While I was away at HR Tech, I listened to excellent but frightening podcasts from This America Life about the global financial meltdown, read through The Essential Drucker, and Caveman's Guide to Baby's First Year.I learned about what to do in business and with baby, and what not to do with the global pool of money (investing in mortgage-backed securities, CDO's and credit default swaps – what Warren Buffet called financial weapons of mass destruction).
Asteroids Happen. Be Prepared. (Especially when they're manmade, hurled from Wall Street's stratosphere.)
But even with Taleo, Salary.com and Kenexa getting hammered in the market (along with every other industry going up and down and up and down – and now they're up), you wouldn't know it at HR Tech. The consensus from most suppliers we spoke with is that the show went well – for visibility and lead generation (ATS vendor nowHIRE said they had great leads while SonicRecruit said no). And most HR folks and executive management I spoke with were there to shop – maybe not with a long list and until they dropped – but they were there to buy software and/or services for their companies. Day 2 on the floor seemed to have thicker traffic than the first day.
Attendance numbers were bloated as they always are at events, and according to John Zappe from the ERE:
Seems there's a little discrepancy over just how the financial climate affected attendance at HR Tech. Wednesday, show manager Fred Kurst estimated attendance at around 2,000, not including exhibitors. Now we hear that number may have been more of a guesstimate and that registrations fell off as rapidly as the Dow did a few weeks ago. Even so, vendors, who almost always grumble about the cost and the conference attendance, told us they were at least happy about the latter.
Dozens of companies announced new products at this year's show, including our own HR Community. There were many familiar faces and some new kids on the block as well. It was great to talk with new companies/products to the HR space like eThority and Orchestrata.
Marketing fun spilled out from most booths, but out of all the fun marketing tchotchkes given away, including the Monster monsters, the one folks across the hall crossed the entire floor for was our t-rex squeezies and t-shirts.
Great show, great marketing, great visibility and leads. Oh, and I loved the tagline from Workday: Innovation is not installed.
Damn straight. Asteroids Happen. Be prepared. Build to sustain and remain.
See you next year at HR Tech!
Post by Kevin Grossman
Labels: HR Tech, lead generation, online visibility, trade shows