PASS Summit 2014 Speaker Idol Competition

If you watched my SQL PASS 1st Timers webcast last week (which you can see the recording of here) you saw that I announced that this year the PASS Summit will be hosting it’s first ever speaker idol competition.  The goal behind the Speaker Idol competition is to give speakers who are known in their region a chance to be seen at the international level so that they can improve their chances of being selected to speak in future years, to get some real time feedback from other speakers about their presentation style, and so that they can improve as speakers.

In order to qualify to be a contestant in the SQL PASS 2014 Speaker Idol competition there are a few simple requirements:

1. You have spoken at a SQL Saturday or SQL Rally event (or other large non-pass event, such as SQL Bits, a TechEd Conference, etc.).
2. You have not spoken at the PASS Summit or PASS Business Analytics Conference for a breakout, spotlight or pre-con session.  (If you gave a lightning talk and no other session you are eligible.)
3. You will be in Seattle during the PASS Summit (attending PASS isn’t needed, and if you aren’t attending PASS we will get you to the session room for Speaker Idol).
4. You are available to attend which ever speaker idol session you are assigned to.
5. You have a 5 minute technical presentation which you can give.
6. You sign up on the registration form before October 10th 2014 at 11:59:59pm (23:59:59) Pacific time according to Denny Cherry’s Verizon Cell Phone.

The rules for Speaker Idol are pretty simple.  12 contestants will be selected from those who have submitted.  Those 12 people will be broken up into three groups of four, which will be the initial rounds.  One group will compete each day (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) with the winners from each round moving on to the final round.  A wild card contestant will be selected from the 9 contestants who didn’t win their initial round.  These four contestants will compete in the final round on Friday.  The winner will be guaranteed a session at the PASS Summit 2015.  The exact times for the Speaker Idol sessions won’t be known until the PASS Summit Schedule is announced.

Judging will be done by a panel of experienced speakers (who haven’t been announced yet) who have spoken at conferences such as the PASS Summit, TechEd, Dev Connections, Intersections, etc.  Judges will give each speaker feedback as soon as they are done presenting.

If you think you have what it takes to compete in this years PASS Summit 2014 Speaker Idol Competition, then I invite you to signup on the registration form.  You’ll notice on the form that there is no session abstract requirement which is correct.  There is no abstract review for selecting the people for Speaker Idol.

So go submit yourself, and I’ll see you at the first speaker idol session on Wednesday.

Denny