SHRM09 Wrap Up… The SHRM’s Recovery + Rebuild – Yes We Can?

So imagine this – day two of the SHRM09 conference and I’m having lunch with my FOT pals. You know, we’re sitting around and shooting the breeze, making fun of the HR people who would walk by us… and then Kris mentions how he remembered seeing the images of very place we were sitting post Hurricane Katrina lined with rows and rows of cots. Thousands of displaced New Orleans residents. The chaos and disruption. Nice lunch time topic, right? But to be real for a minute… it kind of made me pause, giving me a bit of a reality check about where we were sitting because in all honesty, I had forgotten just what the New Orleans Convention Center served as four years ago.

Remember the Hurricane Katrina aftermath? Up to 20,000 displaced residents called the convention center home while rescue efforts were underway. 20,000 people. And there we were, thousands of HR pros gathered together to do some learning and networking at SHRM09 in the very same place where people were huddled in masses because they’d been displaced by Katrina. Is it just me, or is there something about the whole situation that makes you pause?

SHRM doing the conference in New Orleans isn’t just a coincidence. It’s a concerted decision made to help revitalize a city which still hasn’t fully recovered. As much as I have criticized SHRM in the past (here, here and here), I do give the organization its props for this move because when you have 10,000 or so people descend upon the city for anywhere between three and seven days? That’s a lot of money going into the pockets of New Orleans and its residents. Then you also have volunteer activities SHRM has lined up for conference attendees to help revitalize housing in New Orleans. 60+ attendees participated each day in the volunteer activities because cynical as we may be, HR people at the end of the day are actually nice and want to make a difference.

The work to revitalize New Orleans is ongoing, four years later. On my flight into town for the conference, this was amplified for me as I had the fortune of sitting next to Obama’s appointee for Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts and in the rows around us were staffers for Senator Landrieu from Louisiana who were also doing recovery related work. I got to talking with my airplane passengers and of course they asked why I was heading to New Orleans… and for them, the idea of 10,000 or so professionals congregating in New Orleans for a conference – in June/July? It was amazing because let’s face it – it’s muggy, it’s uncomfortable, it isn’t glamorous by any means. But the contribution it makes to a city like New Orleans? It’s big. And for that… I have to applaud SHRM.

When I reflect about the state of SHRM, in some ways, I kind of feel like it’s almost as if SHRM is experiencing a rebirth and recovery of its own as well. A new CEO at the helm, a more visible and influential COO driving a lot of new initiatives to bring SHRM into modernity (or some semblance of it)… but as we are seeing with New Orleans, recovery doesn’t happen over night. You need some dedicated people in place – idealists who are in it because they really believe in the cause. And that’s what I’m seeing with SHRM and this conference in particular – dedicated (and very gracious) hosts, volunteers and staff members, and equally if not even more dedicated members/attendees. No doubt that there’s still work to do… but when you see the state of affairs up close and personal, your perspective changes just slightly. And shocking as it may sound, I’m a little more optimistic about the rebuild and recovery than I have been in the past.