Welcome to the new and improved Atlanta/SE Chapter Website

Although I was given fair warning before I accepted the role of Marketing/Website Director for the local board, I did not realize how quickly our committee would be taking on the project to implement our newly redesigned website. During the month of April, I’ll share the team’s journey with you and some of our learnings along the way.

One of the first questions was - how on earth would we come up with the new look and feel for the site? Fortunately for us, the chapter won funding to work with an outside marketing firm to create the design. So we thought the hard part was over, because all that was left to do was to find the technical resources to construct the site. Wrong!!!! Finding the technical resources was fairly easy, but what we did not bargain for were the constraints of not working with a traditionally hosted website. You see, it turns out that our website is hosted by an Online Content Management System.

With an Online Content Management System, the site is created through WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interfaces and templates, not your traditional code. This was challenging for our web developers because they now had to learn how to incorporate their coding changes into our provider’s framework. It was also a challenge for our provider because some of our requirements just would not fit into their delivered framework so they had to do some additional coding behind the scenes to make things work. It all came together and the design was successfully implemented into our website.

Hats off to my fellow project team members – Ken Henegan, Jones Wynn, Pamela Speights, Claudia DeAnda, Dawn Kostun and Andy Saenz for making this project successful!

Check back next week to find out more about some of the new features and technologies we discovered along the way. Don’t forget to check out the website out at www.ihrimatlantase.org!

IHRIM visits GA Southern!

I had a great opportunity this week to share with Bob Hoell’s HRIS class at Georgia Southern University. Yes, there is actually an HRIS class at Georgia Southern! We talked about the current state of HRCM applications, specifically what companies are spending their time and money on. We also discussed HRIS roles and of course we talked about IHRIM; what a great networking and resource it is for a student, professor and or a practioner.

The class had been discussing ROI’s and Business Analytics so they were glad to see that companies are spending their time and money on ROI’s and Business Analytics in 2007.

A few of the student are graduating in December so that were interested in hearing about the roles in HRIS. They wanted to understand what the responsibilities included and how do you find and get a job in HRIS. One of the students asked if we did “job fairs”? I said we currently didn’t but after discussing the idea I thought perhaps we could invite students to attend the vendor fair so that they could learn about the various vendors as well as the firms the practioners attending the meeting are from.....maybe share their resumes.

We spoke about why an association is important especially when you are starting out in a new field or moving to a new location…..it is a perfect way to learn and network or should I say Netweaving with people.

Join us for our December meeting so that you can learn about NetWeaving and weave with some new IHRIM members.

Sites and Sounds of HR Tech

Once again, HR Tech did not disappoint. Chicago’s Navy Pier was a scenic location for this year’s HR Technology show. Long walks down the never ending hallways did offer a great view of the lake. We heard that attendance was up over 30% as compared to last year.

A few notables from the Atlanta IHRIM Board members who attended:
*There are more ATS vendors than there are companies in the Fortune 500.
*Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler (speaker at our Q1 meeting in 2007) are still trying to find a system which will deliver real metrics on quality of hire.
*We heard the Silkroad Red Carpet reception was quite a hit. Did any Atlanta Chapter members attend?
*The IHRIM Association was excited about the turnout at the IHRIM booth. Lots of members and prospective members stopped by to learn about our fantastic organization.
*The first HCM battle ensued with Workday, Oracle and Lawson. No winner was declared but each vendor offered a quick, and I mean quick, insight into their solutions.

On behalf of the Atlanta/SE IHRIM chapter board, welcome to our redesigned site.

The website has been redesigned with you, our members, in mind. Our desire is to provide you with an online experience that is as innovative and relevant as our face to face events.

Some of the new and exciting features include:

Improved links and navigation
An Atlanta/SE board blog
Local member feedback and postings
Targeted links to the Association website to engage you in chats and events with IHRIM members globally
Links to relevant HR-related content

We are committed to providing you a website you will want to visit often. The board would love to hear from you -- please use the member feedback or send an email to tell us how we’re doing. We welcome your feedback about the site, our programs, and your thoughts about the HRIS/IT world – we want to hear from you! As IHRIM Atlanta continues to expand to the next level, we look forward to serving even more in the technology industry.

Special thanks to our board Web Directors, Brenda Thompson and Andy Saenz, Tyler Carantit and Dominic LoSasso from Tyler Dominic Creative (http://www.tylerdominiccreative.com), our volunteer web developers Pam Speights and Claudia DeAnda, and Dawn Kostun, chapter administrator