Notes from HR Tech
October 16th, 2009Ok the dust is well and truly settled from Chicago, so it’s time to reflect!
As always, it was a truly great show. It’s really rewarding to catch up with so many analysts, bloggers and other industry players in one place. In fact, I heard the HR Tech Conference described this year as the village square of HCM! We also caught up with lots of vendors we like, including my two top picks for creative rethinking and repackaging of HR processes: www.smartrecruiters.com – the FREE applicant tracking system, and www.rypple.com – for continuous personal feedback.
As you know, we didn’t have a booth at the tradeshow this year. Instead we went guerrilla, and it was a hit: Sonar6 wins the Guerrilla Marketing Award from HRCapitalist! Obviously not being tied to a booth meant we got to get around and talk to more people, and we found it really paid off.
It also seems that the influencers are starting to cotton on to our business model, as discussed by Brian Sommer in SMART Selling in the SaaS World. We’ve always maintained that we want to democratize performance and talent management – and to do that, it’s important Sonar6 is transparent and accessible to the people who need it. And who wouldn’t want to be called out for bringing “fresh light to the employee and team performance management darkness“?
Now for my only gripe.
As an industry we have some of the most confusing messaging I have ever come across. Honestly, I walked around the tradeshow and I couldn’t work out what a heap of the vendors actually did – it must be awful for customers!
We keep it easy though: we do performance reviews that don’t suck.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:51 am
While your guerrilla marketing may have been a hit, it violated the social compact (and contract) between exhibitors and the conference.
Exhibitors pay for the right to share the attention of the attendees. And even after they do so — with a booth or a sponsorship — the rules do not allow them to seek prospects by walking around.
So yes, you beat all the rules, had a great time and maybe snaffled up some prospects, too. But in doing it that way, you were essentially stealing from all the other vendors there, who did play by the rules.
Next time, support the conference and everyone else who pays to create your field of dreams. As Kris Dunn, The HR Capitalist, said in your link above: this was the year to rent a booth and go all out.
Great t-shirt.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Bill, you’re right, and if we had it to do over, we’d definitely hire a stand. In fact, we plan to do just that next year. Love your show, big fans.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’m still not entirely sure what we did wrong… but Mike I’ll take your steer for next year.