Having delivered thousands of speeches in his career, Joseph Grenny's engaging style is a sought-after mix of entertainment, practicality, and foundational research. Traveling across the globe from East Asia, to India, to Europe, Joseph has spoken to organizations including NASA, the American Bankers Association, the Supreme Court of California, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, the American Public Works Association, and the American Society of Training and Development.

A seasoned executive and business strategy expert, Joseph has addressed executive level teams for clients including IBM, Progressive Insurance, Sprint, Textron, McGraw-Hill, Texas Instruments, and Genentech. Whether he's speaking to an audience of more than ten thousand or to a small executive team, Joseph's dynamic and captivating style keeps his skills in high demand.

An organization’s success is determined by how well people execute on its high-stakes projects and initiatives. However, current execution trends are anything but promising. According to recent research:

• Fewer than one in three critical initiatives will achieve intended goals, and almost half are deemed outright failures.
• 83 percent of employees say they are working on projects, programs, and initiatives they believe will fail.
• Companies’ collective inability to execute on major projects costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Jessica Lee is a senior employment manager for APCO Worldwide, a privately held, global communications and management consultancy based in Washington, DC. At APCO, she serves as an internal strategic human resources business partner, provides consultative workplace advice to all levels of staff and manages APCO’s recruitment activities ranging from university relations to employment branding initiatives.

Prior to joining APCO, Jessica held progressively responsible human resources roles in both the public and private sectors. In addition to recruiting, her experience includes benefits administration, harassment investigations, application tracking system implementations and HR policy development making her a true generalist.

Jessica is also an active member of the human resources and recruiting social media community as editor of the blog Fistful of Talent where she and her colleagues write on a variety of topics related to talent management. She is a sought after speaker delivering presentations at national and local HR conferences and was recently named one of HR’s top 100 influencers by recruitingblogs.com.

Social media do not have to be intimidating. To be effective in this space, you don’t have to be a tech geek or a marketing pro, and it’s not just for companies who have a household name. Deploying a social recruiting strategy can be done by anyone with limited budgets, if you follow the right principles and road map.

Case in point: a year and a half ago, Jessica Lee was a social media neophyte. Fast forward to today and she’s launched her company into social recruiting and she’s the editor of a popular recruiting blog. Jessica will lead a discussion on how she was able to deploy a social recruiting strategy for her company, a mid-sized, global PR firm. She’ll provide practical, tangible thoughts for establishing a recruiting presence on various social networks, determining how social recruiting plays with and impacts other traditional recruiting efforts and simply managing the social media as an additional recruiting tool.

Andre Mamprin is richly experienced in leadership development. Before co-creating The Next Institute, Andre served as Director of Leadership Development at The Banff Centre, where he was instrumental in the design and delivery of leadership and organizational development programs for a wide range of clients. Andre is an experienced entrepreneur and a seasoned leadership advisor. Like Ross, he has made a lifetime study of leadership and its essential elements.

Ross Gilchrist is a seasoned leader, facilitator, and advisor to c-suite leaders and entrepreneurs. Before co-creating The Next Institute, Ross served in senior executive positions in both boutique and international financial services corporations. He has been a highly successful entrepreneur, and has coached entrepreneurs and professionals across North America.

HR professionals invest significantly in the development of leadership competency. We can be less rigorous in creating conditions for the emergence of leadership character. Leader character is both elusive and crucial - it can deepen or derail competence. How do we align competency development with the discovery, emergence, and amplification of character?

In this engaging and highly interactive presentation, Ross Gilchrist and Andre Mamprin provoke fresh insight into The Essential Elements of Leadership™ and The Essential Elements of Leader Character™.

Ross and Andre will be joined on stage by Ian Chisholm and Marita Wieser, Learning Leaders at The Next Institute. Ian and Marita will dramatize and demonstrate specific presentation content.

Over the past twenty years, Joseph Grenny has taught and advised more than one hundred thousand leaders on every major continent from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. He has advised CEOs and senior executives on more than a dozen major change initiatives — receiving credit from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics’ President as a key factor in helping the organization win the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter program.

Joseph is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High, and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior.

Creating sustainable change is a constant struggle for organizations and individuals. We often lack the skills to influence the behaviors behind issues like:

• Failed initiatives
• Short-lived change efforts
• Unproductive corporate cultures
• Entrenched bad habits

Charles (Chuck) Hamilton leads Virtual World Strategy for the IBM Center for Advanced Learning - an IBM Human Resources centered function. For the previous two years, Chuck led the Learning and New Media Program for the IBM 3D Internet Group as well as IBM Learning’s entry into virtual worlds known as the IBM@PLAY program. With over 11 years in IBM, Chuck’s passion lies in connecting people and technology.

He speaks at approximately ten conferences a year, promoting IBM’s role in the future of learning, technology and work. He is widely published and he has recently been published in Fast Company, Talent Management Magazine, Meetings and Incentive Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Canadian Business and The Globe & Mail. When he is not traveling around the world he spends his time in Vancouver playing traditional Irish music in his Celtic band.

Our traditional workplaces are simply not big enough to contain all of the work activity required by today’s workers. Front line workplaces are more akin to the world wide web itself, acting like an infinitely scalable collection of people and technologies working as a knowledge creation collective. If we hope be able to work and learn at the confluence of these new spaces we are going to need to be among the first to embrace the new virtual social work environments now forming. Learn how IBM is developing Web 2.0 Work Places for our new talent. Understand emerging new world work strategies such as:

• The Remote Worker
• Endeavour Based Work
• Global Teaming
• Crowd Sourcing
• Mass Collaboration - 'We versus me'
• 18 Minutes - New Media News
• Connectedness - The New Classroom
• @Home, @Work, @Play
• Producers and Consumers

Geoff Affleck is a speaker, trainer and business consultant. Geoff holds an MBA from York University and a degree in marketing, and is the owner of Small Business Makeovers based in Duncan BC.

After 10 years in sales, marketing and training at several national corporations including Bell Canada, Geoff became self-employed in 2001 as has since operated 3 successful small businesses including a ski and snowboard school with 100 employees.

He has a passion for personal development and has studied with many well known transformational leaders. As a Certified Passion Test Facilitator, Geoff’s focus is to help others discover their passions and achieve more success in their lives.

Geoff is on the Adjudication Board at Business Works Self Employment Program. Although he now lives and works from Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island, you’ll notice that he has a bit of an accent from his native land of Australia.

The correlation between passionate, engaged employees, happy customers and profitability is strong. Most companies have three kinds of employees:

1. Passionate and engaged
2. Not engaged
3. Actively disengaged

How do we encourage more passionate and engaged employees? By helping them discover their own top five work-related passions - the things that matter most to them in their life at work. We also help employees identify their core passions - "why" they consider their top five work passions to be so important to them.

When you match employees' passions with job roles that reflect the company's need to deliver its unique value to clients and customers, you create the opportunity for employees to be fully engaged in delivering that value.

Chilwin C. Cheng (moderator) is the co-founder and President of Paradigm Shift Solutions Inc., operator of www.FairDismissal.com - Canada's first web-enabled, value-priced service helping small-to-medium sized businesses manage their legal costs and litigation exposure by understanding their legal rights and obligations when dismissing employees and calculating notice periods and severance obligations. Its first service: www.FiredWithoutCause.com - a service helping Canadians understand and calculate their severance entitlements without the assistance of a lawyer - launched prominently to a national reception. He is also a practicing business litigation lawyer. His passion is to "Bring Law to the People" by creating innovative channels to deliver affordable legal information and advice to Canadians and their businesses. These two web-enabled services are the first of several products that Paradigm Shift Solutions will launch in 2010/2011. Before founding these startups, he was Chief Litigation Counsel and General Manager (Western Region) of Market Regulation Services Inc., the independent regulator of Canada's stock exchanges, and a former prosecutor.

Herb Isherwood is currently the Managing Partner of Bull, Housser & Tupper and spends half his time in that role. With the other half of his time he maintains a busy practice advising employers on labour and employment matters. Herb has extensive experience in mergers, acquisitions and other corporate restructuring and is frequently called upon to advise on complex transactions. Herb's recent work includes advising on executive employment agreements and incentive plans in the telecommunication and technology industries, conducting collective agreement negotiations in the hospitality and entertainment industries and advising on executive terminations. He has also assisted clients in addressing attendance issues in the workplace and been involved in drafting, enforcing and interpreting agreements that restrict post employment solicitation and competition by former employees. He is a trusted advisor to many employers in the public and private sectors in all major areas of the economy including communication, finance, transportation, warehousing, local governments, hospitality, health care, high tech, professional services, entertainment, retail, resource and manufacturing.

Sandra Banister has practised labour law (as trade union counsel) and civil litigation (primarily personal injury and wrongful dismissal) since 1982. She acted as Special Counsel to the BC Transit Board on issues of successorship and contracting out and represented the Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture as Special Advisor on the Status of the Artist. She has been a frequent speaker at a variety of conferences and seminars for the Trial Lawyers Association, Continuing Legal Education, the Labour Sub-section of the Canadian Bar Association, the Benchers of the Canadian Bar Association, Lancaster House, Insight, the Centre for Labour Management, and the B.C. Federation of Labour. She has taught numerous labour related courses for trade unions and has organized and instructed the provincial labour law course for the annual Canadian Labour Congress Harrison Winter School since 1985.

Gwendoline Allison is a Partner with Clark Wilson LLP's Labour & Employment and Commercial Litigation Practice Groups. Her practice encompasses a broad range of commercial litigation, including employment-related and contract disputes. She has acted for a variety of clients including large corporations, financial institutions, health authorities and not-for-profit societies. Gwendoline has experience at all levels of court, including the British Columbia Court of Appeal, and she has represented clients at a variety of tribunals. Gwendoline is the founding co-author of a textbook on employment standards law, and is a frequent speaker on litigation and employment issues. She is an adjunct professor of civil litigation at the University of British Columbia, and is a Director of the Continuing Legal Education Society. Gwendoline obtained her LL.B. (Honours) from the University of Glasgow in 1989 and her LL.B. from The University of British Columbia in 1994. She was called to the Bar of BC in 1995.

Robert Sider is a partner with Lawson Lundell in Vancouver. His practice focuses on management-side labour and employment law. He advises on labour and employment aspects of commercial transactions and day-to-day labour and employment issues. His work includes labour and employment litigation, arbitrations, human rights, employment standards (including director and officer liability issues), collective bargaining and workers compensation. Robert obtained his LL.B. from The University of Toronto in 1990 and was called to the Bar of BC in 1991.

Join us for a lively panel discussion of the daily legal issues faced by HR practitioners. Learn firsthand innovative approaches towards dealing with common predicaments. Our panel will include representation from employer and employee-side lawyers to provide a more complete picture of the dynamics involved in dealing with workplace concerns.

Paul Mangotich has been training managers and leaders since 1988. He is highly experienced in the field and has trained thousands of business professionals. Paul is a long-time member of the American Society for Training and Development and the Montreal Chamber of Commerce.

Don Jones is founding President of exper!ence it inc. and the Creative Director of the Simulation Design Practice. Don has achieved a global reputation as a leader in the design of sophisticated management and leadership business simulations and experiential programs.

Don is an accomplished consultant, speaker and author. He has developed learning and implemented large-scale corporate change and experiential learning programs for multi-national, Fortune 500 companies in over 20 countries.

Don's work in the world of experiential learning has been featured in the Globe and Mail R.O.B. Magazine and the Financial Post. He has been a keynote speaker at both international training and business conferences. His literary work focusing on management has been translated into several languages and distributed internationally.

Journey Home is an interactive, team-based simulation that provides participants with an intensive, powerful, fun and relevant learning experience. It is Star Date 3000 AD, and a squadron of Starships is engaged in a race against time. Each Starship is a team, comprised of six players. Each team member has a unique and valuable role to play, bringing his or her own information and experience to the mission. The ultimate mission is to save Earth from enemy raiders and to find the technology to stop the spread of a deadly virus. Journey Home addresses the people and passion theme of the 2010 Conference. By the end of the Journey home experience, participants are connected emotionally and intellectually to the following learning outcomes:

• The true power of teamwork
• Alignment to mission
• The importance of communication
• Empowerment
• Customer focus
• Creative innovation

An expert in topics ranging from influence and leadership to organizational change and effectiveness, Joseph Grenny has been cited in dozens of newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared on more than one hundred radio and television programs including ABC News, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and the Today Show

Formerly, Joseph was cofounder and president of California Computer Corporation. And in 2007, he and his coauthors were named Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year for their work in founding and leading VitalSmarts, a leader in corporate training and organizational development. VitalSmarts has helped more than three hundred of the Fortune 500 realize significant results using a proven method for driving rapid, sustainable, and measurable change in behaviors.

A crucial confrontation is a face-to-face interaction in which we hold another person accountable for a broken promise, a violated expectation, or bad behavior.

Accountability issues such as lagging performance, quality, and low morale can keep you from getting the results you need. Crucial Confrontations presents a straightforward step-by-step process for identifying and resolving performance gaps, strengthening accountability, eliminating inconsistency, and reducing resentment

Dr. Nancy MacKay (moderator) is President and co-founder of MacKay & Associates. For over 15 years, she has been helping organizations improve individual and organizational performance. As a certified executive coach, Nancy coaches and facilitates 8 CEO networks comprised of 100 CEOs. In addition, she operates forums for Senior Executives involving 50 executives.

Nancy is the co-author of the book The Talent Advantage and continues to be an invited speaker to many groups and conferences. She has addressed thousands of people across Canada, the United States, Norway, the United Kingdom and throughout Australasia. She has been a professor and taught in the business faculty of several universities including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Waterloo and Lincoln University in New Zealand. She has received numerous awards, including being named a World Class Consultant by an international group of her peers. In 2008, she was named as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles that have been published in international research journals as well as being featured in many popular business publications.

As the Vice President of Human Resources for TELUS Corporation Debbie Oster has supported a number of national client groups including Partner Solutions (Sales and Marketing), Business Transformation (Information Systems), Human Resources, Corporate Affairs and Finance as well as managed the TELUS Diversity portfolio.

Prior to joining TELUS, Debbie spent several years in the consumer products and manufacturing/distribution industries including Coca-Cola Bottling Ltd. Canada and Canadian Tire Corporation. Volunteer work includes being on boards and committees that support children with learning disabilities including the Canadian Learning Disabilities Association of Canada.

Len Posyniak, CHRP is Vice President, Human Resources and Corporate Law for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. Len is responsible for providing strategic human resources and corporate legal services in order to support the corporation's goal of high performing, engaged and capable people. He has extensive experience in human resources and labour relations in both the public and private sector. Prior to joining ICBC in 2006, he was a Senior Executive (partner) with Accenture. Len also has also served as Vice-President of Human Resources and Communications for the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and as General Manager of Human Resources for the City of Surrey. Len is as an advisor to the Board of Directors of Providence Health, and in addition, he is a member of the BCIT HR Program Advisory Committee. Regina.

Rob Van Nus is the Vice President Human Resources for Graymont, a private, family-owned business and the third largest producer of limestone and limestone products in North America. Rob is a member of the Graymont Strategic Leadership Team and has overall responsibility for developing and executing high-impact and cost-effective human resource strategies to ensure Graymont attracts and retains a high quality workforce. In addition, Rob guides internal strategic communications, supports the strategy development process, counsels on organizational design opportunities and is the primary management representative on the Pension & Benefit and Compensation Committees of the Board.

Prior to joining Graymont in 2004, Rob was an Associate Partner with IBM Business Consulting Services where he provided consulting services to a variety of private and public sector clients. In 1989 his consulting career started in Executive Search then expanded to include a broader array of Human Resources services including Compensation, Process Facilitation, Organization Design, Change Management and then Transformation Support for major enterprise changes including those enabled by technology. Rob's first career was as a Chartered Accountant and he has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University and is a Chartered Accountant and Certified Management Consultant.

Are you winning or losing the war for talent? Discover strategies that you can employ immediately to help turn you and your organization into victors in the talent wars. By attending this session, you will be able to:

• develop an extraordinary leadership style;
• view talent strategically;
• and become your company’s leading advocate for top talent acquisition and retention

A panel of 3 senior HR executives moderated by Dr. Nancy MacKay will present, discuss and explore various talent management themes. The focus will be on real life situations and applications and will draw on the experience and expertise of the senior executives on the panel. This will be a lively, interactive session, with lot’s of audience questions and interaction!

Howard Ehrlich (moderator) has practiced labour and employment law in Vancouver since 1983. He has been a Partner in Bull, Housser & Tupper's Labour & Employment Law Group since 1988. An acknowledged expert in his field, Howard has contributed to hundreds of course manuals and journals, and made presentations to a wide variety of clients, professional groups and employment-oriented organizations on labour and employment law issues.

Howard appears at the Labour Relations Board to represent clients in hearings. He represents clients in interest and rights arbitrations, human rights hearings, mediations, collective bargaining negotiations and certification drives. Howard has extensive experience providing strategic advice to clients in all areas of labour a nd employment law. He counsels clients on the employment and labour relations implications of corporate reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions.

Richard Press is a partner at Davis LLP where his practice focuses on employment and labour law, as well as related administrative tribunal work, such as human rights, workers compensation and employment standards. He represents clients in a variety of sectors, including: forestry, First Nations, health, technology, services, manufacturing, and financial. Mr. Press provides strategic advice to clients on all aspects of employment and labour relations. He also serves as an advocate for clients and has appeared before provincially and federally appointed arbitrators, the British Columbia Courts, the provincial and federal Labour Board, and various Tribunals. Mr. Press has written about and given multiple presentations on various elements of employment and labour law.

Judith Macfarlane is a partner in the Labour and Employment Group with the Vancouver law firm Bull, Housser & Tupper LLP. She was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1996. From 1997 to 2009 she practiced labour and employment law at a large Vancouver law firm as an associate and then as a partner. In 2009 she joined Bull, Housser & Tupper LLP. Judith represents employers in both the public and private sectors. She has advised municipalities, post secondary institutions, and other public bodies, as well as companies in the telecommunications, transportation, technology, cleantech, food service, and hospitality industries. Judith advises employers with respect to workplace policies and practices, collective agreement interpretation, and other labour and employment matters. She has a broad range of experience in representing clients before a variety of administrative tribunals, federally and provincially instituted boards of arbitration, the British Columbia courts, and the Federal Court of Canada.

Paul M. Pulver is a partner with Coutts Pulver. Paul received his LL.B. from the University of British Columbia in 1994. He was called to the BC Bar in 1995. Paul acts for a wide variety of employers and employees in the private and public sectors. He has appeared as counsel before various courts and administrative tribunals, including the British Columbia Supreme Court, the British Columbia Court of Appeal, the Federal Trial Court and Court of Appeal, the BC Labour Relations Board, the Canada Industrial Relations Board, the B.C. Employment Standards Tribunal, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and arbitration boards. Paul has written several articles on labour relations and employment law matters and is a regular speaker on those subjects at Continuing Legal Education, BC Human Resources Management Association and other seminars.

Lisa Southern of Roper Greyell received her law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in 1996. Since she was called to the BC Bar in 1997, Lisa has filled a variety of legal roles that have provided her with a unique background and perspective. From 2003 to 2006, she served as a Vice-Chair at the BC Labour Relations Board. In 2006, she was appointed as Registrar. Prior to joining the Board, Lisa practiced at a large national law firm where she restricted her practice to labour, employment and human rights issues. She also worked as a labour relations advisor for Forest Industrial Relations Inc. This umbrella organization was established to bargain and administer the collective agreement governing member companies and employees certified with IWA-Canada. Lisa's unique experience as adjudicator, mediator, administrator, client and practicing lawyer allows her to bring a no-nonsense, results-oriented approach to employment and labour law.

Are you frustrated when you attend a seminar only to leave with your questions unanswered? Do you want to have more of an opportunity to have session presenters deal with the real issues of concern to HR practitioners? Then sign up for this session, and have the opportunity to bring your thoughts and questions to a "free-for-all" session where you determine what's talked about.