I received my notification from the PASS Program Committee on Friday evening, and found out that I will not be speaking at the PASS summit this year. It’s a little disappointing but not entirely surprising; it’s only been in the past year or so that I’ve committed to speaking professionally, and there are many others who submitted sessions who are far more experienced at speaking than I. To that end, I’d rather have the bar set very high, even if it excludes me for this year, to maintain the quality of the material and presenters at the PASS summit.
I do appreciate that the Program Committee now offers feedback for the sessions that are not selected. Mine was marked as “Insufficient speaker experience”, which sounds like a bummer but it’s good information and something I can work on between now and next year’s selection.
In the meantime, I’m adding more speaking engagements to my agenda. I’m speaking this week at the North Texas SQL Server User Group meeting, and I’m going to submit sessions to one (or perhaps both) of the SQL Saturday events coming up in August.
So for this November, I’ll simply be an attendee/volunteer at the PASS Summit, and will continue to accumulate outside engagements to build my street cred for next year’s selection.
Be careful what you ask for--it can be rewarding yet replete with challenges. The collective, finite wisdom of those on the Selection Committee have rejected me in the past as well. Why O Why must we suffer so for the inadequacies of the rest of the human race? Seriously, I imagine that the Committee has their hands full--it must be a tough job. Better luck next year & good luck with your other speaking gigs!
Sorry to hear you won't be speaking at PASS. Hopefully I'll get to see you at another SQL event.
I'm sure that next year you will have plenty of speaking experience. You are making a great investment in time and money speaking at local events, and I am sure it will pay off in the long run.
