IOUG-Live - Paper Submission rejected - Who?

Hi All
Been reading the number of postings on who got their Paper Submission rejected for the IOUG-Live conference. Odd to see so many experienced and good speakers rejected. I wont mentioned their names here but you would definitely know them.

I was under the impression that preferences were given to past presenters and automatic selection for the top 10% of presenters. Maybe that was in the past.

I contacted the IOUG-Live Head of Selection committee, Ian Abramson and this was his reply. (Ian, thanks for the reply). Ian was made aware that the reply would be forwarded to this list.

Tony,
Thanks for contacting me.
As the head of the selection committee, I guess I need to take responsibility for these selections. Papers are reviewed by teh individual Focus Area Managers and scored based on subject matter, previous speaking experience and a number of other factors. This is compiled by the FAMs and then selections are provided to us. The selections are based on this scoring. We receive hundreds of papers each year and the process is very labour-intensive and like many things it is possible that we make errors and ommisions in our selections. To address the issue of <name deleted> and <name deleted> directly, I am disappointed that you were both not selected, both of you are considered top speakers. Of course this not the scenerio I would have liked to see. There are sometimes oversights of this kind and when this occurs I would suggest for the future we do a better job in ensuring that all top rated speakers are included. I also feel that if a speaker who is not selected; that they communicate with the Director of Education or the Technical Session Chair to get a better understanding of why they were not selected. This may then trigger us to re-look at the reason for this selection and could enable us to repair a potential missed speaker. I hope this helps you better understand our process. The IOUG always strives to select the best speakers and subjects, but it is not a perfect process.
Ian

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