CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

Proposal deadline: The CFP has closed, however submissions will be continue to be reviewed on a rolling basis until program is final.

1. Read the Submission Guide: "What you will be asked to provide in the submission process"
2. Review the following details...
Critical dates	Presentation guidelines	Conditions, requirements, & benefits	Possible topic areas	How to improve your chances
Then...		3.Submit your proposal here

Presentation proposals are now being accepted for the 21st Annual DAMA International Symposium + 13th Annual WILSHIRE Meta-Data Conference scheduled for April 5-9, 2009 at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida.

This conference is recognized as the foremost vendor-neutral data management educational conference in the world. 1000 IT and business professionals from over 20 countries attended the conference in 2008. For reference, previous events can be reviewed at www.wilshireconferences.com.

Presentations are invited across the entire range of data management fields of interest. As a guide, key educational themes and topics for 2009 are listed below.

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Presentation Guidelines

1. Presentations may be proposed in the following categories:

• Conference Sessions (1 hour duration)

• Special Interest Group (SIG) or User Group Sessions (a facilitated discussion of 1 hour duration)

• Workshops (3 hours - see terms below)

• Tutorials (6 hours - see terms below)

2. Please take note of all the requirements and follow the presentation guidelines carefully.  There is a great deal of competition for speaking opportunities at this conference and based on historical trends, we will be able to accept fewer than one in every 6 presentation proposals.  Therefore, incomplete or poorly constructed proposals tend to be quickly eliminated from consideration.  If you are unsure of your proposal, you may email us with questions so we can guide you before you make an official submission. PLEASE NOTE: We cannot tell you if your proposal will be accepted or not. This would not be fair to the hundreds of other potential speakers who have also submitted proposals.

3. Presentations from corporate practitioners that reflect real-world experience and hands-on implementation will receive priority consideration.

4. Vendor organizations may submit proposals for any presentation category, but please understand that vendor presentations are viewed very cautiously in light of past experience with sales pitches and commercialism. Therefore, very few speaking slots are ultimately offered to vendor organizations. (Vendors interested in promoting their products may purchase exhibit space, product presentation times, or other sponsorships. Please contact Cristina Lim at 310-337-2616 x103.)

5. Commercial/sales presentations and/or demonstrations during conference sessions are not appropriate (Please note point # 3 in Presentation Conditions below).

6. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are one-hour long and conducted in the early mornings and evenings.  The typical format is a facilitated session, comprising a 5-10 minute overview talk by the speaker, followed by audience discussion.  SIGs can be for any level of audience experience.

7. For further guidelines, see "How to Improve the Chances of Your Proposal Being Selected"

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VERY IMPORTANT!
Speaker Presentation Conditions, Requirements & Benefits

1. All speakers must agree to provide their presentation to Wilshire Conferences in a standard electronic form (PowerPoint is required), no later than March 9, 2009. This is necessary to prepare the event CD and documentation. Presentations will be distributed via a secure .PDF or a hard copy onsite. Speakers who are delinquent in meeting this deadline risk being replaced on the program, and may not be selected for future programs.

2. By submitting a proposal, the speaker agrees to the standard copyright and reproduction terms of this event.  These terms provide that copyright in original presentation material remains with the speaker, however Wilshire Conferences is granted the right to record, reproduce and distribute each presentation in all forms of printed and electronic conference materials, including, but not limited to, the conference CD-ROM, printed attendee notes, the conference website, and audio and/or video recordings (digital and/or analog), without royalties or fees payable to speaker. Sorry, there are no exceptions to these requirements.

3. All sessions will be rated by the audience for commercial content.  Any speaker who is judged by the audience to have made an inappropriate sales pitch for his/her own company, book, product or service during a conference session risks having their presentation interrupted and/or halted, and will not be invited to participate at future conferences.

4. By submitting a proposal, speaker agrees that he/she has permission from his/her company to make the presentation under the terms outlined in this Call for Presentations.  If you do not have approval at the time you make the proposal, you must indicate this clearly.

5. One speaker per accepted session receives complimentary attendance to the entire conference.  Additional speakers will be asked to pay a modest fee sufficient to cover the costs of their attendance.

6. All Conference Session, Panel and SIG speakers are responsible for their own travel and living expenses.

7. Workshop and Tutorial speakers receive a fee ($500 for half-day workshop speakers, $1250 for full-day tutorial speakers, plus a $250 bonus for submitting final presentations by the deadline) plus an expense reimbursement in accordance with the standard conference policies (which may be viewed here - in a new browser window).  An expense budget will be established and confirmed with the speaker prior to final acceptance.

8.  Click here for Keynote, Tutorial, and Workshop speaker travel and living expense policy.

All questions regarding the Call for Presentations may be sent to us at speaker@wilshireconferences.com.

Thank you!

 
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Possible Topic Areas

DAMA International Symposium

• Data Management Best Practices - Case Studies and Success Stories
• Interaction of Business and Data Management
• Data Strategy
• Enterprise Information Management (EIM)
• Data Requirements of Legislative Compliance
• Measuring the Business and Financial Value of Data Assets
• The Politics of Data
• Future Trends and New Developments in Data Management
• Marketing and Selling DM
• Global Data Management
• Modeling - Data, Process, Object, Logical and Physical
• Data Integration
• Project Management
• Use Cases and Requirements Analysis
• Agile Development
• Architectures - Enterprise, Data, Information and Federated
• Data Warehousing, Data Marts, Decision Support
• Business Rules and Business Rule Engines
• Information and Data Quality 
• Stewardship and Governance 
• Data Management's Role in ERP and Packages
• Customer Relationship Management
• Knowledge Management
• Implementing Data Administration Functions
• Applying the Zachman Framework
• Data Security
• Data Privacy
• Metrics
• Data Lexicon, Data Naming Standards
• Ethics
• Advanced Research of Data and Information Resource Management

Wilshire Meta-Data Conference

• Technical and Management Issues in Metadata
• Repository Implementation and Project Management
• Metadata Best Practices
• Data Services
• Master Data Management (MDM)
• Customer Data Integration (CDI)
• Product Information Management (PIM)
• Metadata ROI
• Managing Metadata Proliferation
• Use of Metadata to Integrate Applications and Services in an SOA Environment
• Requirements for Metadata Tools
• Metadata Registries
• Business Metadata
• Metadata Architectures
• Integration Standards
• Unstructured Data
• Integrating Unstructured and Structured Data
• Business Semantics
• RDF
• Ontologies
• Taxonomies
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• The Semantic Web
• Search Techniques and Technologies
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
• Enterprise Information Integration (EII)
• XML for Data/Metadata Management
• Working with XML Schemas, Namespaces, etc.
• Business Intelligence
• Real-Time Analytics
• Business Performance Measurement (BPM)
• ITIL

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How to Improve the Chances of Your Proposal Being Accepted

There is no "formula" to being accepted, and there is no way to guarantee that your proposal will be selected by the conference committee.  However, there are a few ways that you can improve your chances and avoid being eliminated in the early part of the evaluation process.

DO...

- Write clearly, succinctly, and use a spell-check.  You'd be amazed how many proposals we receive where it's really difficult to understand  the subject matter of the presentation.

- Offer more "Advanced" subject matter, especially if you're an expert in your field.  Develop a presentation that stretches the audience to reach further (i.e. help bring them up to your level).  Too often we receive very basic speaking proposals from people who have much more to offer.  We want more advanced, sophisticated subject matter!

- Give us something exciting with which to evaluate you. eg. "voted 'most amusing' speaker at the DB2 conference", or "I have just completed a major project dealing with these issues and I'm excited to share the difficult lessons with my peers."

- Be specific about what you'll be presenting, and why it will be useful to the audience.  i.e. "I'll show you exactly how we reduced the time to create the models by 25%, and reduced the cost of re-work by another 50% because of the improved quality the deliverables."  That's much better than "Discussion of efficiencies, quality improvement and cost reductions."

- If you're from a vendor company, you have a better chance of being selected if you propose talking about the "leading edge" of the technology area in which you operate, rather than the basics.

- If you're from a PR firm, speaker placement agency, or internal marketing department, make sure your speaker is willing and available to participate before you make the submission.

- Be willing to speak on a panel.  It's not as much podium time, but the panels are very well attended.  And given the competition for speaking slots then you will definitely increase your chances of being accepted.

- Accept all the speaker terms.  If there's anything you're not sure about, contact us to discuss it.

- You may email us at speaker@wilshireconferences.com to ask questions.  We're happy to help.

- Finally, you must use the web-based form to make your final submission.  That way your proposal will go directly "into the database", where we can track it, distribute it to the committee and ensure proper follow-up. 

DON'T...

- Don't propose "obvious" topics.  The attendees of Meta-Data+DAMA are a reasonably sophisticated audience, and they already understand "Why Data Management is Important" and "Why Quality Matters" (for which we receive over a dozen proposals every year). Though we need some presentations that cover fundamentals, they have to be about new subject areas, and must be pitched at a level that's useful to an audience of data management professionals.

- Don't ever propose a talk that discusses how your products "meet the needs of data management" -- you'll never be accepted.

- Don't make the same proposal you've submitted for the past 3 years.  Please offer something new.  There's probably a good reason we didn't accept it the first 3 times.

- If you were accepted and presented at a previous year’s event, don’t submit the same proposal this year. We do not repeat the same conference sessions in subsequent years. If the proposal is similar, indicate the differences from the previous year.

- If you're from a vendor company, don't talk about your products, unless we specifically ask you to do so.  Just don't do it.  If you're deemed to have made an "unacceptably commercial presentation" then you won't be invited back to speak.

- Don't take the shotgun approach (ie. making a dozen different proposals and hoping that one gets accepted).  Much better to contact us beforehand, get some advice as to what we're looking for, and refine the list down to the 2-3 good topics that are most likely to get you selected. 

- Don't assume that extensive audiovisual or technical requests can be easily provided at no cost to you.  For example, a high-speed Internet connection can cost as much as $2500 a day in some venues, so don't assume we will be able (or willing) to provide the connection for you.  If you need a more elaborate or expensive AV set-up then contact us to discuss it first.

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Presentation Proposal Submission Form

Meta-Data/DAMA 2009 Home Page

Wilshire Conferences Home Page