Perhaps the biggest question the upcoming HR Technology Conference might inspire is “What am I going to take away from this, really?” Looking for the best way to explain it, I went to the most logical source, reading everything I could find from people who attended last year’s conference.

First, the fact that there was so much written about it in the first place speaks volumes about the impression made on attendees. But I also noticed some threads of collective agreement running through the many write-ups about the event's takeaways.

For one thing, there was a sense that just being there allowed one to have his or her finger on the pulse of HR. Steve Boese on his blog wrote that over the course of the conference, he began to pick up a recurring theme of “internal organizational silos” — that is, different groups like Compensation Planning, Talent Acquisition and Training and Development failing to integrate their strategies (and even working at complete cross-purposes), and making it nearly impossible to successfully implement a Talent Management Suite:

I heard this 'silo' issue at least three different times at the conference, and after being initially surprised it began to make perfect sense. The larger a system footprint gets, the more internal process and functions it impacts, the more people have to be involved, and the greater the need for increased coordination and collaboration.

Many attendees also wrote about individual companies that had made an impression in the way they were changing HR in big and small ways. Brian Sommer at ZDNet saw that potential in one such company:

The recession may have affected the growth of applicant tracking and hiring management solution, leading to a rise in acquisitions by companies that are looking at broader talent management solutions. But some single solution providers – such as the UK’s MrTed, changed the playing field with new sales and go-to-market strategies, especially for small-and mid-sized companies (the company added 2500 SMB customers in 9 months without any marketing beyond FaceBook).

One of the most impressive opportunities bloggers wrote about was getting significant face time with these gamechangers, as when Ron Hanscome at HCM Tech Vista wrote about meeting the CEO of the very same Mr. Ted

After a quick stop at Cornerstone on Demand, we progressed to the TalentDrive reception. In the midst of the meeting, greeting, eating, and cocktailing I had the pleasure of meeting Jerome Ternynck, CEO of MrTed. Our conversation became for me the highlight of the evening, as we had a great dialogue on the future of applications development for HCM. This encounter brought home to me the stark contrast between these forms of communication. The ability to immediately ’read’ the other person, to sense and respond, and to grasp the ‘essense’ of the person are all elements that dramatically separate face-to-face communication from SM.

The discussions at the conference also sparked a lot of interesting ideas, leading to ruminations on HR’s big issues like this one from Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist:

Convergence as defined by [Bill] Kutik and the panel asks the simple question: Will HR tech providers be able to survive as stand alone players in a single product category (think performance management, learning management or recruiting), or will they have to develop an entire suite of products to survive?  Example - you're offering a great Performance Management solution - do you also have to get good at a Recruiting solution and eventually even dip your toe into a core HRMS to ensure that you survive as a company and give the customer what they want?

Even when they were arguing against one or more of the points made at the conference, or making suggestions for this year’s, the writers clearly felt lucky to have this event as a platform for making sense of ever-shifting world of HR technology. In the conclusion of his detailed wrap-up, Michael Krupa at InfoBox noted that he almost didn’t go:

My company was not planning on attending this year due to budget cutbacks but at the last minute decided we should go.  I’m glad they found the money. Between the show floor, keynotes, sessions, shootout and the chance to spend time with all my tweeps (who are now peeps), the HR Technology Conference was worth the time and money.