Now in its third year, HR Tech Fest 2016 is happening this November in Melbourne. The agenda has just been released, and it’s a whopper – 36 sessions over 2 days! We sat down with #HRTF16 Program Director Simon Yeowart to get an insight into what we can expect this year.

How is this year’s event different to last year’s?

Just as HR disruption continues to change, so does the agenda for HR Tech Fest. This year it will feature some new subjects which have become pressing to the community: Building a talent community, developing your social brand and the link between CX and employee experience feature heavily in 2016.

We’ll also be moving the event to Crown Promenade in Melbourne this year so expect everything to be bigger and better!

Who are the big hitting internationals coming across for the event?

We have eight international speakers on the line up for HR Tech Fest 2016. We’ll hear from Yahoo’s Head of Talent, we have the USA’s biggest employer (Walmart), as well as speakers from the finance sector (Visa and Amex). And for the first time we are featuring Asian HR leaders from Indonesia and India.

What stories from the front line of HR do people need to hear about?

There’s great things happening in Australia at the moment – real disruption from the ASX listed companies to the start-ups. It’s hard to pick the stand outs with such a great line up but we have everything from Rio Tinto’s global transformation to Fairfax’s L&D shake up. We also hear from Envato and Atlassian in the tech space.

One of the recurring questions at the roundtable discussion groups was “Building an Effective Business Case for HR Technology Progression?” Who is going to answer that at the conference?

All of our speakers have at some point had to get an HR tech project off the ground by influencing the business and stakeholders in their organisations. Recent projects from JBS, Sonic HealthPlus, Port Stephens Council all feature this heavily. Plus world renowned leaders such as American Express’ Global Transformation Lead, Jennifer McClure and Jason Averbook have spent their careers building HR business cases.

We also have a session on day two “Selling the Business Case” which is a practical two-hour workshop led by three industry experts who will take you through how to build a business case, sell your vision to the company and paint the end game.

What other cool things are on offer?

We are again featuring the best HR Tech Start-ups from around the world with a competition for the most innovative to present to the community at the event. The top three entrants will demo their technology at the Sunday networking evening before the Festival kicks off. All attendees will vote and the entrant with the most votes get the opportunity to present on day two of the Festival. More details on entering here.

Content delivery has also changed – we have an interactive stream running throughout the event, giving everyone the opportunity to delve deeper in the hottest subjects and solve common problems live at the conference.

We have 28 speakers delivering 36 sessions over 2 days at HR Tech Fest 2016. That’s a lot of information! What’s your advice for people coming along to make the most of it?

Turn off your emails for two days and immerse yourself in this thriving HR tech community. The opportunity to interrogate some of the leading exponents of HR transformation from around the world doesn’t come around too often. We’ll have more networking and experiential components to be involved in too.