Minnebar 2012

[markgritter]

This was the 7th Minnebar, the 4th I've attended, and the third I organized a session. Minnebar is an "unconference" with content driven by the attendees, although it's a bit more structured than most Barcamps with a schedule created ahead of time. But there was a whiteboard open to schedule some of the empty rooms at the last minute

Comments

[freelikebeer]

It all sounds so interesting.

[freelikebeer]

Did you have slides?

[markgritter]

Yes, but only because I felt obligated to start with some. I'll put them up on the Minnebar wiki when time permits.

[anonymous]

Hello Mark,

I enjoyed your session but was bummed that you dismissed the most important details (to me, at least) by saying that HR/benefits issues can just be contracted out.

Health insurance is a huge problem even in my consulting partnership (around 20 partners) and is the number one thing preventing me from joining a start up or starting up on my own.

[markgritter]

Health insurance is certainly a problem but my think it's not a scaling problem. Almost the opposite--- it's harder with 3 people than with 300. We brought in a company called Filice (filice.com) to set up our health benefits very early.

And as I mentioned in the session, for HR we hired somebody from the same consulting company that provided our accountant (Ravix group). The advantage is that we could get somebody who was experienced in this area without having to bring them on full-time, when we didn't have enough work to keep them occupied.

At some point you do need to bite the bullet and have a real HR department, but I don't know where that is--- I think not < 100 employees.