When are sessions going to be chosen?
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Posted on: Mon, 02/18/2008 - 1:29am
When are sessions going to be chosen?
I’ve scoured this site looking for the answer to what should be a simple question. Less than 2 weeks out, I would like to know if I should continue to spend my free time composing the session I have proposed or give up on it if it wasn’t selected.
Any insight into this will be greatly appreciated.
Roger,
I am not affiliated with the conference at all, save for being another possible presenter.
I heard on IRC tonight that the session list should be released at 12 PM PST on Monday, February 18th.)
I sympathize with the demands of getting a conference ready. However, I have a client who wanted to send some newbies to the conference, and they asked me, “What are the sessions going to be?” (curious if there would be enough things they could handle) I replied, ‘Um… I don’t know.” I told them to hold off on registering until the real sessions/days are posted. Also, due to the demands of work, they can’t go all three days, so they wanted to know which 1 or 2 days would be best for what they need to learn. So it isn’t enough to know that most of what is posted on this site will be at the show - they need to know what is going to be presented when.
I understand that Drupal is cool enough that a lot of people will go no matter what is presented. But for people who want specific things, they need to know what’s going to happen so they can decide if it’s worth the travel costs and taking off work.
I have been going to/presenting at conferences for 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Perhaps the conferences you’ve been going to had paid staff?
I’ve been to conferences with paid staff (they’re the minority) and conferences where everyone was a volunteer, but I’ve never seen such little lead time for a conference. I mean, it was just a month or so ago that the conference was announced, and now it’s less than two weeks until the conference and we still don’t know what the sessions are going to be.
Personally I only submitted sessions I could put together in less than a week, and I figured there was no harm in putting together an outline for the two sessions I proposed, but dang, I do have other work to do and it would be nice to know ASAP.
I mean, at this point there isn’t even a date for when the sessions will be decided. Even if the organizers haven’t had a chance to decide yet, is there a date?
I’ve gone to all kinds - paid, ad-hoc, 1-day, big commercial stuff…. and sure - I’ve seen last-minute session postings - for tiny shows. (Such as the jQuery conference at Harvard months ago - attended by lots of Drupal people) But I think that a free one-day conference for 50 local-and-regional people is not the same thing as a paid show in a major convention center with people traveling from all over the place.
I recognize that a conference is a huge amount of work - and that a volunteer force is not going to function like a conference management company. And I’ve often seen the professionals miss deadlines on deciding sessions (where you only hear 2-3 months ahead of the show instead of 3-4, etc). Also I’ve met a few of the people who are involved with this show - I bear absolutely no ill will toward them - they are great people.
I posted here because I know people who wanted to go, but couldn’t decide without the sessions. The fact that today is the registration “deadline” and there is no schedule is weird.
@smerrill: Thanks for the update.
@conference staff: I truly appreciate everything you all have done and will continue to do to put on this event. I sympathize with the stress you must be under right now. I simply wish there was at least a posted date for when the sessions are to be selected.
Looks like the Design and User Experience sessions have been chosen:
Without further delay, here is the lineup for DrupalCon Boston’s Design and User Experience track:
(Or view the whole thing at http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/2008/feb/18/design-and-user-experien... .)
They’re going up today. We’ve been contacting presenters today and marking the sessions that have been accepted.
Thanks, Steph :)
Fantastic. Can’t wait to hear about the sessions!
@stephthegeek, have all sessions been decided upon - for each track?
Yep. I know there’s still a few people sorting things out to make sure that everyone who submitted a session (accepted or not) gets contacted asap, but most people should have been contacted today. We’ve also been marking accepted sessions as such (eg. Scheduled: Accepted here: http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/session/title-no-tears-methods-user-cent...), so that’s another place you can check.
When the list does go up (today from the sounds of it?) where will that be?
Seems like very little session info in general on this site. I am guessing mine can’t get picked up since i saw obscure post saying something about drafts had to be emailed to track co-chairs. I still have no idea what that refers to and certainly never saw links to what to do next after i submitted session proposal.
:(…
The schedule is subject to change, but overall, it’s likely to look like this …
http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/sessiontutorial-schedule