Monday, November 09, 2009

The History of Bacon & HR


Post-HRevolution Un-Conference and I have not stopped thinking about this conference experience. Yes, it was a small conference, a gathering of visionary HR bloggers and HR social media enthusiasts in Louisville, KY. The heart of the discussion was how social media can influence HR’s place in business and to paraphrase Trish McFarlane’s Fox News interview… to drive the business strategy … be leaders in our companies that bring in new tools and technologies…”

Meeting these HR professionals in person and being actively involved in the discussions that have been going on online for months was a thrill. The energy and intellectual discussions were fluid and filled with the collaborative spirit that seemed all too familiar in many ways. Oddly familiar since I had only talked on the phone to Steve Boese a few times and met Crystal Peterson at KYSHRM a month ago. I had never met any of these people before outside of Twitter and their blogs. But, I knew their voices, their point of view and their businesses. It met all expectations for me. My role was to add value by tweets, questions, cookies and bacon buttons. I hope it inspired HR visionaries to DO something beyond the talk.

The one question that was asked repeatedly to me… “Why bacon buttons?”

So I felt I owed it to everyone to share “The History of Bacon and HR.” I must preface by saying that bacon is a common theme in social networking because of the “Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees of Separation.” In HR there is also the food component centering around Lance Haun’s family butcher history and this rock'n guest post he did on Punk Rock HR here and Steve Boese love of BBQ that birthed HRevolution here and another Steve bacon reference here. Throw in Mark Bennett’s blog post here on Talented Apps that ties it all together, we now have a string of bacon blogging themes that run through tweets and blog comments that just made a bacon button meaningful to me to give to you. If I missed some other good blog posts on bacon please share the links in the comments. If you missed getting a bacon button, DM me. @awardframes. Now I hope bacon is meaningful to you and symbolizes that personal aspect of social media that makes us all real. I sure enjoyed meeting the “real you” at HRevolution.

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Thanks again to Steve Boese, Crystal Peterson, Ben Eubanks and Trish McFarlane and a special shout out to the event sponsors and session leaders. We appreciate being involved and sponsoring this cutting edge experience. Bacon Button photo courtesy of zazzle.com

7 comments:

Sean Conrad said...

This post really needs to include this image: http://xkcd.com/418/

LynFH said...

Way funny Sean! Thanks for the image inspiration!

Joan said...

Thanks SO much for explaining the bacon thing so clearly, Lyn. I can sleep better now. You ROCK! (slang I learned from you youngsters - and now love.)

Trish McFarlane said...

Lyn, I LOVE this post. It's one of those age-old questions "Why HR & bacon" and you set us all straight. You have been supporting our efforts for HRevolution since day one back in the summer. I cannot thank you enough for not only being a fantastic sponsor of HRevolution (helping cover costs, bringing wonderful cookies for everyone, and the Bacon buttons that were so fun) but for also attending and really participating. Having people there that focus on running a business instead of pure HR was so valuable. People like you, Lois Melbourne, Dustin, all make us think in a different way.

So, thank you for all of your support. I sincerely hope you'll join us for the next one.

Anonymous said...

It is extremely interesting for me to read the article. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything connected to this matter. I would like to read a bit more on that blog soon.

Beth N. Carvin said...

Cute post!!

Since you are becoming the HR Bacon historian, you're going to have to dig back even further. HR and bacon have a loooong history.

HINT: Are you familiar with the HR Bacon Hut?

LynFH said...

Thinking there is a wealth of info out there on HR and bacon. So much so I bought HRBaconHut.com and while this blog can still exist as part of my framing ecommerce sites I can take HRBaconHut.com and really focus my blog content for this crazy wonderful audience of HR tweet friends and colleagues to be able to talk HR shop and write about bacon as it relates to HR. Whatta ya think? Not everyone has a SHRM membership to see the HR Bacon Hut forum posts.