The Call for Speakers began in mid-August. With more than a month build up, our social team worked hard to promote the event by reaching out to speakers in various channels, subject areas, and regions of the world. We were not ready for what was to come!
The Submissions Arrived!
As days passed, speaker submissions rolled in. The Summit committee was amazed, excited, and inspired by the amount and quality of the submissions. We hoped to ensure a great conference by having experienced speakers and valuable subject matter. After an initial review of the submissions, we quickly realized DNN Summit could easily be one of the best DNN Conferences to date.
To provide perspective… a record number of submissions were received from individuals all across the globe and from some who’ve never even attended a DNN event. Due to quality and overwhelming response of the submissions, we expanded speaker sessions by adding an additional room at the event. Despite the expansion, we still had a tremendous task at hand with submissions totaling well over 4 times the capacity available. The response was tremendous.
Speaker Selection
Having so many quality submissions is a good problem to have but a challenging scenario. Imagine having to review so many great sessions and figure out which ones to pick and why. Our first step began with each committee member flagging sessions red, yellow or green. Once everyone completed this process, the committee met for an extremely long meeting in which we discovered we had many more greens than yellows or reds. Within a reasonable time period the sessions were narrowed down to 60. But this is when the going got tough. All 60 sessions were great. The bad news… we had 25 sessions to cut. The committee had to look at the balance of content, the overall fun verses valuable information factor and consider which sessions would draw more attendees. We did our best to accommodate as much as we could while keeping the content balanced. This was not an easy task and was not taken lightly. Passionate debate ensued over various session topics which will ultimately benefit conference attendees. We appreciate every session submitted and encourage everyone to continue to submit for future conferences. Each submission played an integral role in the successful line-up for DNN Summit 2017.
Speaker Notification
Yesterday (Monday, September 26, 2016) individual emails were sent notifying speakers of their selected sessions. If you submitted a session, you should have been notified whether you were selected to speak or not. If you have any questions regarding your submission feel free to contact us for more information. If you were selected to speak please be sure to respond with the requested information in the speaker selection email.
We’re Not Done Yet - Ignite Session “Call for Speakers” Still to Come
One of the recent trends in our conferences is to end the day with Ignite Sessions. If you’ve ever seen an Ignite they are entertaining. The Ignite format has 20 PowerPoint slides which auto-advance every 20 seconds, forcing the speaker to complete their presentation in 5 minutes. Ignites can be about anything and everything and are usually very creative and engaging sessions. We will be posting the call for Ignite speakers soon so stay tuned to the Speakers page and our social media accounts for more info!