EclipseCon 2009 Selection Guidelines

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Discussion

The EclipseCon conference committee is committed to putting on the best EclipseCon ever. The most important feature of EclipseCon is the presentations. Typically there are far more quality presentations than there are slots. This section of the wiki is dedicated to establishing common guidelines that will be used by the program committee members to evaluate and select presentation proposals.

Selection Criteria

Quality

• Title: Catchy, Short, and Descriptive
• Abstract: Does the abstract
  • describe the talk
  • identify audience take aways
  • explain the importance of the talk
  • provide an outline
• Difficulty: Does the abstract match the difficulty assignment?
• Speaker: Is this speaker qualified
  • Biography - if they can't take the time to create a good bio, what does that say?)
  • Experience - Speakers will be asked to describe their speaking experience in the comments.
    • Category reps should prompt for experience if none is provided
  • EclipseCon 2008 Reviews - The PC can review last years evaluations and comments

Feedback

• Community Feedback: As represented in the comments.
• Presenter Response: Is the presenter willing to amend their presentation based on community feedback?

Program Balance

Each category has been allocated a specific number of talks. The category representative (see EclipseCon Program Committee) will review all entries for their category and work with the submitters to accept the talks that best meet the objectives of the category. This will include looking at:

• Difficulty: a mix of easy to expert
• Category Coverage: representation from the projects within the category
• Community Diversity: a diversity of voices is a goal

Open Source

Eclipse is an Open Source community. EclipseCon is not exclusively open source, but those talks that embrace an open philosophy will be given preference over closed talks. This includes

• Source Available: Will the attendee be able to download your slides and samples?
• Eclipse Technology: Presentations on Eclipse technology are preferred.
• Open Source: Presentations on Open Source technology that interact with Eclipse are better.
• Commercial Eclipse: Commercial products that are Eclipse focused are good, but face more scrutiny to ensure they are good technical talks and not just marketing pitches.
• Commercial Non Eclipse: Not appropriate for EclipseCon.
• Sales Pitches: Should be directed to exhibitors

Saying No

Unfortunately, we can't say yes to everyone. The category reps have agreed that they will try to work with each submission to make it acceptable. This may include:

• Modifying your submission
• Combining your submission with a similar presentation
• Shortening your submission

Even with these measures we may still need to say no. The program committee will strive to make sure that anyone that has taken the time to submit a talk will at least understand why their talk has not been accepted.