VMworld 2013 Call For Papers opened today. I know many of you are excited about this and hoping to have a session accepted at this top-of-the-bill event. Personally I always submit various sessions and for the last years always had atleast one of them excepted, and some years even multiple. So the obvious question I always get is “do you have tips”?
I guess at the risk of lowering my own chances, here they are, do note that as always there is a limited number of sessions that will be accepted. No guarantee that my tips will help in any shape or form, but these are my rules when I submit a session:
- Be Original, make sure your suggestion is unique. If there are 10 others submitting the exact same, chances are slim you will get in. (Every year I see at least 5 or 6 community/bloggers panel sessions being submitted, with limited space make sure you work together on this and do not compete.)
- Think Big, although your 2 host home-lab might be interesting to you VMworld is attended by 20.000+ people. So make sure your session appeals to the broader audience AND to the voting committee.
- Quality over Quantity, really there is no point in submitting 10 sessions. Rather submit two or three, well thought out and developed submissions. This is what you will be judged on by the voting committee. They will read your title and summary, this will need to convince them!
- Co-Present! Something I always try to do is to team up with someone. Not only will it make the “delivery” a lot easier, but a second pair of eyes on the submission will help!
- Theme – Theme – Theme, although the theme for 2013 hasn’t been announced yet all of us can more or less guess what it will be about. We all know VMware has these three pillars they are focusing on, and that the SDDC is a major part of it… Make sure to submit something that hits that theme / fits in to those three pillars!
Now before you start running and submit a session, take a deep breath, sit down, relax and think about what you are going to submit. The Call For Papers will be open until April 12th so no need to rush, start scribbling down those ideas and go take your time to fine-tune them!
It would be really helpful that a theme is determined as soon as possible because it would make the development of papers much easier. Even though we all know VMware has three pillars they are focusing on, and that the SDDC is a major part of it, it would be better to make it much more explicit. Hopefully you announce them as soon as possible.