Allen Kinsel, my brother in arms for the Summit 2010 Program, posed a question about how to grow the pool of speakers for the PASS 2010 Summit. Allen has proposed that in order to bring in more speakers, we limit things to 1 session per speaker. With 168 sessions across the board, that’s a lot of potential speakers. Currently, we limit things to 2 sessions per speaker.
What are your thoughts?
This poll will close on Thursday, March 18 at 8AM EST and I’ll publish the results in a separate blog post.
[poll id="2"]
Comments
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Especially given that PASS doesn’t pay anything. Those of us who both lose income and pay our own way need to justify the trip, and doing only a single session makes it much less appealing.
You have a good point. Maybe I should have had a third choice: No, but set aside X sessions for new speakers. Maybe I should see if I can change that now.
I vote no as well. There are people like Adam that need to justify their trip, but also I think this is a marketing item. Having some popular speakers deliver 2 makes sense to me.
However I would support a couple of other ideas. Limiting speakers to presenting no more than say, 2 Summits in a row isn’t the end of the world. We could exempt spotlight or pre/post con people, but it would be nice to have slots open up for new speakers.
I’d like to see a percentage of new speakers as well, perhaps 20% first time speakers.
Hah, when I vote No, a popup says Please Choose a valid poll answer. RIGGED! RIGGED!
By the way, I really like the idea of bringing in new speakers, but I don’t think they should really be “new” speakers. Just new to the summit. Attendees don’t pay to come to a conference to see someone work on stage fright issues. Any summit speaker should have at least four or five code camps, SQL Saturdays, user groups, or whatever under their belt.
Also, setting a fixed arbitrary number, e.g. 20%, is going to become limiting. There are only so many people who are even willing to give speaking a try once, let alone multiple times. At my UG I’ve had some brand-new speakers speak, and maybe 50% didn’t really like the experience enough to continue. Given the number of speakers that PASS brings in I think it might be impossible to fill 20% year after year.
I don’t think there should be a limit. I would love to travel and present, but I am not able to for a variety of reasons, so those that can do and should be able to give as many presentations as they believe they are capable of giving. A way to ‘limit’ the number given is to look at what is available and say ‘Bob is able to give 5 presentations, but we will give him 4 and give one to Jane’ Just because someone can give 5 doesn’t mean they have to be allowed 5.
Darn, I voted NO but had come to the page before the 3rd option was posted so I didn’t see the option of “No Set aside X slots” which I would have voted for.
I posted a somewhat long-winded comment on Allen’s blog that gives my thoughts.
I also agree with Adam that there should be some mandatory experience for Summit speakers. Considering that there were over 500 abstracts submitted for 113 sessions, I think the Summit could probably manage 10-20% new speakers for several years, especially with the expanded opportunities to speak (SQLSaturday’s, Virtual Chapters, etc…) the pool is growing fairly quickly.
I voted no, and set aside. But I think there’s another option. Encouragement vs. Discouragement.
I couldn’t vote. It kept saying I needed to provide a valid answer. So, let me just say it here & you can add my vote. No, I don’t think they should limit the good speakers like Adam or Paul/Kim or Kalen or Itzik, etc., but I do think they ought to set aside a percentage of slots for new speakers. It might be a gamble, but that’s the one way to ensure you’re injecting new blood at the same time you provide a quality program with the speakers that people are paying to see.
What is the objective of this initiative?
From the perspective of a person who comes to PASS summit to learn, has to travel, pays money, loses income for a few days etc., it is better to have several quality sessions from a high quality speaker.
From this perspective, what would be the advantage of replacing a high quality session from a well known speaker with less impressive one from another speaker just because of some quota?
It won’t let me vote Yes!
I’d hate to lose Adam (or anyone else) that decided it wasn’t worth their while to do only one session, but I think in terms of overall community it would be a powerful and inclusive message. I’m not opposed to leaving the committee a little leeway, but it will have to be used carefully, and in a way that makes sense to the community and to the other speakers.
Going a little further, one of the lessons I’ve taken from SQLSaturday is that we need to help speakers maximize the value of their participation. Maybe that’s allowing one slide about their company, but it’s also almost forcing them into networking opportunities (BOF lunch last year was great). I see too many speakers who speak, and then disappear into the ready room or wherever. Not all speakers are great networkers, so we should try to teach, encourage, and provide opportunities to do so.
Doing more with the recorded sessions is also a nice way to increase the reach of a speaker.
If we can’t find 110 compelling speakers then we have a reason to double up, but I think we can find them, and we should!
I think I broke the survey when I added the third option, but I appreciate your feedback. We’re trying to do a lot of things and some of it might have to wait for next year. Maybe we’ll have a few free minutes at the BoD meeting to chat about your ideas. If not there’s always email.
Getting speakers more involved is pivotal. I heard such great things about the BoF lunch that I think we need to do it again this year, or something similar.
I’m sure it won’t change people’s minds, but it’s worth mentioning, PASS is already doing a pretty good job of bringing in new speakers. Have you guys looked at Allen Kinsel’s blog lately? He posted a percentage of first time speakers for each of the last two years: http://www.allenkinsel.com/archive/2010/03/pass-first-time-speaker-statistics/
I think the numbers are higher than most people think they are.