I got this in an email about a week ago from the PASS Data Community Summit.
There’s more to it, but essentially I submitted 3 talks (2 on deployments, 1 pro dev) and none were selected.
It’s slightly disappointing, as it is a rejection, but it’s not really a rejection of me. It’s that the talks didn’t make the cut. I’ve spoken there before, and I have other engagements coming up at events. I’m also still going to the Summit and I’ll likely still have some speaking slot from Redgate.
For others, this might be very disappointing, but it’s not a rejection of you as a speaker. It’s that there are only so many slots, and there is a lot of competition. The program committee is a volunteer one, and while the conference organizers review their selections, they don’t make many changes. I know because I was one of the final reviewers where we looked at the breakdown of sessions in different topic areas, the diversity, the experiences, and we really only made 3 changes out of a few hundred where we saw a gap.
I don’t want to give too many specifics, but Grant noticed we had no Extended Event sessions in there, so we removed another DB Administration talk and added an xEvent one.
This year had over 1,100 submissions for 108 slots. There are a few more slots for vendors and a small few for first time speakers specifically, but that is a lot of competition. My Pro Dev talk has been popular elsewhere, but it wasn’t better than the others that were selected. Same for my other submissions.
They were good, just not good enough.
I do get rejected by some events, as do most other speakers. I don’t know anyone that is picked 100% of the time.
It’s OK. It doesn’t stop me from submitting, and it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do a great job at this conference. It just means not this time.
If you feel bad, that’s OK. Just keep submitting, working on your presentations, ask for feedback from others, and keep sharing your knowledge. You’ll get picked at another event.