Thursday 14 October 2010

The New Social Influencers

 

   I’ve had this article published in HR Magazine to support the upcoming Connecting HR unconference, and also in response to the magazine’s list of UK HR influencers which I thought was total rubbish, to be frank (eg including Dave Gartenburg from Microsoft who returned to Seattle two years ago.  Duh!).

 

Who are the new influencers?

 

Publicising the article @HRMagazine asked Who are the new HR 'influencers' in the blogosphere?  Which sort of suggests they didn’t actually read the article before publishing it, because what I tried to argue was that the new, social influencers are people who influence in a social way (through relationships), not just those that use social media.  But anyway.

 

So who are these influencers?

Well, I’d suggest that the list (or un-list – read the article) should include people like:

 

  • Marc Weedon for the management of his International HR linkedin group
  • Mike Morrison for his support of the CIPD Members linkedin group (the UK’s largest online HR community)
  • Steve Bridger for his role as the official CIPD community manager
  • Natalia Alexandrou for some sterling CIPD tweeting in an organisation that quite frankly doesn’t get it

 

 

 

  • Theo HRD for his growing reputation as the international man of HR mystery
  • Nicholas Creswell for his global employment rebranding for Thomson Reuters
  • Flora Marriott for unconferencing at Yell
  • Jon Weedon for leading the socialisation of the Internal Communication profession

 

I suppose you could make a case for the inclusion of local CIPD group members, but I’m going to keep them off, largely because many of them don’t do much to grow community (there are probably a few exceptions – the local equivalents of Steve Browne in Ohio).

 

The really interesting thing about the above list is that most of these people are involved in Connecting HR!

This should make for a great unconference on Thursday, and I think provides justification for us taking on the role of identifying a new list of social, or maybe simply ‘real’, influencers at the unconference.

 

If you’re not at the event but you want to submit your suggestions for new influencers in UK HR, tweet us on Thursday 21st using the hashtags #chru #nihr.

You can also email  khry5c-w91c6k@twittermail.com, also referring to #chru #nihr, and keep your message short!

 

 

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2 comments:

  1. Hi Jon
    If you had read HR Most Influential properly you will have seen that it is Most Influential HR practitioners - not UK practitioners - hence why Dave Gartenberg and some other non UK practitioners were in this list. Interesting to see some of your unconference attendees thought your list was missing people at the top of organisations - ie Vance Kearney, who is on our list. I once again reiterate that our list is decided by HR practitioners. They obviously do not think your world is as influential as you all think. I note that the people on your list attended your unconference - another example of the 'small world syndrome' you are accusing the HR world of being!! Interestingly, the one blogger whose name is mentioned most frequently to me is The HRD - showing that HR practitioners like to hear from one of their own! Look forward to hearing your views in our HR Vision interview.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Sian,

    OK, agreed, though your list is clearly not a global list either.

    Next point: that's exactly the problem - most HR practitioners don't even know this 'world' (or this way of influencing) exists - that's why you get comments like Jenny Ambrozek's on this: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2010/10/hr-innovation.html.

    I'm sure there was an element of small world syndrome in the unconference list: http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-on-social-influencers.html

    - but in my opinion, most of the overlap was due simply to the fact that we designed the event for social influencers, so there was bound to be a lot of social influencers there!

    Lastly, our community includes plenty of HR practitioners who act as social influencers, and believe in the power of social influence.

    TheHRD is just one of these practitioners in our community - and he has commented by the way, that he thinks your list represents the old order too. I'm not sure he'd agree that he's one of their own!.

    Lastly, this isn't about blogging. The use of social media is one way that some of this group of people seek to influence. But it's the style of influence, not the mechanism used for it, that's important.

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