Dear Colleague:

HR academic legend Dave Ulrich last year validated something many of you already knew. He added "technology proponent" to his list of the six key competencies required of a successful HR professional.

However the term "technology" makes you feel, Ulrich's point was you have to know how to advocate, analyze and understand technology to be effective personally and to have an impact on business performance.

For 16 years, the sole purpose of the HR Technology^® Conference has been to teach you how to get the business benefits from technology. The increasing awareness of how critical that is to HR is the reason we’ve gotten so large and so popular.

And why people say we are one of the two must-attend big HR conferences of the year.
China Gorman, former COO of SHRM (the other conference) says so, stating the HR Technology^® Conference would be her first choice if she could attend only one.

Don't be misled by our name. We focus on business process and organizational success enabled by technology, not on the bits and bytes of it. Attendees range from recruiters and HR generalists to functional HR leaders (including systems, of course) to CHROs.

The conference is the world's largest gathering of people who care about HR technology with all the foremost industry experts in attendance (many presenting), thought leaders from the major and emerging HR consultancies, senior HR executives from the world's leading organizations, every important software vendor, and attendees from around the globe – last year from 28 nations.

In short, everyone you need to meet and talk with to solve your problems or to expand your perspective will be in Las Vegas with you – 6,000 people last year.

We cover all the latest trends – SaaS, The Cloud, social, mobile, analytics, video, gamification, Big Data and MOOCs – as well as the more traditional technologies and processes that still compete for your attention. Whatever is changing the way work and HR gets done is featured in the conference.

Not only will we figure out the future together, but we'll give you dozens of practical takeaways for challenges you are facing today. All delivered by senior HR executives from world-class companies, leaders who may have solved your problems already.

But what you'll hear at the presentations is just one part of its value to you. The rest is who is sitting next to you or across the table: the community you need to be a part of.

Here are just a few program highlights:

• Opening Keynote from Don Tapscott: Author of the seminal works Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital and more recently Radical Openness. For more than a decade, Don has been a leading authority on technology and its transformative impact on work and society.

• The HR Tonight Show Starring Bill Kutik and co-host Naomi Lee Bloom with four industry luminaries, Bill's last interviews as conference co-chair.

• NEW! HR Tech Talks: Six industry personalities, six lightning-fast talks about work, technology, management and more. Think of them like the famous TED Talks, but from your colleagues.

• Closing Keynote from Top Industry Influencer Jason Averbook: Long an audience favorite but never before a keynoter during eight years of panels, debates and expert discussions. Jason will challenge your thinking about work and what the future of HR technology promises.

• The Latest Things That Matter – Social, Mobile, Video, Analytics:
  
  
• Fourth Annual Social Media Panel: The success stories on social in the enterprise are still hard to find, but moderator Marcia Conner helped create them and found them. Hear how you can harness social technologies to get real work done in your organization – directly from four innovative companies that have done it themselves.

• Keen on the Small Screen: The Power of Mobile for Candidate Attraction: Mobile technology is transforming recruiting at Informatica, a leader in Cloud technology solutions. Every candidate you're targeting has a mobile phone – does your message and process translate? Find out how to make the small screen work for you.

• Hilton Checks-in With Digital Recruiting Technology: You know it's well past time you introduced video, mobile and real-time feedback into your recruiting process. You just don't know how. Hear, see and touch the latest digital technologies, including video, that global powerhouse Hilton has leveraged to improve sourcing and recruiting.

• A Graded Track of Five Sessions on Analytics: Plus Workforce Planning. Start at the beginning or the middle. But abandon the guilt about not starting! We'll help.

• Three More Panels:
  
  
• NextGen Influencers Panel: Moderator Bill Kutik leads a panel of emerging and influential industry leaders – an analyst, a systems integrator, an HR leader, and a vendor executive – in an energetic discussion of HR, technology and work.

• Collaborative Learning Panel: Stacey Harris of Brandon Hall directs a panel of HR executives from leading companies on learning, collaboration and technology challenges facing organizations today. Between social, networked and informal – how we learn at work is changing profoundly.

• How Can Recruiting Technology Span the Globe? Industry legend Gerry Crispin's panel of global recruiting leaders will examine talent acquisition playing out on the world stage. Hear what's working, what needs improvement and how technology fits.

• Awesome New Technologies for HR: The best bleeding-edge HR technology innovations and their creators, live for the fifth consecutive year on the big stage.

• Expert Discussions: A chance to interact with the most experienced and knowledgeable industry analysts. The kind of access that you get only at HR Tech. No presentations – just conversations.

• Expo Hall: Certain to be the world's largest once again. Forty or more new products will be introduced. See and touch the latest solutions from the leading vendors in every category, as well as start-ups. They all will be there, many with product executives in addition to salespeople, giving you insights you can use to compare and act on.

• And much more!

As you read the brochure, you'll find yourself wishing time and again you could attend two or three sessions in the same time slot. So bring your colleagues along! We have deep group discounts, too.

If HR technology is your responsibility, your career, your problem – or you just need to learn more – join us for Human Resource Executive^®'s 16th Annual HR Technology^® Conference & Exposition.

Dave Shadovitz
Editor & Publisher, Human Resource Executive^®
Chairman, HR Technology^® Conference & Exposition

Bill Kutik
Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive^® and HREonline.com
Co-Chairman, HR Technology^® Conference & Exposition
Host, “The Bill Kutik Radio Show^®”

Steve Boese
Inside HR Tech Columnist, Human Resource Executive^® and HREonline.com
Host, HR Happy Hour