SQL Server Magazine Connections Spring 2008 – Call for presentations

With the November 5-9th SQL Connections conference in Las Vegas around the corner, Shirley Brothers, the Connections Conference Manager, would like to start planning the Spring show. And, for the Spring show forward, Paul and I will be the co-chairs of the SQL Connections conference. We would like to invite you to submit abstracts for the Spring 2008 SQL Connections conference, to be held in Orlando, April 20-24th, 2008.

The conference will take place shortly after the SQL Server 2008 launch (Feb 27, 2008), and will focus on best practices for SQL Server 2005, how to upgrade and migrate applications from SQL Server 200x to SQL Server 2008 and new features to leverage in SQL Server 2008. However, we will consider all topics – from design to performance to troubleshooting to architectures to programming. Also, we’re likely to closely follow our past conference format with three primary themes/tracks: Infrastructure and Scalability, Programming, and Business Intelligence. You should aim for the intermediate to advanced audience for any SQL Server 2005 materials and for SQL Server 2008 – we’ll consider any level – especially depending on the newness of the feature.

For submitting session abstracts, please use this URL:  http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts

Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. Please do not use bulleted items or line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. If you have an issue with the site, please follow up with an email as well to paul@sqlskills.com.

Please create a new speaker record (if you haven’t submitted before) and submit at least 3 abstracts; however, it will help your chances of being selected if you submit 5 or 6 abstracts. We need to have all your abstracts by October 26th. 

Finally, please see some important notes about your sessions at Connections conferences. These comments are from our Connections Conference Manager – Shirley Brothers:

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I would like to thank each and every one of our Connections speakers for helping us make this event so successful. Last year in Vegas we had just over 4,700 attendees; we hope to do that or better this fall. By the end of September we had over 3,000 registrations for our Fall show.

A successful show happens when you have a combination of things come together: great speakers, good venue, great partners, fun events, and ongoing relationship building. I hope we can all continue to work together to make Connections the very best event outside of Tech Ed, for years to come. As a more successful show, our competitors are trying to compete by moving their shows closer to our dates and in some cases, to the same cities.

It’s very disheartening for me to see our speakers presenting similar topics at competing shows that are scheduled so close to our own shows. So I want to make a small change in how we handle speakers. Essentially, I don’t want to schedule a speaker at a Connections show who is also presenting at one of our competitor’s shows, in the same state, within 30 days of a Connections show. Many of you have known me for years and you know that I would never discourage a speaker from doing something that is good for his/her career and company. I have never asked a speaker not to speak for a competitor and I am NOT saying that now. I am saying that if another show sits within 30 days of ours in the same state, that the speaker should choose to speak at one or the other conference, but not both. If for whatever reason a speaker does not choose Connections during that time period, there will NOT be hard feelings and they can speak for one of our shows at another time. 

I want Connections conferences to be different and unique in the minds of our attendees, our sponsors, and our speakers. I have given this a lot of thought and I think the best way to produce our Connections shows is not to have any of our speakers presenting at our show and at a competitor’s show a few weeks earlier or later in the same place.

Shirley
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