I joined the Blog Squad team circa 2010 and rolled merrily along until a few years ago when I removed myself (and then went back for one more year in NOLA cuz it’s down the road) before removing myself entirely.

Let’s be real: this is simultaneously ABOUT money and also NOT about money. SHRM only covered registration for the ever-expanding blog squad which really meant feeding them (the hard costs) since it’s not like there was a finite number of tickets and a blogger ticket meant there was one less ticket for a paying attendee. Bloggers covered all their own travel and lodging. SHRM, obviously, got a pretty sweet deal from this free labor: less so “during” the conference when the content tends to be lots of selfies and “woo hoo!” “yay SHRM” BUT in the MONTHS leading up to the big show – this crew of dedicated HR folks provided millions of words of FREE content for the SHRM website/blog.

The saddest part, to me, is that once again SHRM has alienated some of its biggest cheerleaders (much as they have done with various moves and affiliations during the last few years as mentioned at the beginning of this post).

But, as is abundantly clear…..they don’t care. And, in the bigger scheme of their business plan…. this means nothing.

SHRM is NOT, protestations aside, a “membership” organization. SHRM is a lucrative money making venture.