TRULondon - the excitement begins!

The Recruitment Unconference (TRU) is kicking off in London tomorrow. This means some of the biggest names in HR social media including world-famous bloggers, influential thinkers and essentially the super cool online HR set will be descending on our capital city to hang out and talk recruitment, HR and probably a whole lot more.

I'm going to admit to be especially excited to see Laurie Ruettimann, the US based Punk Rock HR blogger who I've had some correspondence with in the past but have yet to meet, and if you don't already read her blog you should - give it a go. There will be lots of other exciting people who don't often come to the UK, let alone converge in one place at the same time – if you search for #TruLondon on Twitter now you’ll see lots of rather jet-lagged Americans just waking up to a truly dismal UK day. Of course the UK HR scene will be there too, including our own occasional contributor and continual HR blogger, Jon Ingham.

Unconference?
An unconference is a conference…but with less structure. It's the first one I've had the opportunity to attend but I understand there is no Powerpoint or presentations and the 'streams' are based around discussion so everyone can learn from each other - and presumably get to know each other much better than you would at a standard conference. There are leaders for the streams but I believe they are planning on setting off the discussion and facilitating the session more than anything else.

Although it’s clearly based around recruitment there are plenty of more general HR streams open too. So far the ‘streams’ which have caught my eye as ‘must sees’ are: H.R.Evolution featuring Trish McFarlane, Laurie Ruettimann and Steve Boese, Employer Branding v Employee Branding featuring Nick Price, Sarah White, Michelle Fischer and Jon Ingham, New Tools, Old Rules featuring Bill Boorman, Matt Alder, Paul Harrison and Jim Stroud, The Talent Wars featuring Trish McFarlane, Peter Gold, Michelle Fischer and Jon Ingham and in particular, H.R. Gen Z featuring Trish McFarlane, Jon Ingham and Laurie Ruettimann. So you can expect some input from those for sure.

I'm very excited about the whole thing, and hope you'll join HRzone online, or say hello in person if you're going. It's sold out ticket-wise but you can join in on Twitter from your desk (if you're on Twitter already, make sure you're following @BillBoorman, the organiser) and you'll be able to follow it on the Cover it Live box on the HRzone.co.uk homepage, which will pull in relevant tweets and live comments.

There's also an evening bash: if you're in London, search for #trucurrytweetup on Twitter to see the invite and sign up. It's free to register and I'll be there too along with all the other 'unconferencers'.

What else will HRzone be doing there? I'll be tweeting and live blogging from the discussions. All our thoughts and tweets will appear in the Cover it Live box on the HRzone homepage. You can follow it on Twitter to just see the tweets but the HRzone coverage will keep you updated by pulling in everything tagged #trulondon and #trucurrytweetup from Twitter anyway. If you want to join in from your desk just comment in the HRzone Cover it Live box or if you tweet already, go ahead - but don't forget the hashtag! There will most likely be some blogs too, so stay tuned!

For more info see here: http://thetruconferences.com/