Round Up of the NHRD Conference in Chennai

The NHRD conference was organized in Chennai this time around. The participation was really high even though we had the incident in Mumbai and Chennai was in two feet of water. There were student delegates, industry professionals, Academia but my sensed is that delegates from HR service providers outnumbered other groups.


The topic's seemed interesting and the speakers from respected organizations with tons of experience in HR. However the overall experience was not so great as many speakers did seemed to have been briefed well about the topic of discussion or they simply did not spend time preparing.


The topics and speakers list is on NHRD Chennai website: http://www.nhrdnconference2008.com/


I am not going to write about what everyone spoke about or said....... There were some sparks of delight when Prabhakar spoke about the future of trade unions, when Gurucharan Das spoke about India and its growth or when the topic of shaping the new HR manager and role of Hr in uncertainty was presented. There were other good speakers too, but they were really few and far between……….what the conference really taught me was “what not to do” when presenting or speaking about a topic in front of people who already know a lot……….

- Listen to the brief carefully and understand what you are being asked to speak about (personal views / org practices / strategy / research)
- Think about whether you are really the right person for the topic
- Even if the same topic is to be presented, there will be a lot of difference in the way you present it depending on the angle you take (personal views, org practices, strategy, research etc)
- Prepare and practice……….you audience can see it
- Keep it brief and simple (no one complains if its brief)
- Present balanced views and in a calm and composed fashion…people are not paying 12k to hear you rant and rave
- Last but not the least, don’t let the podium get in the way of your interaction with the audience, move around (the color mike is just a ask away)
- If you are not a confident speaker a big conference is not the stage to practice……

So that’s my round up of the NHRD Conference 08, I hope and wish that the next year would be better experience and learning.