Not to get religious or anything but trying to sum up my overall description of my very 1^st professional conference, I’d have to say it was like a church revival. The church revival happens once or twice a year when your local church hosts an event with guest pastors, choirs and other people of influence and they celebrate their religion and get the people all excited and reconnected to their spiritual self. They rededicate themselves to their commitment and they get all fired up.

The speakers’ challenge you think differently, they make you laugh and even make you dance. You get a different perspective on the huge organizational effort it takes to pull off such an event. You get to meet some of the people that you’ve only read about or seen in pictures. You get to steal a moment with a keynote speaker.  From a social media standpoint, it’s shrunk the world and given the nameless people like myself a name. Here’s what I mean by that, I had people hugging me and wanting to shake my hand that I didn’t know. I got to meet a lot of my readers IRL, as they say, which means IN REAL LIFE.

That was amazing and weird, not of them, but weird for me because if you know me, I mean really know me; I am relatively modest and private.

Something that you may or may not know about me is that I am currently fighting the toughest battle of my life, fat! Yea, I’ve been on this veggie diet this year, it’s been great. I’ve also been battling a bunch of nagging injuries, aches and pains. My right side is all effed up, I’m a little gimpy, but the folks up at SHRM took care me and I appreciate that.

If you are on Twitter search the ILSHRM12 hash tag (#ILSHRM12) you see a bunch of tweets on everything, from the speakers to the parties. Oh yeah, HR folks love to party but not at work as Talent Anarchy pointed out during their session.

Am I breaking Title VII by comparing the conference experience to a religious experience? I dunno. I’m not judging, just giving SOME of my readers a comparison point. I also felt validated and accepted. For me to be among these folks was a huge honor, the road to professional acceptance has not been easy but this made a lot of those storms of the past worth it. Soaking it all up, I felt renewed, recommitted and reconnected. And that’s just my 1^st one.