I received the email this week that I won’t be getting a place on the schedule, nor will the other chapter leaders from Florida. The event team received a lot of abstracts and even with limiting each speaker to one, there still wasn’t enough room for everyone, so they can had to make some decisions. It’s about a 2 hour drive for me, so I’ll be attending anyway, looking forward to learning and networking and seeing old friends. If it was a longer drive or a flight I’d probably elect to not go, harder to justify the time and expense if not doing a presentation

I’ve got a lot of respect for their decision. We want to grow speakers, and that sometimes means someone else has to step down. In Orlando we’ve been lucky enough to be able to expand, hosting 9 tracks at our most recent SQLSaturday #49, but scaling out hits the wall at some point. It’s not just a matter of space, it’s nice to have enough options to make it interesting but no so diverse that only get a handful of attendees in each room.

There’s no lack of opportunities to speak in our community. As a speaker I’m going to submit two abstracts to any event that I’d like to attend, and leave it up to the event team to decide who gets the coveted slots. My expectation is that there will be more times when I don’t get selected, and that’s ok, it’ll average out over the year.

See you in Tampa!