Growing the pool of speakers
Following up to Andy's series about growing the pool of speakers, I thought I would detail an idea we've been kicking around for this years summit.
First some history
In 2009 PASS accepted 585 community abstracts submitted for a total of 113 community sessions slots that were available (including 10 pre/post conference sessions) of those 80 were regular sessions, and 23 were spotlight sessions. We had 30 speakers give 2 sessions including the 10 pre/post conference sessions. We normally ask that speakers accepted for a pre/post conference session also present a spotlight session, so that every attendee of the conference gets access to these high caliber speakers. This left us with 20 regular speakers presenting 2 sessions in 2009.
The big idea
In order to give more speakers a chance to present at the annual summit, were proposing limiting all community speakers to 1 primary session per summit. There would obviously have to be exceptions for panel sessions and co presenters since we wouldn't want to discourage those types of sessions. The benefits as I see them are that we'd open up 20 more slots, give or take from year to year, to new speakers thus allowing others in the community an opportunity to present. The downsides (or risks) as I see them: We stand to potentially loose coverage if we receive no abstracts on a particular subject that would be a currently chosen speakers second session. Cost, that is 20 extra comped admissions to the summit. Pass would need to decide if the value of these extra comped admissions are worth the expense. What I mean to say is if we spend money on those extra comps, that money couldn't be used on some other priority.
I'd also like to mention that in my years on the program committee, no discussion of comps has ever occurred while deciding to choose one speaker over another. This however is different since it would be a policy.
So, what say you? keep the current limit of 2 per speaker, restrict it to one, make the limit 15?
Delicious
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Google Bookmarks
Live Favorites
Magnolia
Reddit
Slashdot
Stumbleupon
Technorati Favorites
Twitter
Yahoo! Buzz
8 comments
1 trackback
RSS 2.0
Bloglines
MyYahoo
Netvibes
Newsgator
Rojo
8 comments
5 months and 27 days ago
Allen, I think the additional cost is well worth the value to the event and to the community. I like that you're looking at the potential downside, and from the outside it seems like it shouldn't end up being a big concern, but still good to leave yourself some room to manuever the first time you implement this.
I wonder if you could write more about the spotlight sessions and the overall process of reviewing and selecting sessions?
5 months and 27 days ago
Keep in mind that you may not end up with 20 additional comps as some of these will likely overlap with comps awarded to volunteers in other areas. Perhaps you're only looking at 10-15 additional. You also will need to make allowances for adding an additional session for a presenter if there is no coverage for a specific topic that requires it.
I will comment on Andy's suggestion in my blog since I'm responsible for Spotlights, Pre-Cons, and that selection process.
5 months and 27 days ago
I'd like to see new speakers, but not sure I want to limit it to 1. Maybe limit the number of consecutive years, set a percentage of new speakers, set some requirements for speakers as well (delivered the presentation twice already to UGs/SQLSaturday, etc).
5 months and 27 days ago
You're correct the number could be different in many cases, I was looking for a maximum impact based on last years numbers as a way to quantify the potential expense.
5 months and 27 days ago
I like the fact that pre/post con speakers do a spotlight and think that should continue.
I don't know that I think it should be a hard and fast rule to limit a speaker to 1 session. I think that it should be more of «soft» rule for the abstract selection teams to choose a new session by a «new» speaker over an existing speaker if they evaluate closely. So if speaker A has a session already selected and their second session rates a 8 out of 10 while speaker B has no sessions selected and their session is a 7 out of 10 then you select speaker B. If there are no sessions that measure up then I think you need to allow speaker A to speak twice.
Also to throw into the mix, there were over 90 MS sessions in 2009 and at least the ones I went to, could have been done just as well by a community speaker, so limiting MS sessions a bit would open up slots for community people. That doesn't mean you eliminate the Buck Woody's and Bob Ward's as I know those were great sessions.
Perhaps also factoring in past performance (ratings) would help. Allow top N from each track to have 2 sessions and everyone else limited to 1 (including MS folks).
Those are my random thoughts on it.
5 months and 27 days ago
How about encouraging new speakers? Encouragement vs. Discouragement.
5 months and 22 days ago
How about this... if you have a repeat speaker whom you'd like to present two or three of their submitted sessions, and there's a new speaker that has submitted a similar session that meets general quality criteria - how about asking the existing speaker to mentor the new one?
5 months and 13 days ago
sounds like a great idea but, Im not sure how this would work logistically, especially since we cant expect all experienced speakers to be willing mentors to others they may or may not know.
Write a comment
If you want to add your comment on this post, simply fill out the next form:
* Required fields
You can use these XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>.
1 trackback
To notify a mention on this post in your blog, enable automated notification (Options > Discussion in WordPress) or specify this trackback url: http://www.allenkinsel.com/archive/2010/03/growing-the-pool-of-speakers/trackback/