories as I was walking through the expo hall. Number one one, and this is for all you vendors out there I'm going to call this the Best Value for Advertisers Award and I'm going to give it to Rippling for sponsoring the Wi-Fi password. So not something that I would have thought about, but guess what? Everybody in that hall likely wanted to know what the Wi-Fi password was and probably passed by that sign. So A+. I hope that was fruitful and a good investment for Rippling, but they own that space. That is the Best value for advertisers award.

Speaker 1:

The next one, two this is pretty specific to me. I'm going to call this the best swag or product that will make your 14-year-old daughter extremely happy. Allison at Paycor. And I know there was one other woman that I was talking to there. It was later on Thursday afternoon. I'd been very good about not piling up a bunch of swag so I could travel light, but as I was leaving their booth, they were trying to give me brownies. I said no, and eventually they said hey, what about some nail polish and hand sanitizer? And those just happened to be two of my daughter's favorite things in the world, not sure why. Well, definitely I get the nail polish, maybe not so much the hand sanitizer so I couldn't resist it. I grabbed it and when I got home and gave it to my daughter the next day, she was absolutely tickled. So thank you, paycore, and thank you, allison, for making me take those home with me. All right, the next award three is what I'll call the perfect thing.

Speaker 1:

At just the right time I was going on my 738 booth in a row talking to people and I met I believe his name is Chris Haberly Hopefully I'm pronouncing that last name right that's Seekout and they just their swag was a bottle of water and mints, and after you've talked to people for 90 minutes straight, that is exactly what I needed. So we certainly appreciate that. As a matter of fact, I think I might have there we go. There's the mints in the water from Seekout, so definitely appreciated that. What I'm going to call the best snack award I'm going to give it to, and there were a lot. It was really nice. You were never hungry, never thirsty. Something was not too far away at one of these booths, but usually mid-afternoon, a lot of treats and things to get you to come to their booth, and I'm a sucker for anything that even looks like ice cream. So Ice Sims had their nitrogen ice cream and again, for me it was just the right thing at the right time. There's their booth. They had somebody I guess I would call it making it right there on the spot, had three different flavors. That was fantastic. So I am awarding them the best snack award Five.

Speaker 1:

The next one I'm going to call the best overall experience, or maybe I'll call it the best virtual experience. I went into the Cornerstone booth and Cornerstone they've made a living in the learning space and performance management software space and I was speaking with them and they asked me if I wanted to sit down and use their virtual experience, and so I put the headset on and they told me what was going to happen. I've done a little bit of virtual reality, but it's usually games and everything just looks like little Roblox blocks and anyway. So they sat me down and they warned me what was going to happen. So they set up this virtual experience and I was going to be having a very difficult conversation with one of my employees who was a manager who had been saying offensive things to some of their subordinates and I was going to be going through a coaching call, and I will tell you what this guy that showed up on the other side of the desk for me was I'm going to put it nicely a jerk. They did a great job of simulating someone like this. Oh yeah, right. Well, the jerk store called they're running out of you and I was absolutely flustered. They walk through and they give you different choices of how you can react to the employee, and I did it. It was probably can react to the employee, and I did it. It was probably like six or seven minutes and, honestly, I took it off. I'm there in Vegas, I want to relax a little bit, and that was certainly not a relaxing situation, but I can understand how it would be effective as a training technique to try and simulate those tough conversations that you never want to have but you should be prepared to have. So I will give them the best virtual experience award for Cornerstone 6.

Speaker 1:

We're going to move to the most popular exhibit where there was always a line, and that is going to go to High Bob. So High Bob, in the entryway of the convention set up I'm going to call it a photo booth, but it was an enormous setup. So I'm not a big fan of getting my picture taken, but I understood what people were getting in line because it looked like they were doing a very good job of touching up the photos and making them look good. But there was a line there, the entire conference. There was not a time, even when I left on Thursday afternoon and the conference was ending, that there wasn't at least 20 people waiting in line for that. Good, on High Bob. It was a good idea. It attracted a lot of people and obviously people loved it because they did not leave it alone the entire conference. So I will give them the most popular exhibit award for the HR Tech Conference.

Speaker 1:

Let's move on to the best physical good. So I've got some pictures here. I was amazed at what people were doing, and in this case HireVue was creating I'll call it semi-custom t-shirts. So they weren't fully customized, but they had several patterns that you could choose from, and a lot of them were Vegas themed and they would just print you up t-shirts right there on the spot. So that appeared to be very popular. I was trying to be good and not take a lot of extra stuff, so I did not take one, but that was one that definitely caught my eyes. Congratulations to HireVue.

Speaker 1:

8. Let's move to the booze. So on Tuesday night I think I showed the menu earlier of all of the companies that were participating in the pub crawl, and I'm pretty simple For the most part I'm a beer but I do like champagne, and Isolde had some Kim Crawford champagne. I didn't know that they even made champagne and it was the first drink I had that evening. It just was the right thing again at the right time. So I am giving the best cocktail for the Tuesday pub crawl to I saw Now we'll move on to the next evening nine the best cocktail for happy hour.

Speaker 1:

So on Wednesday I was really trying to make it to as many boosts as I possibly could. The happy hour, I think, started at 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock. It sneaked up on me and so by the time I even thought about or realized that people were supplying alcohol, it was already probably 30 minutes into the happy hour and Michaela from Upwork grabbed me and just started up a conversation and they were serving these spicy margaritas. And it was just again, the right thing at the right time. Michaela was fantastic. I will put her in the category of one of those very intelligent young people that I met during the conference, so my thanks to her for picking me up with that drink, and our last H-R-I-S-E 10, is going to Flockity.

Speaker 1:

So I'm calling this the startup that I'm rooting for, and there were a lot of good ones. I couldn't make it to all of them Flockity, f-l-o-c-k-i-t-y, and they had started a influencer marketing. What they call influencer marketing meets recruitment marketing. So interesting concept. Essentially, if you have influence in whatever market you are maybe you are a TikTok nurse or some other influencer on another platform that specializes in some particular job their thought is that you may have some influence to point people to jobs that you think are great matches for your audience. So I believe the way it works is you can sign up through the Flockity platform and if you wanted to list your jobs there, then that could go out to their influencer network and those influencers could elect to share it with their audience. If so, I think they, you know you then pay by the click, and just a really interesting concept. That's one that I'm rooting for. Again, there are quite a few that I talked to that were really interesting. As a matter of fact, we're probably going to have two or three on the podcast eventually, but I thought that one was definitely interesting.

Speaker 1:

Last thing I'll say is I'm going to give a honorable mention to Alice and CeeDee with CeeLo and they provided me with some fantastic socks. So I'll call this the runner up in the physical goods category. And there we go. It's those beautiful socks, so definitely appreciated all the work people put into these booze and I'll just call it overall just a really first-class operation with the entire conference Cool.

Speaker 1:

A few other people I wanted to talk about is number one, david Adams, who is SVP of sales at VentureHR. He gave me a lot of perspective about the technology conference and being a vendor there, perspective about the technology conference and being a vendor there. It just so happens that I'm from Nebraska and he's not, but he is also a Nebraska Cornhusker football fan. So we had a ton to talk about. Tim Sackett, who has been on the podcast. If you go back to probably episode about four or five on our podcast feed, tim was gracious enough to come on the podcast and he was good enough to take time out of his busy schedule he was presenting at the HR Technology Conference to spend 15, 20 minutes with me and I really appreciate him taking the time to do that. Chad Sowash of the Chad and Cheese podcast. I think it's a must listen. It is a little more recruitment focused, but number one, they're just entertaining and number two, they just have really good information that I think is relatable to the HR technology industry in general. I was able to meet him in person at the conference and certainly appreciated him taking a couple of moments to say hello to me. Mentioned Michaela Milani of Upwork, another fantastic, smart young person that was at the conference, hooked me up with the margarita there on Wednesday night. Last but not least, robert Richardson, who is a strategic advisor at SAP Success Factors, who we were hoping to have on the podcast, was good enough to have a conversation with me as well when he heard about the podcast, certainly appreciated that. That's a wrap.

Speaker 1:

If you have questions about anything HR Technology Conference planning for next year, certainly reach out. If you have ideas for other awards for next year, let me know. You can always reach me at TroyTROYWallace at HRASCareerscom Also, we're going to put a little incentive out there. So I was donning a couple of different types of t-shirts. We had our HRAS mode t-shirt and we have one captures the theme of the show HRAS. No one gets here on purpose, so if you email me at troywallace at hrscareerscom, or if you are the first to comment on either Spotify or YouTube and just say t-shirt, you are going to get one of these t-shirts. So I will reach out to you and figure out which one you like the best and we will get it out in the mail to you. There's a little incentive there. Any likes, subscribes, reviews on any of the major platforms certainly do help us and we do appreciate that. Thank you all for being here and for the HRS careers community. We'll talk to you next time. What's the difference? You're the all-time bestseller. Here we go.