In India, students studying HR and new entrants to the profession need to be inspired and engaged early, before their excitement and enthusiasm are lost. After all, this strategically important group will drive the profession into the future. However, engagement is not limited to these HR professionals of tomorrow. Experienced practitioners need rejuvenation and leaders need to provide direction.

Trapped in their individual roles and organizations, there is no single meeting ground where all these groups can interact and learn from each other in an environment that encourages broad and out of the box thinking.

SHRM India is meeting this unexpressed need with the first of its kind HR Unconference First, People that will celebrate the HR profession and professional. The Unconference has already begun and is travelling across the country with a series of live and online events building up to a two-day fiesta in Goa scheduled for September 21 and 22, 2012. Winners of the various competitions and awards will be felicitated in Goa during First, People.

In the run-up to the festive culmination in Goa:

Students can participate in regional competitions to reach the national finals of a challenging quiz during First, People

Early practitioners can demonstrate their knowledge of HR in an exciting and competitive online game FUN-da-MENTAL. This stimulating weekly virtual hot-air balloon race is a social competition where players can invite others to join in the sprint to the finish line.

Experienced HR professionals can imagine how they would solve tomorrow’s HR problems today by playing the scenario-based game, Future Bytes. This ‘what if’ challenge will stretch their creative and visionary muscles to come up with innovative solutions to what is very likely to happen in the imminent future.

Organizations working passionately to enhance and advance the practice and profession of HR can nominate themselves for the innovative First, People Awards. These Awards, in partnership with Economic Times, will recognise excellence in eight novel disciplines like Social Media People Campaign, HR Analytics, Community Impact and Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders. Judged by an eminent panel with the help of process advisors, Ernst & Young, the First, People Award winners will be accepted astrailblazers of the profession.

In Goa, First, People will bring together winners, leaders,experienced practitioners, emerging professionals and students with speakers like Curt Coffman, the co-author of one of the best-selling management books of all time, First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently and Mark Inglis,the first double amputee to climb Mount Everest. Sessions will cover various aspects of tomorrow’s enterprise from varying perspectives using edgy, disruptive formats that allow participants to revisit why they joined HR in the first place.

The guidelines for this event are simple: No boring lectures. In an atmosphere of celebration, there is no place for the moribund lectern.

The mantra is to think exciting and innovative amid beach parties, rain dances and general revelry that establish once and for all that HR is not only the best but also a fun profession. After all, at an ‘Unconference’ the lighter side of HR is very serious business.