Category Archives: Conference Life

The Quiet of the Blog….

Conference Life, Presentations, WiTty Perspectives, , ,

Yikes… it’s been over two months since I’ve blogged! Besides the holidays, there’s been a lot going on here that’s kept me away. So what’s going on?

Get-ChildItem, Take 2

Little Dutkiewicz #2 is due at the beginning of May! So I’ve been spending a lot of time offline getting ready for his arrival.

Conference and Event Planning

After CodeMash happened, I’ve been heads down in event planning. These are some of the events that came up.

SQL Saturday #241 - Cleveland - February 8

From everything I’ve heard, it was a successful event! SQL Saturday was held at Hyland Software, with pre-cons at Hyland and at the Microsoft office in Independence. You can see the whole line-up here: http://sqlsaturday.com/241/eventhome.aspx

Unfortunately, I had an emergency keep me away. However, it was great to follow the #SQLSat241 stream and see everyone enjoying the event.

PowerShell Saturday 009 - Cancelled

Working with two other primary organizers and a few other organizers, we were planning on doing a PowerShell Saturday in March in Toledo. Unfortunately, there were some scheduling issues that came up, so this event is cancelled.

UXPA Cleveland - Introduction to Test Driven Development (For Developers and Non-Developers)

My friend Laura reached out to me to see if I could give a presentation for the UXPA Cleveland chapter. I’m excited to be speaking on the concepts and tools of TDD this coming Thursday, February 27th. I’m even more excited that I’ll be speaking at OverDrive’s new campus. I left OverDrive before the new campus opened, but from the stories I hear and the pictures I’ve seen, it’s a great place to check out! Want to know more about the event? Check out the UXPA Cleveland website!

Private speaking engagement for a local company

My friend Pieri of PC Computing passed on an opportunity to speak at a client near their International Women’s Day event. I will be speaking at a breakfast with some of their female employees on taking advantage of technology to make life management a bit more efficient. By becoming more efficient, this will hopefully inspire them to use their freed up time to help themselves more!

Women and Technology Seminar

Pieri and I are teaming up to help promote three chapters of professional women’s organizations down in the Medina area - the American Association of University Women, the International Association of Administrative Professionals, and Working Women Connection. (Disclaimer: I am a member of the Working Women Connection Cleveland East chapter.) We’re teaching women about Windows 8 and some tips & tricks for iPads and Surface tablets. Our event is Saturday, March 29th at the University of Akron: Medina County University Center. If you’re interested in learning more about those groups or topics, please check out our event on Eventbrite.

Stir Trek: Winter Soldier Edition

Once again, the Stir Trek board is planning for a super awesome Stir Trek conference. This year’s event is Friday, April 4th - opening day of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We’re holding this at a new location - the Rave Motion Pictures theater at Polaris. While we enjoyed our experiences at Marcus Crosswoods in the past, their comfy new seats unfortunately would’ve made us cut the number of attendees at the conference, and we couldn’t do that! Tickets have gone up to $75.00, which covers:

  • Conference admission - with over 40 sessions of technical and career-related content
  • Well-known local, regional, and international speakers
  • Breakfast and lunch
  • Attendee T-shirt
  • Private screening of the movement and refreshments during the movie

For those familiar with the event, we’ve also done away with the +1 registration option. If you need a +1 registration, you’ll be able to purchase those from the theater directly. As in the past, registration is handled via Eventbrite. Hope to see you there!

What happened to WiT Wednesdays? Will you pick those back up?

While I really wanted to run with that idea and even had great ideas for it, I just haven’t had time to get all of the posts written out or interviews done. Basically, life happened and WiT Wednesdays have been back-burnered. They may return but not with the frequency that I had hoped.

So this little guy in the making… he’s not letting you slow down, is he?

The overachiever in me isn’t letting me slow down. I’m going to continue to speak and organize events as long as I can, and then once he’s here, I hope to be back at it again within a few months. I’m not ready to put my career on hold - I’ve got things to do. :) So stay tuned for more events on where you can find me in action!

Thoughts on Speaker Selection Tactics

Conference Life, Diversity,

 

After reading Justin Searls of Test Double’s post on Calls for Transparency, it got me thinking.  I’m on a variety of conference and event planning committees, and no two events follow the same speaker selection process.  These are just some of my personal thoughts and do not reflect the views of the committees that I serve on.

Blind Speaker Selection

None of the speaker selection committees that I’ve served on have used this process.  While I like the idea of anonymized submissions for an initial filter, I eventually like to know more about who’s delivering the topic – not necessarily who by name but who by experience.  Has this person spoken at conferences of this particular size?  If not, have they had significant amount of speaking at conferences or venues smaller than this?  If there was a way to convey this information while still somehow maintaining the anonymity of the speaker, I would definitely prefer this method. 

Invite-Only Selection

This definitely has its pros and cons.  For one, it could be a matter of the committee selecting only their friends and their heroes.  Or it could be seen elitist and that the committee only wants a certain caliber of speakers, which makes other speakers feel like they aren’t that caliber.  It could also be seen that the committee wants the best speakers possible to help ensure the success of their event – so they want the best speakers for their attendees so that the attendees get the best bang for their buck.  For the committees I’ve been on that have gone this route, I recommend speakers who are known for their topics and appropriate for the event.  While I love my friends, my job on a speaker selection committee isn’t to ensure that they get picked – my job is to make sure I’m selecting people that the attendees will want to hear.  As time goes on, this gets harder and harder to do, as there are so many people out there that are great speakers but days are only so long and conferences can only be so long. 

Open Call for Speakers, Non-Blind Selection

This is the most common tactic I’ve seen on the committees  that I’ve served on.  I like it in that it opens the submission  process up to the whole community, bringing in speakers that we may not have even known about or even bringing in new speakers who are ready to present at our event’s level (whatever that translates to).  This presents some problems though:

  • More submissions means more for a committee to filter through and decide on.  This can make the process that much more difficult.
  • Being non-blind, there’s always the fear of the committee selecting just their friends.
  • Being non-blind, there’s also the fear of the diversity factor. People fear being selected (or not selected) because committees may have quotas or ideal mixes in mind.

The Diversity Factor

This is one thing that I’m sure other speaker selection committee members have weighing on them.  In a non-blind selection or even in an invite-only selection, you can make sure that your selections meet whatever it is that you’re shooting for – be it mega rockstars, more female presenters, or some other mix.  As a female presenter who has been on teams that have tried to take on the diversity factor, I’m begging you other speaker selection types – don’t choose speakers just to meet a quota.  If they don’t talk on topics relevant to your event… if they aren’t experienced enough to be speaking at your event…. please, please, please don’t select a speaker just for diversity.  While diversity is nice to have, sacrificing the quality of your event at the risk of diversity isn’t necessarily a good idea.

Conclusion

I’m currently on a bunch of planning committees.  We have an open call for speakers for SQL Saturday #241 (closing on 12/15); however, our pre-con talk speaker(s) are invited.  For PowerShell Saturday 009 in March 2014, we’re still in our early planning stages, and we are reaching out to local PowerShell resources to help find speakers.  If you’re interested in speaking at PowerShell Saturday 009 in Toledo, OH, definitely email me or ping me on Twitter.  For my event in late March, there are only 2 of us presenting, as it’s a small event and we’re doing it to promote some local groups.  As for Stir Trek, just stay tuned to @stirtrek on Twitter or the website for further news, as it’s always an evolving process – what started as invite-only eventually grew to invitations and open call for speakers.

I can only hope other conference organizers see Justin’s call for transparency and get on board with it.  I don’t know if there’s a speaker selection process that isn’t subjected to criticism – they all have their merits and pitfalls.  But hopefully through transparency we may be able to find a better way of selecting speakers for our events.

Preparing for Future Talks and Conference Thoughts

Conference Life, Uncategorized

I haven’t been blogging much lately, as I’m currently buried in class preparations - taught HTML5 in June, finishing up a SQL Queries course this Thursday, and I also help teach some of the web material for the Software Craftsmanship Guild, ran by the awesome Eric Wise. However, with a few conferences coming up and looking at some recent conference issues, I have to take a break from class prep to get my thoughts out.

Conferences and Families

Recently, there was an issue with a speaker at TechEd who had traveled to be there and his wife’s presence. He ended up cancelling his talks since his wife - who was in from a foreign country on her own not knowing anyone else there - wasn’t allowed to be there. As a conference organizer, if a speaker conveys to me ahead of time that they’re traveling with family, then I have no problem working with them on either getting their family in or at least working with the family to find local things to do during the conference. I totally get travelling with family, especially when going far from home. So I sympathize with him.

Reading Andy Leonard’s blog post - This Isn’t Hard: Allow Spouses to Attend Conferences, I couldn’t agree more with Andy. I don’t help plan conferences with seven-plus-figure budgets - the ones I help with might hit six-figures but definitely not seven. However, the ones I help with have been sympathetic, easy to work with when approached, or understanding when a speaker has to cancel due to family obligations.

This leads me to an upcoming conference I’m speaking at that is family friendly… That Conference!

That Conference - August 12 - 14 @ Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells, WI

This is my first out-of-state conference where I’m actually going to have my family in tow. While I’m looking forward to presenting on untying the knots of IE web development, I’m also looking forward to family time as well.

That Conference is a family-friendly conference - complete with events such as THAT Wildlife, Internet Safety for Parents and Kids by the awesome Richard Campbell, LEGO programming, pig roast, waterpark party… all sorts of fun for the family!

Words can’t explain how excited I am to be hanging with my friends and family!

Software Craftsmanship Guild

After That Conference, then I get to look forward to a new cohort starting at the Software Craftsmanship Guild. My friend Eric had asked me to come by during this first cohort, and he has gotten me to spread some of my love for the web technologies, with more lessons planned in the future. I’ve been enjoying this group so far - with backgrounds from medical illustrator to marketer to entrepreneur to shipping to military and all non-programmers at that. This group of talented men and women show a lot of success so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go. I’m also curious to see who will make the cut and join us in the next cohort. Want to know more? Check out their website at: http://swcguild.com

Strange Loop - Sept 18 - 21 in St. Louis, MO

Shortly after the new cohort starts, I’m heading to Strange Loop to speak on the history of women in tech. I’m really looking forward to this talk - no technical demos for the demo gods to invade and it’s a topic I’ve been excited to talk about for awhile. Not only am I looking forward to speaking here, but I’m also looking forward to the sessions - especially the Raspberry Pi pre-conference workshop. We have a few first gen Raspberry Pis that I’ve been meaning to tinker with, so now I have a good reason to!

Conference Sponsors & Attendees’ Contact Information

Recently, I took a survey for a conference I had previously spoken at, and there was a question on the survey that brought up bad mojo. I’m thankful when conferences are open with how they use their attendees’ contact information. However, more and more and much to my dismay, I’m hearing conferences take the approach of “We’ve got your contact information and for a low cost of {$10 - $35+} you can pay us to not give your contact information to our sponsors.” When I helped organize Cleveland Day of .NET 2008, sponsors contacted us to get our attendee list. Some were a bit more persistent - to the point where I won’t do business with them still today. We protected our attendees’ information successfully, but it still irritated me to see this.

As an attendee, if I’m paying to attend conference, it should be for a meal or for the content - those costs I can understand. Maybe there are costs - venue, insurance, etc. - that couldn’t be covered due to a lack of sponsorships - I could see this being passed on if people really want their conference to happen.

However, charging attendees to prevent their contact information from being released seems a lot like extortion. With extortion, you obtain money with threat, force, torture, or the like. Hmm… obtaining money from attendees with the threat of releasing their contact information to the sponsors - seems like extortion to me.

A friend likened the practice to ad-supported versus ad-free, but even with ad-supported apps, you aren’t necessarily giving away your contact information. You may be giving up screen real estate to see an ad of something that you might care about, but with ad-supported apps, they aren’t saying “Give us your contact information so that we can have our marketing and partners contact you or you aren’t getting our app.” Or if it is an app like that, I back away quickly, as it’s a practice that I personally don’t agree with.

I’m fine with sponsors having a booth or some way of interacting with the attendees at the event. That way, if the attendees want to interact with the sponsors, then they choose to do so. This is the opt-in approach. If sponsors aren’t getting the foot traffic they had hoped for, then they need to work with the conference organizers on finding a way to make this happen without putting the attendees’ personal contact information out there. Conference organizers could promote the sponsors in emails, slides on the speakers’ decks, conference programs, through word of mouth, Twitter - the opt-in options are endless.

However, I am not a fan of the opt-out by paying model. To me, this seems unfair to the attendee. So going forward, I won’t be speaking at conferences that take this approach. I personally cannot support conferences that do this, not in good conscience.

Conclusion

I’m looking forward to the conferences I have coming up. From family friendly and just well-respected… I’m super excited to say the least! But at the same time, as time goes on, I’m going to be even more careful about the conferences I speak at or even help organize, because if there are practices I don’t believe in that are happening, then I’ve got to either change the conference (by speaking up) or change the conference (by walking away and sticking to my beliefs).