UKOUG

A good day today. I was privileged enough to be at the paper selection day for the UKOUG conference in December 2008. For those who don't know what happens, and perhaps suspect some sort of elite giving themselves presentation slots, here is roughly how it works. 

Firstly a reasonably large group of reviewers from around the world, though naturally UK biased,  score your abstract on a scale from 1 (very poor) to 6 (excellent). They also have an opportunity to comment. These scores are then collated and a small team review the scores and allocate presentations to available slots. The purpose of the 2nd review is twofold - first it allows the team to review the agenda for balance of both topics and target audience - this year for example you will be especially well-served if you are a relatively new dba - and secondly it allows for the moderation of some of the scores - where for example only a very few people have scored a particular abstract. Finally, because some presenters get consistently high scores (Jonathan Lewis being the obvious prime example)  then there is the opportunity to ensure that other, maybe lesser known, presenters also get a look-in as well.

So what did this mean this year, well we had 212 submissions for the Server Technology arena (apps dba submissions are separate). We needed to fill 64 slots. So that means we needed to eliminate 7 out of 10 submissions. The average score for  this stream was 4.5 (that's halfway between good and very good.)  and on average over 18 reviewers would have scored your submission. To get into the Top Quartile (more or less to be guaranteed a place) then you needed to score 4.93 (Very Good) on average. To restate - to stand a good chance of getting in, your abstract needed to show a group of nearly 20 Server Technology specialists that it was either very good or excellent. The bar to present at UKOUG is extremely high. Those who will be receiving congratulations communications should feel justly proud. Those who are planning to go, well you should be spoiled for choice. You can register your interest (and maybe win a laptop) here.